Managing Linux® Systems with Webmin™ System Administration and Module Development

5.1. Introduction to Filesystems

On a UNIX system, all files exist in a tree of directories under the root / directory. Drive letters used by other operating systems (like Windows) to identify different hard disks or network drives do not exist. Instead, different hard disks, CD-ROMs, floppy disks, and network drives are attached to the directory tree at different places, called mount points. For example, /home may be a mount point for a different hard disk on your system, and /usr/local may be the mount point for files that are shared from another server. The root directory is also a mount point, almost always for a partition on a hard disk in your machine. The set of files that is actually mounted at a mount point is called a filesystem.