What is the bin directory in linux

The /bin Directory

/bin is a standard subdirectory of the root directory in Unix-like operating systems that contains the executable (i.e., ready to run) programs that must be available in order to attain minimal functionality for the purposes of booting (i.e., starting) and repairing a system.

The root directory, which is designated by a forward slash ( / ), is the top-level directory in the hierarchy of directories (also referred to as the directory tree) on Unix-like operating systems. That is, it is the directory that contains all other directories and their subdirectories as well as all files on the system.

A directory in a Unix-like operating system is merely a special type of file that contains a list of the names of objects (i.e., files, links and directories) that appear to the user to be in it along with the corresponding inodes for each object. A file is a named collection of related information that appears to the user as a single, contiguous block of data and that is retained in storage (e.g., a hard disk drive or a floppy disk). An inode is a data structure on a filesystem that stores all the information about a filesystem object except its name and its actual data. A data structure is a way of storing data so that it can be used efficiently. A filesystem is the hierarchy of directories that is used to organize files on a computer system.

The full names (also referred to as the absolute pathnames) of all of the subdirectories in the root directory begin with a forward slash, which shows their position in the filesystem hierarchy. In addition to /bin, some of the other standard subdirectories in the root directory include /boot, /dev, /etc, /home, /mnt, /usr, /proc and /var.

Among the contents of /bin are the shells (e.g., bash and csh), ls, grep, tar, kill, echo, ps, cp, mv, rm, cat, gzip, ping, su and the vi text editor. These programs can be used by both the root user (i.e., the administrative user) and ordinary users.

A list of all the programs in /bin can be viewed by using the ls command, which is commonly used to view the contents of directories, i.e.,

/bin is by default in PATH, which is the list of directories that the system searches for the corresponding program when a command is issued. This means that any executable file (i.e., runnable program) in /bin can be run just by entering the file name at the command line and then pressing the ENTER key. The contents of PATH can be seen by using the echo command as follows:

There are several other directories on Unix-like systems that also contain the string (i.e., sequence of characters) bin in their names, including /sbin and /usr/bin. The former contains additional programs that are used to boot the system as well as administrative and system maintenance programs that are only available to the root user. The latter contains executable programs that are not required for booting or repairing the system.

Created June 5, 2005.
Copyright © 2005 The Linux Information Project. All Rights Reserved.

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Linux Directory Structure explained: /bin folder

This is second post in our Linux directory explanation series. /bin is one more important folder. Bin stands for binary which means an executable file. This folder contains commands or scripts or executable which can be executed to accomplish a task. We have some cousins to this folder as given below along with bin folder.

Let’s start with /bin folder.

1./bin folder

/bin: Stands for binary. This folder contains base executables which are required for minimal system working. These commands are available in runlevel 1 for basic administration. Commands which are available in /bin folder is accessed by every one and can run by every user. This folder contains basic commands such as cat, chmod, chgrp, chown, date, dir, dd, df, ln, mv, echo and zipping tools such as bzip, gzip etc.

2./sbin folder

/sbin: This folder stands for system binaries or super user binaries. This folder contains commands which are required for changing system properties or system level settings such as disk management, network management etc. This folder is accessed some times by normal user but they can not execute any of the commands located in this and what ever commands/scripts located in this folder are run only by root user. If you want to make normal user to run these commands you have to implement SUDO or Powerbroker to give elevated access. Some of the commands available in this folder are chkconfig, dhcpclient, fsck and it’s related commands, ifconfig and it’s related commands, init and it’s related commands, lvm and it’s related commands etc.

3./usr/bin folder

/usr/bin: This folder is similar to /bin. This folder contains normal commands which are an extend set of commands to /bin folder for normal user and not that much essential to run the machine. This folder contains commands such as at, atq, bc, awk, cal, cmp, dig, diff, du, env, find, free, ftp, gcc, groups, id, info iostat, last, lsof, md5sum, nmap, rar, seq, tail, top, vi, unzip, who.

