FreeBSD Manual Pages
HIER(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual HIER(7) NAME hier -- index of FreeBSD file system hierarchy DESCRIPTION / root directory of the file system /COPYRIGHT FreeBSD copyright information /bin/ fundamental BSD user utilities; see intro(1) /boot/ programs and configurations used during FreeBSD boot(8) defaults/ default boot configuration files; see loader.conf(5) device.hints kernel variables for controlling drivers; see device.hints(5) dtb/ compiled flattened device tree (FDT) files; see fdt(4) and dtc(1) overlays/ compiled fdt(4) overlays; see fdt_overlays in loader.conf(5) efi/ the uefi(8) EFI System Partition (ESP) mount point firmware/ loadable binary firmware kernel modules fonts/ binary bitmap console fonts; see loader.conf(5) and vtfontcvt(8) images/ beastie boot menu images; see loader_lua(8) kernel/ FreeBSD kernel and modules; see kldstat(8) kernel.old/ alternative kernel and modules loader.conf boot loader configuration; see loader.conf(5) loader.conf.d/ loader.conf(5) configuration files lua/ scripts for the Lua boot loader; see loader_lua(8) modules/ third-party loadable kernel modules, such as those installed with pkg(8) or from ports(7) zfs/ ZFS zpool(8) cache files /compat/ files supporting binary compatibility with other operating sys- tems linux/ default location for linux(4) compatibility run- time /dev/ device nodes and special files; see intro(4) and devfs(4) ada0 first ATA storage device ada0p1 first partition on ada0 cd0 first optical drive cuaU0 first USB serial port; see cu(1) da0 first SCSI storage device da0s1 first partition on da0 dri/ GPU character device nodes; see drm(7) drm/ GPU drm(7) special files fd/ file descriptor files; see fd(4) fd0 first floppy drive gpt/ storage partitions by GPT label mmcsd0 first SD storage device mmcsd0s1 first partition on mmcsd0 nda0 first NVMe storage device attached via cam(3) null infinite loop that accepts anything and contains nothing nvd0 first NVMe storage device using NVMe namespaces pts/ pseudo-terminals; see pts(4) random source of weak randomness; see random(4) sa0 first tape drive usb/ USB busses vmm/ active bhyve(8) virtual machines zvol/ zfs(8) volumes /entropy provides initial state to RNG; see save-entropy(8) /etc/ base system configuration files and scripts; see intro(5) auto_master autofs automount(8) configuration bluetooth/ bluetooth configuration files cron.d/ tables for driving scheduled tasks; see crontab(5) crontab root's cron table defaults/ default system configuration files; see rc(8) devd/ configuration for devd(8), the device state change daemon devfs.conf boot time device configuration dma/ configuration for dma(8) freebsd-update.conf configuration for the base system updater; see freebsd-update(8) fstab static filesystem configuration; see fstab(5) hosts database of local hosts if no network name server is running inetd.conf configuration for BSD heritage internet servers; see inetd(8) localtime local timezone information; see ctime(3) jail.conf.d/ jail(8) startup scripts login.conf login class capability database; see lo- gin.conf(5) machine-id defines the UUID for the local system, re- quired for dbus mail/ sendmail(8) control files aliases addresses to deliver system mail mailer.conf mailwrapper(8) configuration motd.template message displayed upon tty login; see motd(5) mtree/ system mapper specification; see mtree(8) newsyslog.conf.d/ log rotation configuration files. ntp/ stored time for the Network Time Protocol ntp.conf configuration for the NTP client, ntpd(8) pam.d/ configuration files for the Pluggable Au- thentication Modules (PAM) library; see pam(3) periodic/ scripts that are run daily, weekly, or monthly by cron(8); see periodic(8) pf.conf configuration for the Packet Filter fire- wall; see pf(4) pkg/ default configuration for the package man- ager, pkg(8) ppp/ PPP configuration files; see ppp(8) rc.conf system and daemon configuration; see rc.conf(5) rc.d/ system and daemon startup/control scripts; see rc(8) resolv.conf DNS configuration; see resolv.conf(5) resolvconf.conf DNS configuration manager configuration, often generated by local-unbound; see lo- cal-unbound(8) or resolvconf(8) security/ OpenBSM audit configuration files; see au- dit(8) ssh/ OpenSSH configuration files; see ssh(1) ssl/ OpenSSL configuration files cert.pem System trust store in bundle form; see certctl(8). certs/ System trust store in OpenSSL hashed-directory form; see certctl(8). openssl.cnf OpenSSL configuration file; see openssl.cnf(5). untrusted/ Explicitly distrusted certifi- cates; see certctl(8). sysctl.conf kernel state defaults; see sysctl.conf(5) syslog.conf system message log configuration ttys tty creation configuration; see getty(8) wpa_supplicant.conf client wifi configuration; see wpa_suppli- cant.conf(5) /home/ home directories for users; the typical home for an