Ubuntu - the list of frequent used directories and their purposes
Published on: 22nd Apr 2014
Updated on: 16th Jul 2025
Overview
As a system administrator, we need to configure the new program after installation. Otherwise, those programs will not be usable or not secure. The configuration files usually stored in etc directory and you have to configure it by referencing their setup guideline.
The frequent used directories
The following is the common directories which we will access most of the time.
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/etc- stores all the configuration.-
/etc/fail2banfilter.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).
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/etc/nginxsites-available/default- this is the default website configuration file.sites-enabled- this directory keeps the symbolic links for the configuration that has been enabled.
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/etc/sshsshd_config- this is the SSH configuration file.
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/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.
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/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.
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/var/www- usually, we store the website assets (such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, image files, etc) here.
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/home- stores the user’s files./home/tester- this is the default directory for 'tester'.
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Author
Lau Hon Wan, software developer.