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Define - /etc?
ogar572 asks: "There has been an ongoing and heated debate around the office concerning the definition of what /etc means on *nix operating systems. One side says "et cetera" per Wikipedia. Another side says it means 'extended tool chest' per this gnome mailing list entry or per this Norwegian article. Yet another side says neither, but he doesn't remember exactly what he heard in the past. All he remembers is that he was flamed when he called it 'et cetera', but that 'extended tool chest' didn't sound right either. So, what does it really mean?"
It means etc...
Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.
I've always assumed "et-cetera". Sort of like labelling a box "miscellaneous".
It'll be interesting to see what this turns up. I assume that the people that would actually know why it was named that way in Unix are still around and active in computing?
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
- The C must mean "configuration" obviously
- There's a high chance the T means "tool"
- The E, I don't know, but surely it means something to do with system-wide
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Well, etc means etc. And it's really the "place-where-config-files-go". And wow, this must be the day when a question like this made into /. :)
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I would side with "et cetera", or (if I remember my Latin) "and the rest". The rest of the stuff that *nix needs to run.
/var is system-specific read-write stuff; you can (rarely) have a network file system (NFS) *nix system with a common /etc (hardly ever written to), but always requiring a local /var (as well as /tmp).
I've always said "et see" and not "et ketera" or "et setera."
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Long time UNIX hacks---and by that I mean UNIX guys from the early-1980s---pronounce /etc as "slash ett cee"; to me that makes it clear that /etc's origins are as "et cetera".
Editable Text Configuration
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
It's where I put my users home directories :-)
OH GOD, WHY DO I KEEP GETTING ROOTED?
hehehehe.
It's for text configuration data, gets horribly abused though. And Linux/BSD folk have different ideas of what goes there from what I recall.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is (!(/usr) && !(/bin) && !(/mnt) ...) a correct answer?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Enormous Trove of Configuration files, that's what it is.
But I'm afraid Ken Thompson or Dennis M. Ritchie would rather talk to their own poop than to Slashdot journalists.
So we rather speculate.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!
Considering none of the other standard directories are acronyms, I'd have to call bulltish on this one. :)
extern/extended/enhanced tool configuration
20 years ago, there was nothing to settle. It was et cetera. It was named that because of what it was used for. The configuration files for other things that live elsewhere. It provided a short reference to those files. Also notice how we did not like to type back then. Before that time, you were typing on what amounted to a glorified printer with a keyboard, so every char you did not have to type was great. One central location for binaries with a 3 letter name. Everyone knew where everything was. I'd get flamed if I said it was better than it is now, but it really was more elegant.
/etc. It all followed logic back then. Anyone loading tools in /etc would have been the one getting flamed for not knowing how to organize a system.
Extended tool chest? Yeah, name tools that go in
Ok, now I really do feel old because it was more than 20 years ago. Sad because I was smart enough to answer this and not smart enough to make millions when the industry took off. I'm also too stupid to understand flame wars. If you like your system a different way, do it. If you think I should do mine different, pound sand.
http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/linux/rute/node1 7.htm quotes it as etcetera configuration files. others who are quoting it as an acronym may also double as alternative logical viewpoints, however, all unix configuration files are 99% of the time plain text files by default. that's just the way it is.
/usr, generally i see it as abbreviation for "user customised files", reason being that /bin is obviously going to be very similar on all unix-like systems. /usr/bin is generally used for customised install files, things that are created after install.
/use/home layout, yuck!
reading too much into the naming can be dangerous. consider
but what about reading this name as "/user files", which then creates the awful
Why UNIX?
IIRC, some other systems (SunOS?) used to put binaries in there, which never made sense to me
Oh Jesus, get off your high horse you elitist prick.
He obviously knows what's in it and how it works. He is trying to discover it's origins. You know, basic human curiousity. It might be nice to know how it's supposed to be pronounced. I've heard it pronounced "et setera" and as "et see". et setera would seem right to me, but if it's not supposed to stand for "all the rest" or whatever the Latin did, then it would make sense to pronounce it differently.
I'm pretty sure it is "et etera". I've been mucking with Unix since Unix V7 (1980), and I've never heard of "extended tool chest". It doesn't really make sense because you don't put any tools there. If there were any "tools" to be put in an "extended chest", they'd have gone in "/usr/local" back in the day. That was before the practice of having an "/opt" directory evovled.