interactive user beastie would be /home/beastie/ /lib/ system libraries critical to binaries in /bin and /sbin geom/ class-specific libraries for the geom(8) utility nvmecontrol/ vendor-specific libraries to extend the nvmecon- trol(8) utility /libexec/ system utilities critical to binaries in /bin and /sbin /media/ mount points for removable storage media such as CDs, DVDs, and USB drives; see automount(8), or bsdisks(8) if a using a desktop environment from ports(7) /mnt/ empty directory commonly used by system administrators as a tem- porary mount point /net/ automounted NFS shares; see auto_master(5) /nonexistent/ a non-existent directory; by convention, it serves as a home di- rectory for user accounts that need no home directory; see also /var/empty/ /proc/ process file system; see procfs(4) /rescue/ statically linked programs for emergency recovery; see rescue(8) /root/ home directory of the root user /sbin/ fundamental BSD system administration utilities; see intro(8) /tmp/ temporary files commonly removed between system reboots; see clear_tmp_enable in rc.conf(5) /usr/ contains the majority of user utilities and applications bin/ common utilities, programming tools, and applica- tions; see intro(1) freebsd-dist/ distribution files (like base.txz); see re- lease(7) and bsdinstall(8) include/ standard C include header files lib/ shared and ar(1)-type libraries; see intro(3) clang/ shared libraries for the system com- piler, clang(1) compat/ shared libraries for compatibility debug/ standalone debug data for the kernel and base system libraries and bina- ries dtrace/ dtrace(1) library scripts engines/ OpenSSL (Cryptography/SSL toolkit) dynamically loadable engines flua/ FreeBSD Lua shared libraries i18n/ shared libraries for international- ization lib32/ 32-bit compatibility libraries libdata/ miscellaneous utility data files ldscripts/ linker scripts; see ld(1) pkgconfig/ collections of compiler and linker flags for the pkgconf(1) development tool libexec/ system daemons and utilities executed by programs bsdconfig/ utilities called by the ncurses FreeBSD configuration wizard bsdinstall/ utilities for bsdinstall(8) dwatch/ profiles for dwatch(1) fwget/ utilities called by fwget(8) hyperv/ scripts for communicating with the Hyper-V hypervisor lpr/ utilities and filters for the line printer system; see lpr(1) sendmail/ the sendmail(8) binary; see mail- wrapper(8) sm.bin/ restricted shell for sendmail(8); see smrsh(8) zfs/ Z file system utilities local/ local executables, libraries, etc, installed by pkg(7) or ports(7) bin/ local user utilities, see intro(1) etc/ local program configurations include/ local library headers lib/ local libraries lib32/ local 32-bit compatability libraries libdata/ local utility data files libexec/ utilities executed by local utilities sbin/ local administration utilities share/ local architecture-independent files share/doc/ local documentation share/doc/freebsd/ articles, books, FAQ, and handbooks available from the FreeBSD project share/man/ local manual pages; see man(1) obj/ architecture-specific target tree produced by building FreeBSD from source; see build(7) ports/ FreeBSD ports collection; see ports(7) sbin/ system daemons and utilities meant for user exe- cution; see intro(8) share/ architecture-independent files atf/ scripts for the Automated Testing Framework; see ATF(7) bhyve/ bhyve(8) keyboard mappings calendar/ system-wide calendar files; see cal- endar(1) certs/ TLS certificates for openssl(1) dict/ word lists; see look(1) freebsd FreeBSD-specific terms, proper names, and jargon web2 words from Webster's Sec- ond International doc/ miscellaneous documentation dtrace/ scripts for the Dynamic Tracing Com- piler; see dtrace(1) examples/ various examples for users and pro- grammers firmware/ firmware images loaded by userland programs games/ ASCII text files used by BSD heritage games, see intro(6) keys/ known trusted and revoked keys pkg/ fingerprints for pkg(7) and pkg(8) locale/ localization files; see setlocale(3) man/ system manual pages; see man(1) misc/ miscellaneous system-wide files ascii chart of the ASCII code- points flowers the meanings of flowers magic magic numbers used by file(1) termcap terminal characteristics database; see termcap(5) mk/ templates for make; see make(1) nls/ national language support files security/ data files for security policies such as mac_lomac(4) sendmail/ sendmail(8) configuration files skel/ example . (dot) files for new ac- counts snmp/ MIBs, example files and tree defini- tions for the SNMP daemon defs/ tree definition files for use with gensnmptree(1) mibs/ management Information Base (MIB) files syscons/ syscons(4) files fonts/ console fonts; see vid- control(1) and vidfont(1) keymaps/ console keyboard maps; see kbdcontrol(1) and kb- dmap(1) scrnmaps/ console screen maps sysroot/ files necessary for the -sysroot