Understanding the Linux filesystem

Before we get into the subject of managing storage volumes, we'll first need to have a better understanding of how the filesystem is laid out. The term filesystem itself can be somewhat confusing in the Linux world because it can refer to two different things, the default directory structure, as well as the actual filesystem we choose when formatting a volume (ext4, XFS, and so on). In this section, we're going to take a quick look at the default directory structure.

In Linux (Ubuntu uses the Linux kernel and related utilities) the filesystem begins with a single forward slash, /. This is considered the beginning of the filesystem, and directories and sub-directories branch out from there. For example, consider the /home directory. This directory exists at the root level of the filesystem, which you can see from the fact that it begins with a forward slash. My home directory on my system is /home/jay, which means that it's the directory jay, which is inside...