4./usr/sbin folder

/usr/sbin: This folder is similar to /sbin. This folder contain system commands which are an extend set of commands to /sbin folder for root user and not that much essential to run the machine. This folder contain commands such as arp, adduser, cron, cups related commands, grub related commands, kvm, ppp related commands, tcpdump etc.

5./path/to/some/bin

Some times you will see bin folder in other locations such as /usr/local/bin this is the place you can see some of the binaries which are installed on the system locally. Some time you can see a bin folder in /opt which indicates that some binaries are located in this /opt bin folder.

6./path/to/some/sbin

Some times you will see bin folder in other locations such as /usr/local/sbin this is the place you can see some of the binaries which are installed on the system locally and are system related commands. Some time you can see a sbin folder in /opt which indicates that some binaries are located in this /opt/bin folder.

PATH variable is one of the important variable related to this binaries. To know more about PATH variable read our post on path variable.

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Where should one put a bin directory in Linux? [closed]

Want to improve this question? Update the question so it’s on-topic for Stack Overflow.

Closed 5 years ago .

If i have the source folder of a program containing a /bin directory, what is the «classic» directory to put it in Linux ?

1 Answer 1

Read FHS to find out where to store different files

In your project you can store files as you want. For example:

• bin: The output executables go here, both for the app and for any tests and spikes.
• build: This folder contains all object files, and is removed on a clean.
• doc: Any notes, like my assembly notes and configuration files, are here. I decided to create the development and production config files in here instead of in a separate config folder as they “document” the configuration.
• include: All project header files. All necessary third-party header files that do not exist under /usr/local/include are also placed here.
• lib: Any libs that get compiled by the project, third party or any needed in development. Prior to deployment, third party libraries get moved to /usr/local/lib where they belong, leaving the project clean enough to compile on our Linux deployment servers. I really use this to test different library versions than the standard.
• spike: I often write smaller classes or files to test technologies or ideas, and keep them around for future reference. They go here, where they do not dilute the real application’s files, but can still be found later.
• src: The application and only the application’s source files. test: All test code files. You do write tests, no?

There are more standard ways (GNU C++ standard project?). It also depends of tools you are using.

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Linux Directory Structure Explained for Beginners

If you are even faintly acquainted with Linux, you might have heard the terms root, lib, bin etc. These are various directories that you’ll find in all Linux distributions.

In fact, the Linux Foundation maintains a Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS). This FHS defines the directory structure and the content/purpose of the directories in Linux distributions. Thanks to this FHS, you’ll find the same directory structure in (almost) all the Linux distributions.

Let’s see the Linux directory structure in detail.

Linux directory structure

Linux is based on UNIX and hence it borrows its filesystem hierarchy from UNIX. You’ll fine a similar directory structure in UNIX-like operating systems such as BSD and macOS. I’ll be using the term Linux hereafter instead of UNIX though.

/ – The root directory

Everything, all the files and directories, in Linux are located under ‘root’ represented by ‘/’. If you look at the directory structure, you’ll realize that it is similar to a plant’s root.

Linux Directory Structure

Since all other directories or files are descended from root, the absolute path of any file is traversed through root. For example, if you have a file in /home/user/documents, you can guess that the directory structure goes from root->home->user->documents.

The cruel rm -rf / joke

You may have come across some jokes on internet that mentions “rm -rf /” . rm command is used for removing files and directories in Linux.

With rm -rf /, you ask your system to forcefully and recursively delete the contents of the root directory. Since root directory has everything underneath, you end up deleting everything and your Linux system just vanishes (theoretically).

Most Linux distribution won’t run this command unless you provide –no-preserve-root. In any case, don’t be curious to run this command. Curiosity killed the cat, after all.

/bin – Binaries

The ‘/bin’ directly contains the executable files of many basic shell commands like ls, cp, cd etc. Mostly the programs are in binary format here and accessible by all the users in the Linux system.

/dev – Device files

This directory only contains special files, including those relating to the devices. These are virtual files, not physically on the disk.