com- piler/linker argument to build non- native binaries VERSION/ files for FreeBSD release VERSION; by convention, "VERSION" matches uname(1) -r VERSION/MACHINE.MACHINE_ARCH/ represent the binary ABI for these files; "MACHINE" matches uname(1) -m; "MACHINE_ARCH" matches un- ame(1) -p tabset/ tab description files for a variety of terminals; used in the termcap file; see termcap(5) vi/ localization support and utilities for the vi(1) editor vt/ files used by the system console; see vt(4) fonts/ console fonts; see vid- control(1), vidfont(1), and vtfontcvt(8) keymaps/ console keyboard maps; see kbdcontrol(1) and kb- dmap(1) zoneinfo/ timezone configuration information; see tzfile(5) src/ FreeBSD source code; see development(7); the lay- out of the source tree is described by the top- level README.md file tests/ the FreeBSD test suite; see tests(7) /var/ log, temporary, transient, and spool files account/ system accounting files acct execution accounting file; see acct(5) at/ timed command scheduling files; see at(1) jobs/ job files spool/ output spool files audit/ security event audit trail files; see audit(8) authpf/ user shell sessions for authenticating gateways; see authpf(8) backups/ critical system configuration backups cache/ miscellaneous cache files pkg/ cached packages for pkg(8) cups/ cached printers for the Common Unix Prinitng system; see cups(1) crash/ default directory to store kernel crash dumps; see crash(8) and savecore(8) cron/ files used by cron; see cron(8) tabs/ crontab files; see crontab(5) db/ autogenerated system-specific database files etcupdate/ temporary files and log for etcup- date(8) freebsd-update/ downloads and temporary files for freebsd-update(8) pkg/ package database empty/ for use by programs that require an empty directory, used for instance by sshd(8) for privilege separation games/ status and score files for BSD heritage games heimdal/ Kerberos server databases; see kdc(8) lib/ state information for ported Linux applications log/ system log files Xorg.0.log Xserver(1) log, if X(7) is installed rotates to Xorg.0.log.old aculog serial line access log; see cu(1) auth.log system authentication log bsdinstall_log system installation log cron scheduled task log; see cron(8) cups/ logs for cups(1) daemon.log default log for system daemons devd.log default log for device state change daemon dmesg.today kernel message buffer log, rotates to dmesg.yesterday debug.log undiscarded debug syslog messages lpd-errs logs for the line printer spooler daemon; see lpd(8) maillog sendmail(8) log, rotates and com- presses to maillog.0.bz2 messages general system message log; see sys- logd(8) mount.today currently loaded fstab(5), rotates to mount.yesterday pf.today packet filter firewall log; see pf(4) pflog saved packets caught by pflogd(8) ppp.log see ppp(8) security transcript of events marked with the security flag setuid.today listing of executable files which run with elevated permissions, rotates to setuid.yesterday userlog logs changes in users or groups utx.lastlogin last login log; see getutxent(3) utx.log login/logout log; see getutxent(3) mail/ user mailbox files msgs/ system messages database; see msgs(1) preserve/ unused, present for historical reasons quotas/ UFS quota information files run/ files containing information about the operating sys- tem since it was booted bhyve/ bhyve(8) virtual machine unix(4)-domain sockets ppp/ writable by the "network" group for command connection sockets; see ppp(8) utx.active database of current users; see getutxent(3) wpa_supplicant/ IEEE Std. 802.11 wifi run time files rwho/ information about other systems on the local network; see rwhod(8), rwho(1), and ruptime(1) spool/ printer and mail system spooling directories clientmqueue/ undelivered submission mail queue; see sendmail(8) cups/ print jobs and temporary files for cups(1) dma/ undelivered mail queue for DragonFly Mail Agent; see dma(8) lock/ serial device locks; see uucplock(3) lpd/ line printer spooler daemon spool mqueue/ undelivered mail queue for sendmail(8) output/ line printer spooling directories tmp/ temporary files not removed between system reboots vi.recover/ recovery files for the vi(1) editor unbound/ files and configuration for unbound(8) yp/ the NIS maps; see yp(8) NOTES This manual page documents the default FreeBSD file system layout. The ac- tual hierarchy on a given system is defined at the system administrator's discretion. A well-maintained installation will include a customized ver- sion of this document. SEE ALSO apropos(1), find(1), grep(1), ls(1), whereis(1), which(1) HISTORY A hier manual page first appeared in 1979 with Version 7 AT&T UNIX. FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly September 25, 2025 HIER(7)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | SEE ALSO | HISTORY
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