:"/etc". Over the years it became clear that "/etc" was very important, and "/usr" was too cluttered, etc., and thus we have the evolution of the modern Unix file hierarchy.
I always assumed that configuration stuff got shoved in etc because it wasn't a program (that would go in "/bin") it wasn't a library ("/lib") and it wasn't some sort of user data ("/usr" -- this was before "/home"). It was something else, so it went in a place set aside for miscellany
The hierarchy may include historical obscurities such as "/etc", but it is remarkably well thought out. It shows the wisdom of abstracting the file system from storage devices. "/etc" also eliminates, or at least reduces the argument for, a system wide registry file such as Windows has, which has turned out to cause as many problems as it solves.
But it is undoubtedly a bit obscure to the newcomer's eye.
I remember the 1980s when the microcomputer transformed business. In the mid 1980s, most people who worked in computers had been weaned on, or least familiarized, with some form of Unix. When I started my job at one place around 1986, my predecessor had arranged everybody's file systems so their applications were stored in folder under a "bin" folder at the root (this was a Mac shop). By 1990, I was hiring people who had only used personal computers and had never used Unix. One of those people extended the "bin" traditoin by naming the application folder "Bin of Applications" -- as if "bin" referred to an open box, rather than "binary". It gave me a chuckle. "Bin of Applications" carried the idea to the user much better than "bin", and posed no particular inconvenience on a system where you never have to type path names.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
etc = etc text continues : p
I've seen /usr referred to as Unix System Resources, but that doesn't seem very logical either.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
I've also heard it pronounced as "eh tic"
Why would /etc be an acronym when every other directory off root is an abreviation? /bin - binaries /boot - bootstrap files /dev - devices /home - user home directories /lib - libraries /mnt - temporary mounts /proc - processes /sbin - static binaries /tmp - temporary files /usr - user programs (not boot critical) /var - variable data
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Just like slashdot... it is what it is.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
and so, once again, in one line, the Geek reinforces all the negative sterotypes of his species.
Old Unix systems (at least I remember this for SCO OpenServer) also had a bunch of executables in /etc. This is still the case to a limited extent. Think of /etc/init.d/*.
UNIX changed a lot over the years, and the "et cetera" directory developed into the repository for system configuration files, resulting in the (IMHO, rather ridiculous) back-formations to try to make /etc represent what it actually does now days.
Chris Mattern
Have fun with being "qualified to deal with an unix-like directroy hierachy" (Please don't tell me you pronounce it "an oo-nix").. I'll be over here, making money with this shiny toy from Redmond. :-)
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
"Eh... That's where them Config files goes"
Environment Tool Configuration?
I suspect that this might all turn out to be an accidental backronym though, owing its existence only to the fact that most UNIX abbreviations stand for something.
Originally, /usr was an abbreviation of "user", it was where you put home directories. /usr/ken was Ken Thomson's home directory, and /usr/dmr was Dennis Richie's home directory.
/usr.
(These are the guys that invented Unix.)
Then people started making home directories named after software packages. After a while, these names became standardized, and it became necessary to put home directories in some other location than
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
Get a brain, moran.
Because the "editable" is redundant.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
there's a genius on the loose
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
'linked-in binaries'. Here's some of the other TLAs: /lib: linked-in binaries /etc: extended tool chest /usr: unix system routines /bin: basic instructions (native) /var: volatile access region /opt: one per terminal /tmp: this maybe purged /mnt: multiple network things /dev: dont ever violate /sys: she's your sister
You see, the etc hierarchy on Unix was the successor the etb hierarchy on Unics, which was named for the ETA configuration mechanism on Multics, which was named for ETA OIN SHRDLU. So, now you know.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
...Etc Text Configuration.
If you're part of a mailing list which erupts into a flamestorm over the etymology of /etc, then you need to find another hobby.
It's "eet see", and its where you store configuration files.
Or, if you're retarded like HPUX, you put things like the ping binary there.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The only way I've ever heard it referred to is "et cetera", meaning "not bin, not usr, not any of the other dir's, but still that stuff has to go somewhere..."
stuff |
I've _*never*_ heard it called that, always et cetera. I mean, even pretty much every definition of 'et cetera' fits.
a ;)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=et+ceter
"""
and others; and so forth; and so on (*used to indicate that more of the same sort or class might have been mentioned, but for brevity have been omitted*):
"""
etc
I'd like to know how someone could call it extended tool chest. There is _not_ any tools in there, only configuration files.