Some interesting examples of these files are:

• /dev/null: can be sent to destroy any file or string
• /dev/zero: contains an infinite sequence of 0
• /dev/random: contains an infinite sequence of random values

/etc – Configuration files

The /etc directory contains the core configuration files of the system, use primarily by the administrator and services, such as the password file and networking files.

If you need to make changes in system configuration (for example changing the hostname), this is where you’ll find the respective files.

/usr – User binaries and program data

in ‘/usr’ go all the executable files, libraries, source of most of the system programs. For this reason, most of the files contained therein is read­only (for the normal user)

• ‘/usr/bin’ contains basic user commands
• ‘/usr/sbin’ contains additional commands for the administrator
• ‘/usr/lib’ contains the system libraries
• ‘/usr/share’ contains documentation or common to all libraries, for example ‘/usr/share/man’ contains the text of the manpage

/home – User personal data

Home directory contains personal directories for the users. The home directory contains the user data and user-specific configuration files. As a user, you’ll put your personal files, notes, programs etc in your home directory.

When you create a user on your Linux system, it’s a general practice to create a home directory for the user. Suppose your Linux system has two users, Alice and Bob. They’ll have a home directory of their own at locations /home/alice and /home/bob.

Do note that Bob won’t have access to /home/alice and vice versa. That makes sense because only the user should have access to his/her home. You may read about file permissions in Linux to know more on this topic.

/lib – Shared libraries

Libraries are basically codes that can be used by the executable binaries. The /lib directory holds the libraries needed by the binaries in /bin and /sbin directories.

Libraries needed by the binaries in the /usr/bin and /usr/sbin are located in the directory /usr/lib.

/sbin – System binaries

This is similar to the /bin directory. The only difference is that is contains the binaries that can only be run by root or a sudo user. You can think of the ‘s’ in ‘sbin’ as super or sudo.

/tmp – Temporary files

As the name suggests, this directory holds temporary files. Many applications use this directory to store temporary files. Even you can use directory to store temporary files.

But do note that the contains of the /tmp directories are deleted when your system restarts. Some Linux system also delete files old files automatically so don’ store anything important here.

/var – Variable data files

Var, short for variable, is where programs store runtime information like system logging, user tracking, caches, and other files that system programs create and manage.

The files stored here are NOT cleaned automatically and hence it provides a good place for system administrators to look for information about their system behavior. For example, if you want to check the login history in your Linux system, just check the content of the file in /var/log/wtmp.

/boot – Boot files

The ‘/boot’ directory contains the files of the kernel and boot image, in addition to LILO and Grub. It is often advisable that the directory resides in a partition at the beginning of the disc.

/proc – Process and kernel files

The ‘/proc’ directory contains the information about currently running processes and kernel parameters. The content of the proc directory is used by a number of tools to get runtime system information.

For example, if you want to check processor information in Linux, you can simply refer to the file /proc/cpuinfo. You want to check memory usage of your Linux system, just look at the content of /proc/meminfo file.

/opt – Optional software

Traditionally, the /opt directory is used for installing/storing the files of third-party applications that are not available from the distribution’s repository.

The normal practice is to keep the software code in opt and then link the binary file in the /bin directory so that all the users can run it.

/root – The home directory of the root

There is /root directory as well and it works as the home directory of the root user. So instead of /home/root, the home of root is located at /root. Do not confuse it with the root directory (/).

/media – Mount point for removable media

When you connect a removable media such as USB disk, SD card or DVD, a directory is automatically created under the /media directory for them. You can access the content of the removable media from this directory.

/mnt – Mount directory

This is similar to the /media directory but instead of automatically mounting the removable media, mnt is used by system administrators to manually mount a filesystem.

/srv – Service data

The /srv directory contains data for services provided by the system. For example, if you run a HTTP server, it’s a good practice to store the website data in the /srv directory.

I think this much information is enough for you to understand the Linux directory structure and its usage.

In the end, if you want, you can download and save this image for quick reference to the directory structure in Linux systems.

Linux System Directories

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