lfs-book/chapter06/creatingdirs.xml

<sect1 id="ch06-creatingdirs">
<title>Creating directories</title>
<?dbhtml filename="creatingdirs.html" dir="chapter06"?>

<para>Let's now create some structure in our LFS file system. Let's create
a directory tree. Issuing the following commands will create a more or less
standard tree:</para>
 
<para><screen><userinput>mkdir -p /{bin,boot,dev/{pts,shm},etc/opt,home,lib,mnt,proc} 
mkdir -p /{root,sbin,tmp,usr/local,var,opt}
for dirname in /usr /usr/local
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;do
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mkdir $dirname/{bin,etc,include,lib,sbin,share,src}
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ln -s share/{man,doc,info} $dirname
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mkdir $dirname/share/{dict,doc,info,locale,man}
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mkdir $dirname/share/{nls,misc,terminfo,zoneinfo}
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mkdir $dirname/share/man/man{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}
done
mkdir /var/{lock,log,mail,run,spool}
mkdir -p /var/{tmp,opt,cache,lib/misc,local}
mkdir /opt/{bin,doc,include,info}
mkdir -p /opt/{lib,man/man{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8}}</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Directories are, by default, created with permission mode 755, but this
isn't desirable for all directories. We will make two changes: one to the home
directory of root, and another to the directories for temporary files.</para>

<para><screen><userinput>chmod 0750 /root
chmod 1777 /tmp /var/tmp</userinput></screen></para>

<para>The first mode change ensures that not just anybody can enter the
<filename class="directory">/root</filename> directory -- the same
as a normal user would do with his or her home directory.
The second mode change makes sure that any user can write to the
<filename class="directory">/tmp</filename> and
<filename class="directory">/var/tmp</filename> directories, but
cannot remove other users' files from them. The latter is prohibited
by the so-called "sticky bit" -- the highest bit in the 1777 bit mask.</para>

<sect2>
<title>FHS compliance note</title>

<para>We have based our directory tree on the FHS standard (available at
<ulink url="http://www.pathname.com/fhs/"/>). Besides the above created
tree this standard stipulates the existence of
<filename class="directory">/usr/local/games</filename> and
<filename class="directory">/usr/share/games</filename>, but we don't
much like these for a base system. However, feel free to make your system
FHS-compliant. As to the structure of the
<filename class="directory">/usr/local/share</filename> subdirectory, the FHS
isn't precise, so we created here the directories that we think are needed.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>