The Unix file system hierarchy was not that populated around 1983 and you had obviously fewer files on a system. If memory serves me well, there was /usr for users (which I believe had already evolved to /usr/users - that was before /home of course), /lib for libraries, /dev for devices, /tmp for temp files, /bin for essential executables... and /etc for everything else, including less fundamental executables. You can find remains from this era in the /etc/rc* hierarchy: executables, indeed.
precisely. UnixWare did this as well.
/etc/conf/bin
also idtune, the kernel param config util is in
How does /opt fit into this sceheme?
...is that it is the "home directory for the system". To me, that captures the sense that it's where a particular system gets its configuration (/etc/inittab, /etc/ttys) and personality (/etc/motd, /etc/issue).
Personally I'm in the "et setera" camp, and prefer the spoken form "et see".
Wow, you guys must have nothing better to do. It stands for "etcetera", but we just call it "etsee".
s/Geek/lamer/
So according to Butch Coolidge: I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
If you've ever touched a file in that directory you know what I mean.
The / is you teetering backwards from the virtual roundhouse punch your system just gave you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Go USA!
Surely an "extended tool chest" would imply the existence of a "tool chest". I'm always suspicious of acronyms as explanations for words anyway. Acronyms are usually pretty well known if they're used.
Seems strange that they didn't called it "conf", but maybe init scripts and the like weren't considered part of configuration at the time, so they just threw everything that wasn't user space, mountpoints, binary files, or libraries into etc.
This one so goes into my quotes database. If you thought it up yourselve, brilliant!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
just change it to a link point to /etcetera then no one will be confused
/etc
/tmp/folder -> /tmp/folder2 /tmp/folder2 -> /tmp/folder3 /tmp/folder3 -> /tmp/folder4 ...etc (or should i say /etc) /tmp/folder1
# ls -ld
lrwxr-xr-x 23 root wheel 11 Jan 5 10:30:08 2007 etc@ -> etcetera
In fact, I think it would be great and more simple if eveything were a symlink in /
thats right. I don't want any real files or directories in / at all.
Anyone ever see how many symlinks they can nest. Does it get noticeably slower at say 5,000 links or 50,000 links?
And for fun you could make the last one point to
Sorry about the OT but this whole discussion is OT I think
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
/etc - configuration files, startup scripts, etc...This story needs to be filed under /dev/null
I'm not familiar with any of the alternatives here, but "Every Thing Configurable" is one I have heard. Still, I think that is just a "reverse initialism" (is there a better phrase for this kind of revisionism?), and that it originally must have meant "et cetera".
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
> All he remembers is that he was flamed when he called it 'et cetera'
;-)). Those flamers just think "Unix is too cool so obviously etc can't be an everyday word like all the other people use, it must be some obscure acronym that only WE know". And most likely they don't know what it means themselves or made something up. :-)
Flamed by suckers then. It's the explanation I heard the most frequently (so it MUST be true
Where did he get flamed exactly, I wonder...
On my NeXTStation, some of the things like ping are in /etc/.
It stands for 'Extra Terrestrial Configure'. There are a few different schools of thought as to the origin of the term. Some people believe that it stems from when Dennis Ritchie was abducted by space aliens and returned with instructions to make it configurable. Others believe that when Steven Spielberg couldn't get his system set up properly, he turned to his little alien friend, who tried to set it up so that he could initially 'telnet home', before he gave up on the process and had to settle for using the more ancient technology of the telephone. In any case, it's commonly accepted that one of those two origins appears to be correct.
Next week I'll explain to you how light sabers resulted in the listing of directory files.
No-one who has ever used unix would tell you that /etc was extendable tool chest. So please, whoever started thinks that, shut up until you've used unix. In return, maybe we won't tell people that "Control Panel" is on the side of your computer, "My Documents" are printed on paper inside, and that "start" stands for "Start thinking alright?".
How do people get 'Sequel' from 'SKL'?
/etc is where you put all your etc stuff. /etc and it's there every time.
When I need to get to my etc stuff I always look in
Doh! Anyone knows that!
...EOM
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
/etc for "everything that configures" ?
