/etc .. what the heck does it mean?

Z

Zinn

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For years I just blindly accepted that /etc is where my config shit goes. That's just the way it is. But I was thinking about it, and the it occured to me that the name /etc doesn't really make sense. I mean, when I think "configuration," the phrase "et cetera" doesn't really come to mind, like at all.

So what the heck? Do any of you UNIX-y guys know why it's set up like this and what it means?
 
There was a heated discussion about this roughly a year ago on slashdot.

Under "Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" on Wikipedia /etc apparently means et cetera :rolleyes:
In a certain Unix mailing list it is referred to as "extended tool chest" or "Extremely Terrible Cognomen" :p

I dunno if anybody knows the true etymology of the /etc directory name. The people that came up with the FHS had some weird names for system directories. Also, when I first started using Linux I thought that /usr was an abbreviation for "user" :p (it really stands for "Unix System Resources").
 
The two main ones that I hear are "Extended Tool Chest," and et cetera, as in everything but binaries.

 
What? Don't question the system V gods. Or wherever /etc came from :)

And don't forget about /usr/local/etc!

... and finally, what would you rather? A odd name of a directory that actually makes sense to have, or ... Windows registry? :)
 
I always pronounce it as etC as it a -short e - t - long c- sounds kinda like "etsee" I never really made the connection to etcetera. I always figured it was foreign. Most americans i know call programs "executables" or an exe, but I know an Australian guy that calles them "binaries" So I figured it must be foriegn and that is where they got the term bin, etc must be something foreign too

Guess my figuring was just a bit off eh? :D
 
I've always blindly assumed et cetera for /etc and user for /usr. This thread just rocked my world!
 
GushpinBob said:
Also, when I first started using Linux I thought that /usr was an abbreviation for "user" :p (it really stands for "Unix System Resources").
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Interesting, I never knew what /usr stood for (or gave it any though). Everyone I know pronounces it as "user" though.
 
I'm pretty sure that /usr was originally short for user. / was for the bare minimum that was needed to boot the system, and /usr was every thing else and would often live on another disk. The FHS is out of control and needs to be stopped! :D

 
If it was short for "user", then what were the "root" and home directories used for?

IF the /usr directory was the original home directory then who the hell decided that it would be a good idea to re-purpose the directory exclusively for most binaries, man pages, and (sometimes, usually in Linux) operating system source code?
 
/root is a creation of Linux distros, and I'm not sure when exactly /home came into play. Check other nix systems, there is not always a /home. And if there is, it is often a symlink.

And from the slashdot discussion you linked earlier:

Historically, Unix had /sys for the kernel (short for SYStem, duh), /usr for user areas (yes, user areas), /lib for system libraries, /bin for top-level binaries, and /etc as the miscellaneous area. As time went on, substantial amounts of the operating system went into /usr, with the "bin" account set up to contain most of the tools people needed (which is why bin is also in /etc, and owns substantial amounts of the operating system, despite the apparent lack of a need to have that. It's legacy practices.)
So some time in the mid to late eighties, much of this started to be moved around. Real home directories were moved out of /usr to a variety of directories, eventually standardising, Mac OS X aside, on /home. /usr itself started to be reorganized to look something like the top level, /etc was cleaned out (though much of this happened in the mid-nineties), and we have what we see today.
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alan2308 said:
/root is a creation of Linux distros, and I'm not sure when exactly /home came into play. Check other nix systems, there is not always a /home. And if there is, it is often a symlink.
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yeah on solaris /home is a symlink to like /usr/local/home or something like that. And I've always thought that /root was silly, why bother making it a top-level directory?
 
/root is kinda silly, but I would rather have /root over /home/root (or /usr/local/home/root).

It wouldn''t seem very sensible to put the administrator's home directory in alongside regular users' home directories.
 
GushpinBob said:
/root is kinda silly, but I would rather have /root over /home/root (or /usr/local/home/root).

It wouldn''t seem very sensible to put the administrator's home directory in alongside regular users' home directories.
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root shouldn't need a home directory. How long are you logged in as root anyway?
 
One thing I was thinking about the other day is the best place for service files (web, DB, FTP, etc). I personally dedicate a drive/array to them and symlink it to /srv. /srv/http/www is my webroot with virtual servers going in /srv/http. /srv/db for MySQL databases, /srv/ftp for FTP root. What do you guys do?
 
alan2308 said:
root shouldn't need a home directory. How long are you logged in as root anyway?
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I'd argue that root still needs a home directory for config files and stuff like that. That's where programs (even basic administration-minded programs) will look for user config files.
 
Eva_Unit_0 said:
I'd argue that root still needs a home directory for config files and stuff like that. That's where programs (even basic administration-minded programs) will look for user config files.
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Yea, your right, I didn't even think of dot files and the like.
 
/etc is et cetera. It would make no sense for etc to be an acronym for anything when all other directories are abbreviations, and being created at a time when acronyms were virtually non-existent in the computing field. Anything other than et cetera is just a bacronym.
 
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