Most Appropriate Directory for Files Shared Between Users

directory-structurefhs

Or: where can I put files belonging to a group?

Suppose there are two users on a Unix system: joe and sarah. They are both members of the movies-enthusiast group. Where should I put their movie files?

/home/{joe,sarah}/movies are not appropriate because those directories belongs to joe / sarah, not to their group;
/home/movies-enthusiast is not appropriate too, because movies-enthusiast is a group, not a user;
/var/movies-enthusiast might be an option, but I'm not sure this is allowed by the FHS;
/srv/movies-enthusiast might be an option too, however movies are not files required by system services.

Best Answer

Don't use

/usr is for sharable read-only data. Data here should only change for administrative reasons (e.g. the installation of new packages.)
/opt is generally for programs that are self-contained or need to be isolated from the rest of the system for some reason (low and medium interaction honeypot programs, for example).
/var is for "files whose content is expected to continually change during normal operation of the system---such as logs, spool files, and temporary e-mail files." I like to think of it like this: if your data wouldn't look right summarized in a list, it generally doesn't belong in /var (though, there are exceptions to this.)

Use

/home is for user home directories. Some see this directory as being an area for group files as well. The FHS actually notes that, "on large systems (especially when the /home directories are shared amongst many hosts using NFS) it is useful to subdivide user home directories. Subdivision may be accomplished by using subdirectories such as /home/staff, /home/guests, /home/students, etc."
/srv is an acceptable and often-preferred location for group files. I generally use this directory for group-shared files for the reason mentioned in Chris Down's answer; I see group file sharing as being a service that the server provides.

See the hier(7) man page (man hier) for more information of the purpose of each directory described by the FHS.

Related Solutions

Linux Directory Structure – Standard and Common Directories on Unix/Linux OSes

Linux distributions use the FHS: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

You can also try man hier.

I'll try to sum up answers your questions off the top of my head, but I strongly suggest that you read through the FHS:

/bin is for non-superuser system binaries
/sbin is for superuser (root) system binaries
/usr/bin & /usr/sbin are for non-critical shared non-superuser or superuser binaries, respectively
/mnt is for temporarily mounting a partition
/media is for mounting many removable media at once
/dev contains your system device files; it's a long story :)
The /usr folder, and its subfolders, can be shared with other systems, so that they will have access to the same programs/files installed in one place. Since /usr is typically on a separate filesystem, it doesn't contain binaries that are necessary to bring the system online.
/root is separate because it may be necessary to bring the system online without mounting other directories which may be on separate partitions/hard drives/servers
Yes, /etc stands for "et cetera". Configuration files for the local system are stored there.
/opt is a place where you can install programs that you download/compile. That way you can keep them separate from the rest of the system, with all of the files in one place.
/proc contains information about the kernel and running processes
/var contains variable size files like logs, mail, webpages, etc.

To access a system, you generally don't need /var, /opt, /usr, /home; some of potentially largest directories on a system.

One of my favorites, which some people don't use, is /srv. It's for data that is being hosted via services like http/ftp/samba. I've see /var used for this a lot, which isn't really its purpose.

Which directories are writeable in a system following FHS

If you are removing an account, use userdel -r. This removes the user's home directory together with its contents. In addition the mail spool file belonging to the user is removed.

I wouldn't assume that any directory couldn't have held objects belonging to the user in question. This is particularly true if the user had SUDO privileges.

Use find to look for the UID of the account that you are going to delete; or have just deleted:

find / -user <UID> -exec ls -ld {} +

where UID is replaced by the actual UID value in question, or the username if you haven't already deleted the account;

or, in general for UIDs that no longer map to any name:

find / -nouser -exec ls -ld {} +

These are portable among various Unix flavors (HP-UX, AIX, etc.) and among Linux distributions. The GNU find allows the -exec ls -ld {} + to be replaced by -ls.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux Directory Structure – Standard and Common Directories on Unix/Linux OSes

Which directories are writeable in a system following FHS

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