At least that is what we ate for dinner once a week. yuck!
photosMy Photostream
Or other "sources of information." And it won't be repeated by "Intelligent People." It actually stands for "Edward The Crommulent," who embiggened all of us by providing lower case letters. You see, back in the day computers had only 14 upper-case letters to represent everything (U S R A L I B D C W P E T H), which is why you have to type passwd (no "o" because that wasn't available and we liked it that way). /USR, /LIB, /VAR, /ETC, /BIN, CD, LS, SH were all legall things we could type on those keyboards. (Actually type is a misnomer - we had to strike the 3lb keys with a ball-pean hammer to make them move unless you were one of those lucky bastards with punch-cards and an exacto knife.) Edward's first act was to give us the remaining 12 letters of the US alphabet and numbers. Then, he gave us lower-case letter so we could talk about Unix without SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. Since the reign of ETC we've had it good, before the dark ages of the GUI... But that's a tale for another time.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
/ enhances taco commanding
/ e-polls trouble cowboyneal
or
Linus knows how to pronounce "Linux", so ask him how to pronounce "etc". Better yet, ask Ken Thompson; he should know http://www.bellevuelinux.org/thompson.html.
I've always called it "et cee" and understood that it was a place for system-wide configuration files.
/etc == "Everything That Configures"
At least, that is how I remember it.
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are both still alive and kicking last time I looked, so why bother quoting all these silly third-hand sources? At any rate, there's really no question that "/etc" was just a shortening of "et cetera" -- no one who progammed on or for Unix in the 70s and early 80s (myslef included) has the slightest doubt about that -- it didn't just have config files, it basically had all the junk that didn't fit anywhere else.
--Lee Daniel Crocker : http://www.etceterology.com My life is in the public domain.
Extended Tool Chest is a backronym if I ever heard one. Plus, it doesn't make sense because it isn't really a tool chest, rather it's the miscellaneous other stuff a system needs to run.
I read the internet for the articles.
/etc means etc's total crap uh?
This is a lesson on the downsides of overly cryptic variable names.
Table-ized A.I.
It explains part of why many computer geeks are overweight...
(E)at (T)he (C)ookie
It may mean that now (and /usr = Unix System Resources, yeah right)
/etc. And configuration files also used to live in places like the root directory, or /var. /usr or even /lib, sometimes in ./conf/ subdirs.
/usr really did mean 'users', as in, resources for users not administrators. Well at one point it also held home directories before that was split off into home.
But if you remember, programs like mount and user databases (when passwd files got too long to scan) were thrown into
So it really did mean etcetra. And
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Folks interested in the history of C and Unix will find many interesting documents at Dennis's web page (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/index.html).
Also interesting are a number of old articles:
Volume 17 , Issue 7, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~nieh/teaching/e6118_s
But I couldn't find anything on the meaning of
Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike, chapter 2.6 -- "The Directory Hierarchy":
/etc/getty, which initializes a terminal connection for /bin/login. /etc/rc is a file of shell commands that is executed after the system is bootstrapped. /etc/group list the members of each group."
/etc, so that's the best I could do from my own bookshelf.
"/etc (et cetera) we have also seen before. It contains various administrative files such as the password file and some systems programs such as
I looked through Ritchie and Thompson's "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" and found no mention of
eom
UNIX programming manual from the 70's, /etc is essential data and dangerous maintenance utilities. Having said that, I think et cetera would be close. I actually think it stands for something like essential tools and configurations. Only using et&c would not work because of the &. I suppose it could have been /etnc but why?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Binaries for doing things on the system that weren't built into the shell usually lived in your home directory, and your home directory was all of, or at the beginning of your path. /usr/bin. But eventually user directories moved out of /usr to /home as the size of the system software grew to the point where it was relocated to /usr/bin + /usr/lib, effectively.
Binaries that everyone could use would be owned by the 'bin' account and lived in
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I've used Unix since 1982 and I've always understood it to be "et cetera", pronounced et-cee. "extended tool chest" is out of the question. If that were the meaning, it would have been abbreviated "xtc", not "etc".
Well then.. let's start a wikipedia like vote system.. maybe in 6 months we'll agree on something.. like anybody cares...
Google "extended tool chest" returns "about 13 results." If that's the meaning, it's a very well-kept secret meaning.
/sbin really did mean static-bin. There was also a convention for /stand to contain standalone binaries that could be used if the C-library was hosed. /bin or /sbin, i.e. sln for statically-linked ln.
