Ubuntu - the list of frequent used directories and their purposes

Published on: 22nd Apr 2014

Updated on: 8th Jul 2025

Overview

The following is the common directories which we will access most of the time

/etc - stores all the configuration.
- /etc/fail2ban
  - filter.d - this directory stores the filter for generating the ban record.
  - jail.local - this is the local configuration to define the jail policy. For example, if someone tried to access the server (through SSH) and it happened to be 3 times of invalid password will be jailed (i.e., blocked from accessing the server for x minutes).
- /etc/nginx
  - sites-available/default - this is the default website configuration file.
  - sites-enabled - this directory keeps the symbol links for the configuration that has been enabled.
- /etc/ssh
  - sshd_config - this is the SSH configuration file.
/var - stores the www files, log files, etc.
- /var/log - stores all the log files.
  - auth.log - the access log.
  - fail2ban.log - the log file for fail2ban daemon.
  - syslog - the system log that includes boot up and shutting down events.
- /var/nginx - stores the Nginx log files.
  - access.log - the website access log. This will be useful for generating the web traffic report.
  - error.log - stores the error like missing file and any other error.
- /var/www - usually, we store the website assets (such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, image files, etc) here.
/home - stores the user’s files.
- /home/tester - this is the default directory for 'tester'.

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Lau Hon Wan, software developer.