One of the questions that Unix users are sometimes reluctant to ask is how all the directory names — like /etc, /var and /usr/local — came about in the first place. Why did we adopt the particular ...

While the average Unix user is generally satisfied by the date/time stamps that he sees when using the ls -l command, it is sometimes useful to remember that there are actually several time stamps ...

One of the last things the Linux kernel does during system boot is mount the root filesystem. The Linux kernel dictates no filesystem structure, but user space applications expect to find files with ...

We have looked at the fuser command before to display information about what users or processes are keeping file systems busy. This command can save you a lot of time tracking when you need to quickly ...

Network file system (NFS), server message block (SMB) and common internet file system (CIFS) are all file access storage protocols, used to access files on remote servers and storage servers (such as ...

More than just about anyone, Unix systems administrators are going to be very reluctant to share passwords of any kind, but will never share our own. It’s bad enough if we have to share root passwords ...