Nowadays you just look for commonly-used commands that start with 's' in
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I have been using and programming UNIX systems for 20 years, starting with early versions of UNIX System V. Before Linux existed even, and before Sun worked with AT&T to create SVR4 (and later, Solaris).
...etc.
/etc/ even containing binaries such as /etc/init and /etc/telinit.
/etc/init. This was before /sbin and /usr/sbin came into existance.
It is not extended tool chest, nor editable text configuration.
It was just et cetera, and contained some text configuration files, such as passwd, group, inittab,
In those days,
So, rebooting was done by invoking
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
Kids these days... sheesh.
... Thompson or Ritchie? Their mail addresses are freely available.
Maybe one of the two guys would answer the question.
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/ken/
Well, just type ``man hier" for an explanation. Unfortunately, this tells you what's supposed to be in there, and in its subdirectories, but gives no clue as to what they were thinking when they named it. However, since it contains a lot of various subdirectories I've always assumed it was et cetera.
The two boxes that I can access right now, an Ubuntu box and a FreeBSD one, mention configuration files which are local to the machine and system configuration files and scripts respectively.
And then they both go on to mention this config file, that config file, etc...For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
However even back then people argued over how to pronounce it 'etsi' or 'et cetera' .... can't remember exactly it might have been an eastcoast/west coast thing too (I do weem to remember 'etsi' being in use at Bell Labs)
Having a file hierarchy standard with unknown name sucks. /etc..
Then again, Unix poor naming isn't restricted to
extra-terrestrial-clones
I don't want a signature.
Where we find...
An interesting tidbit is the list of files installed into the boot disk from tape on a virgin UNIX system:
et cetera makes sense as its not just configuration, you have init, password and "various" other stuff found there. etc.. etc..
/etc is much less confusing ok."
A better questions is.. why does Windows Vista (the most advanced OS on planet earth per Steve and Bill) use alphabet device names in 2007?
I can hear computer novices saying..
Novice: "Why is my primary drive C and not A?"
Master: "A and B are reserved for floppy drives."
Novice: "What's a floppy drive?"
Master: ".. Something we don't use anymore."
Novice: "Why are they still reserved then?"
Master: "They just are."
Novice: "Why isn't A the primary and C or Z reserved?"
Master: "... just use Unix, explaining
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
I always just renamed it to &c.
Who cares what it's short for? It's just a place to stick configuration files, is all. You know, you can over-analyse. Then people might start to call you anal-retentive. And if you retain what comes out of your anus, that makes you full of shit.
/usr/local/foo/conf/ if you compiled it yourself from source. (Yes, you, the people with the Amphibian fetish, I'm looking at you!)
Or, strictly speaking, it's where your Linux distributor has hopefully tweaked all the sources for the software so it sticks all its configuration files there, rather than in some random directory such as
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
emacs - Escape Meta Alt Control Shift.
gdb - Get Down Baby.
gcc - Give Communism (a) Chance.
linux - Linus Is Not Usually Xeroflulogitic.
lisp - Lisp Is (for) Symbolic Programming.
java - Just Another Variant (of) Ada.
perl - Perl Essentially Resembles Lisp.
printf - People Rarely Insist (on) Naming This Function.
sed - Slashdot (is) Easily Duped.
top - Totally Ongoing Programs.
vi - Very Irritating.
As support, I ask how you pronounce "etc" when you read it in a book, magazine, etc...? How were you taught to pronounce it in your English class (apparently, so many years ago)?
Ya, I thought so. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Actually there are no .'s or ..'s in the file system. These little gems only denote relative directories and are never actually part of the file system. I'll refrain from calling you a noob. Like the . it is almost always implied, and in 99% of the cases is just redundant.
/etc debate. I thought FSH settled all of this ridiculous bickering years ago? /etc is etcetera abbreviated. "Extended Tool Chest" is the most retarded thing i've ever heard. I don't know why people are still debating this. The people over at the FSH project put a lot of hard work in to their documents specifically to avoid stuff like this.
As for the
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
If you must!
It means the FHS sucks.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
lisp = lots (of) infuriating, superfluous parentheses
Or you're all going to get stuck with a registry!
Have gnu, will travel.
According to Dr. Peter H. Salus, it means et cetera.
According to Dr. Salus, "Editable Text Configuration" is alien to the thinking of the creators.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
ID-10-T
Egregiously Trivial Conversation?
