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 ...

People who have had bad experiences on Windows disks that performed poorly after they had become very fragmented often wonder if they need to apply some kind of periodic analysis and defragmentation ...

If you're new to the UNIX operating system, especially if you're familiar with Windows, you'll find that the file access control mechanisms might not be exactly what you expect. File permissions and ...

There are four ways to specify that a file is in UNIX System Services when you use the FILENAME statement or FILENAME function: You can also use these specifications in combination. For example, you ...

One of the problems that seems to plague nearly all file systems — Unix and others — is the continuous buildup of files. Almost no one takes the time to clean out files that they no longer use and ...

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 ...

The Unix operating system is one of computing's most significant technologies, providing the framework that the familiar Linux and Mac OS X operating systems were developed on. Unix can be a viable ...

One of the files that the average Unix sysadmin rarely looks at, almost never changes and yet depends on every time he or she reboots a system is the /etc/inittab file. This modest little file ...