In computing, a home directory is a directory which contains the personal files of a particular user of the system. On Unix systems, this includes configuration files (usually hidden, i.e. starting with a "."), documents, locally installed programs, etc. The home directory is defined as part of the user's account data (e.g. in the /etc/passwd file). On many systems - including most distributions of Linux and variants of BSD (e.g. OpenBSD), the home directory for each user takes the form /home/<username> (where <username> is the name of the user account). The home directory of the superuser account (usually named root (computing)) is traditionally "/", but on many newer systems it is often located at /root. This convention is not universal, however: in NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, and Mac OS X, users' home directories are stored in /Users/<username>. However in NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP in a single user, non-networked setup, there is a restricted me account in tandem with the standard unrestricted root account, which stores its users' files in /me. In Solaris Operating Environment, home directories are located in /home, but this is actually the mount point of the automounter, which mounts home directories as needed from a file server, or /export/home on the local system. Older Unix systems often used paths such as "/u01" or "/var/users". An additional Unix naming convention (originating from the csh shell) is that ~user can be used as shorthand for referring to the home directory belonging to user, whatever its location on the filesystem. This is why many web servers are configured to show a user's personal website when a URL such as http://www.catb.org/~esr/ is accessed (in this example, the username is esr). A further shorthand allows a user to refer to their ''own'' home directory simply as ~. Separating user data from system-wide data avoids redundancy and makes backups of important files relatively simple. Furthermore, Trojan horse (computing)s, computer viruses and computer worms running under the user's name and with their privileges will in most cases only be able to alter the files in the user's home directory, and perhaps some files belonging to workgroups the user is a part of, but not actual system files. In newer versions of Microsoft Windows, based on the multi-user Windows NT, each user has a home directory which by default is located at C:\Documents and Settings\<username>. (With <username> again replaced by the particular user's login name).
Do other Unices really use the /home convention? On most non-Linux systems I've used, home directories were stored somewhere in /usr. Someone with more Unix experience might be able to clear that up. I've changed the statement to "On most Linux systems" for now.User:Eloquence 07:37, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC) : OpenBSD uses /home/''user'', OPENSTEP/Mac OS X uses /Users/''user'', can't remember what it is under Solaris though... User:Dysprosia 07:45, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC) :: It would be nice to have a table for different operating systems. That could actually make this article useful .. ;-) User:Eloquence 07:46, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)
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Words begining with Home_directory:
Home_directory
Home_directory
Home directory
In computing, a home directory is a directory which contains the personal files of a particular user of the system. On Unix systems, this includes configuration files (usually hidden, i.e. starting with a "."), documents, locally installed programs, etc. The home directory is defined as part of the user's account data (e.g. in the /etc/passwd file). On many systems - including most distributions of Linux and variants of BSD (e.g. OpenBSD), the home directory for each user takes the form /home/<username> (where <username> is the name of the user account). The home directory of the superuser account (usually named root (computing)) is traditionally "/", but on many newer systems it is often located at /root. This convention is not universal, however: in NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, and Mac OS X, users' home directories are stored in /Users/<username>. However in NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP in a single user, non-networked setup, there is a restricted me account in tandem with the standard unrestricted root account, which stores its users' files in /me. In Solaris Operating Environment, home directories are located in /home, but this is actually the mount point of the automounter, which mounts home directories as needed from a file server, or /export/home on the local system. Older Unix systems often used paths such as "/u01" or "/var/users". An additional Unix naming convention (originating from the csh shell) is that ~user can be used as shorthand for referring to the home directory belonging to user, whatever its location on the filesystem. This is why many web servers are configured to show a user's personal website when a URL such as http://www.catb.org/~esr/ is accessed (in this example, the username is esr). A further shorthand allows a user to refer to their ''own'' home directory simply as ~. Separating user data from system-wide data avoids redundancy and makes backups of important files relatively simple. Furthermore, Trojan horse (computing)s, computer viruses and computer worms running under the user's name and with their privileges will in most cases only be able to alter the files in the user's home directory, and perhaps some files belonging to workgroups the user is a part of, but not actual system files. In newer versions of Microsoft Windows, based on the multi-user Windows NT, each user has a home directory which by default is located at C:\Documents and Settings\<username>. (With <username> again replaced by the particular user's login name).
Home directory
Do other Unices really use the /home convention? On most non-Linux systems I've used, home directories were stored somewhere in /usr. Someone with more Unix experience might be able to clear that up. I've changed the statement to "On most Linux systems" for now.User:Eloquence 07:37, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC) : OpenBSD uses /home/''user'', OPENSTEP/Mac OS X uses /Users/''user'', can't remember what it is under Solaris though... User:Dysprosia 07:45, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC) :: It would be nice to have a table for different operating systems. That could actually make this article useful .. ;-) User:Eloquence 07:46, Feb 18, 2004 (UTC)
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H
HA | HB | HC | HD | HE | HF | HG | HI | HJ | HK | HL | HM | HN | HO | HP | HR | HS | HT | HU | HW | HX | HY | HZ |Words begining with Home_directory:
Home_directory
Home_directory
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