Actually there are no .'s or ..'s in the file system. These little gems only denote relative directories and are never actually part of the file system
Honest question based on your statement...Why then do . and .. affect the reference counts on hard links?
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
I think the more important question is "Who fucking cares?"
---I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but I have no clue about where things go or why. .....
/usr and then some attempt to use the root tree. So you end up with stuff in /usr/local/bin/etc or /usr/bin/local/etc and who cares. It's just pretty much arbitrary and was writ in stone back in the dark ages.
/SYSTEM ../kernel ../gui ../config /APPLICATIONs ../kernel ../games ../allusers ../user1 ../user2 /DATA ../sound ../photos ../pron
;) /SYSTEM == Isnt a bad idea, but not in your sense. What comprises the system: the kernel or the software tools that allow the kernel interfaces to be used? Using a wifi connection can be mighty hard without iwconfig. Instead, your /SYSTEM could be used for signed and known good basic binaries required on every connection. Did you know that /bin/ls on most Linux installs is dynamic? What happens if your system lib failed? /kernel == Thats ok, but you also need support from kernel loaders. Also many distributions maintain this in one aspect or another. /gui == Do you mean XWindows or programs that run on XWindows? Yes, there is a massive distinction. A graphics-cardless computer can process the instructions on that computer while displaying to ANOTHER Xserver the output. So, does this catch-all directory get local XServer data or all X based programs? /config == is /etc . Plain and simple. /APPLICATIONS == Unix segregates different types of binaries. Yours would not. Not Good. /games == Are games not applications? /user1 ... == Would you have users populating / ? That's really nasty. Even /home/~ is still not quite there. Sun did this multi-home setup the best.
Nothing's wrong with not knowing. It's not fixing that not knowing that is wrong.
---One place everything was in
Thats not right. The system makes sense if you know how Unices run.
---This may smack of heresy, but wouldn't it be nice to have a directory tree that means something to people who have never seen it? Something like...
Lets take your ideas and explain it, beyond the jokes
Go study why Linux and Unix puts files the way they do. It is all maintained fairly well, and that includes support for multiple versions of the same program (for backwards compatibility). Windows isnt even compatible with its own previous versions.
Yes, "editable text configuration" is a backronym.
And, as another user pointed out "editable text configurations" is a stupid name too, because if it's text, it's evidently editable. So why not just "text configurations" then? Also, in early Unix, everything was editable (remember, in Unix, everything is a file), so that's superfluous too. And, lastly, it was the repository for a lot of things that weren't configurations, including binaries.
Again, this is a backronym, and not even a clever one.
Regards,
--
*Art
FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard), not FSH (though it would also match: FileSystem Hierarchy standard)
Elongated Terrible Conversation.
Honest question based on your statement...Why then do . and .. affect the reference counts on hard links?
That's got nothing to do with /etc.
But to answer your question: The "/media" directory for example is linked from "/" and from what is known as "/media", plus any subdirectories inside it, e.g. "/media/cdrom". So to sum it up:
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. -- Mark Twain
"I am Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce /etc '/etc'". ;-)
Program Intellivision!
Extended Time Continum; that's where the driver was supposed to go for the improbability drive...but the flying car carrying the portable black hole never arrived. :)
It's "et cetera", a miscellaneous category. Anyone telling you different is selling something.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
It doesn't "mean" anything. There's an origin for the term, but that doesn't relate to the current use. There is no zen here - there is no special significance to the name of the directory. It's just a more or less arbitrary name for the place where the config files are kept. Searching for some deeper meaning is an exercise in futility.
From Chapter 2 ("The File System") of "The Unix Programming Environment" by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike (Prentice-Hall, 1984),
/etc/getty, /bin/login. ..."
/usr/bwk /usr/rob, but on your machine the /usr part might be different, as explained
"/etc (et cetera) we have seen before. It contains various administrative
files such as the password file and some system programs such as
which initializes a terminal connection for
and, for what it's worth...
"/usr is called the "user file system,", although it may have little to do with
the actual users of the system. On our machine, our login directories are
and
in Chapter 1."
HTH
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
How many of you remember the file /etc/glob ?
/etc is most definitely et cetera -- it contained all sorts of miscellaneous stuff, both ASCII text files, like /etc/passwd, /etc/motd, /etc/ttys, /etc/rc, /etc/crontab, and BINARIES, like /etc/glob.
It was a BINARY/EXECUTABLE, a little helper C program in Unix V6 and prior, that handled shell metacharacter/wildcard expansions ([]?*). That's right, the shell prior to V7/Bourne shell, did not know how to expand commandline wildcards (e.g. ls -l *.c) but instead handed the job to a little C program to do it (and then do the exec(), so something like cd a* didn't work in the V6 shell).
Anyways, the point is,
Easy
to something more descriptive of what it is actually used for?
/cfg /HKLM
How about
or
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Mod parent down, -1 Clueless.
you had me at #!
Unix doesn't have /boot or /proc. Linux distros tend to have /boot because they are stupid. Plan 9 has /proc, which is as you said for process information. Linux also unfortunately has /proc, but there its for a random assortment of arbitrary information in a hard to find and hard to use structure. Its too bad its named /proc since it has so little to do with the original /proc.
Actually, "." and ".." are part of the filesystem (i.e. they're stored on disk, as directory entries) in the FAT filesystem.
Assuming that all filesystems are implemented 100 % similar to the one(s) you know about _is_ noob and pretentious: the implementer of the FS is free to do things the way he sees fit as long as it provides reasonable semantics.
In fact he doesn't have to do directories or files at all - he may implement everything as a big hash with different entries sharing the same blocks.
I am a rebel. I pronounce it "ets", like if you had more than one et.
you forgot:
PCMCIA - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
Volume 1 of the 1982 edition of the Bell Labs Unix Programmer's Manual defines /etc/ as "essential data and dangerous maintenance utilities". Sounds like etcetera to me.
See Conventions: HIER(7).
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Boobies: Basic Operational Overdrive Biomechanical Infrastructure Emulating System
Hello, people? Ken Thompson is still alive. Dennie Ritchie is still alive. Brian Kernighan is also still alive. Surely it is not beyond the wit of humanity to simply short cut this whole silly little debate by tracking one or even all three down and ASKING THEM!?
i asked ken. it was originally named to be "etcetera".
Why do people do this kind of this shit? Another pet peeve - RTFM - F for "fine"???? Since fucking when?
That was his point. If '..' is a virtual directory and not an actual entry in the directory, then why does it affect the hardlink count of the directory it points to?
This raises a much more important question, why have some distros switched to using /media instead of /mnt. WHY! It isn't three letters, it's more typing and seems totally out of place. I don't mind change if there is a real need for it. What, are we suddenly caring that newbs might find the standard naming system a bit confusing?
What the f' is wrong with /mnt?
I encourage all of you to resist this madness!
Yes i am serious.
Your thoughts form your reality.
Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike gloss /etc as "(et cetera)."
Kernighan, Brian W., and Rob Pike. The UNIX Programming Environment. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1984. 63.
Is "/." pronounced "slash dot" or "oblique dot" or "diagonal dot"?
A proposal to encode the Greek Lunate Sigma in UCS. (It's since been incorporated into Unicode 4.0.) Or this blog post.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Except To Configure
The reason is that the Distro are (maybe they need to) adapting to what MIT-AI types would call Luser's. /mnt is short for /mount and is "the place where you should mount stuff that will not allways be mounted" /media is the place where the system will automagically put your removable media stuff, just before openning Konqueror or Nautilus on them so that they will feel that it works just like the "redmond stuff".
...
/mnt or even with the right mkdir first /I_Prefer_To_Put_It_Here_ZackleTZement :-|)=
Or lets say people that do not make the mastering of their own computer a main priority.
Obviously you are free to configure your Gnu/Linux box so that it doesn't automagically try to find the best action for your USB key and/or CD, DVD, usb disk, etc
And use the mount command (and mount to
Duh.
"easy to configure" =)
The fact that we need 360 comments to define what an abbreviation of a folder means indicates that something is wrong with linux and us. If all these nerds put together have problems with this than what the bleeping bleep is the end user going to think?
I've heard "EDIT THESE CAREFULLY!" tons of places, but I haven't seen it posted in any comments yet here..
How about, someone hop over to PUPS/TUHS and look at some of the original bell labs source / docs?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Not true, or not always true. In AIX it's possible for a program to delete . and .., which can be troublesome.
Every Thing Configured
or
Eternal Temporary Cache
maybe
Eh T Ca
Probably a tweak on et cetera, though:
et config
Fuck this carping...lets go to /root.
Bill Joy, Larry Wall, or RJS...are you out there and laughing at this?
Get off your smug asses and comment. :)
mweep:the sound made by the system bell on a SPARC workstation.
Wait really!? Does that suddenly make a directory a user can't get out of?
jkjk for a second the beautiful thought of a bottomless directory tree that would trap unwitting users made me happy... Then reality came back.
Gravity Sucks
Hm, I had to learn it as lisp = lots (of) Insufficient, superfluous parentheses
We are interested in the origin of /etc, not the comments affixed to some very modern installation. /sbin? /mount? I don't recall these existing 25 years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have an old system handy to check. Perhaps somebody can give a listing from, say V6 or V7 or BSD 2 or some such. /etc used to have lots of good stuff in it: binary executables, configuration files, whatever.
I've never questioned that /etc means "et caetera". In Spanish we are used to call it "e te ce". And, if you find it interesting, "etc" is the usual way to abreviate "ecétera" in Spanish, Catalan and other latin-descendant languages.
I happen to own reference manuals from System iv (AT&T) and other early versions of *nix and some of your definitions are completely wrong. emacs = edit macros gdb = GNU debug gcc = GNU Compiler Collection linux = Linus' Unix lisp = LISt Processor Perl = see the Camel book by Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl for *His* definitions of what Perl means printf = print formatted sed = Stream EDit top = top processes vi = VIsual editor
Dennis
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Yes, it can mean that , although cd / usually works.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
(hence, "reality came back" and I realized my dream could never be.)
Gravity Sucks
Note the "usually" its possible for it to "bug" your entire FS
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
He was the only one that laughed. Pretty sure he earned an 'A' grade right there.
SAILING MISHAP
...he was attacked by a bat when he was a sbool boy?
[Obligatory geek Monty Python reference]
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
When I was introduced to Unix at Bell Labs in 1980 (cbunix 2.3) - it was pronounced "etcetera" (as in "etcetera password file"). If it was turned into a acronym, that was after the fact.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Back in the day when RAM was just starting to be counted in megabytes rather than kilobytes, it was explained to me that EMACS (the editor that wanted to be an operating system) stood for "eight megs and constantly swapping".
Existing Tool Configurations
Evaluatable Textual Controlfiles
Edit this crap!
Eponymical Telemandering Collections
Enamled Tooth Caps
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Um, yeah that was a joke. I'm not sure if your response was another joke, but its not funny.
or possibly "virgule, full stop"
In the Beginning there was a disk. /password and /fstab /etc ... 'et cetera, et cetera, et cetera'
people put files on it.
Files like
And the root got big and full of files.
So it came to pass a folder was made and
people may have been watching the 'King and I'
So the new folder was named
The files where moved there and the root was not so big any more
and it was good.
I learned it as, "Lost In a Sea of Parentheses".
linux - Linus Is Not Usually Xeroflulogitic
The only web matches I could find on "Xeroflulogitic" were for this acronym. Interestingly, Yahoo had a few more matches than Google on it. An online dictionary search for this word had no matches. I suggest substituting "Xeroflulogitic" with "Xenophobic" as at least that makes sense.
emacs - Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
It is technically a backronym, but I think it's more accurate to think of it as a clever comment on how EMACS works than an attempt to explain what it means.
It's always been et cetera, but refered to by most as 'etcee'. What a non issue to debate!
Just my 2p as an oddball, but I've always pronounced SQL as "squirrel". It makes more sense to me at least, given that the acronym comes from Structured Query Language --> "SQuerL". Also seems to fit better in that squirrels are known for storing things away (and recent research suggests they remember far more and forget far less than we initially thought), whereas for "sequel" I find myself asking, "sequel to what?"
Anyway...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
i would like to submit this to be the final word on this topic. /etc stands for et cetera.
according to one of the progenitors of unix, namely dennis ritchie,
------
Originally it was just et cetera, with things like the
password file, init, and whatnot. Some config things
I suppose. The executable ones like init and getty
were put apart there because they weren't intended to
be executed directly by the user accidentally.
I know that various systems have loaded it up
with other stuff, and thus they might have
different explanations of their use of the original
name.
Dennis Ritchie
------
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
GAFSOH: Get a sense of Humour
I don't therefore I'm not.