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Data Storage Operating Systems Software Unix

How To Manage Your Home Directory? 176

Posted by timothy from the taxonomy dept.
gustgr writes "There are times I got surprised after running ls in my $HOME directory. It is filled with trash, test files, directories that were supposed to be only temporary, ascii files with quick notes and all sort of stuff. In other words, it is a complete mess. Then I remove the trash, clean up the directories, run the mv command a few times and everything looks good and normal again. Two weeks later the disorder is back and I have to handle it again. How do you manage your home directory in order to keep it clean? Are your homes a mess too?" I usually keep folders labeled "audible," "visible," "legible," and "work," and subfolders within these that are at least mostly consistent between computers / drives; every day or so I sweep loose files into these, then open each folder, sort, repeat. How do you sort your data?
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How To Manage Your Home Directory? More

How To Manage Your Home Directory?

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  • simple really (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prowl ( 554277 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:23AM (#10897215)
    Anything I want to get rid of, I put in the /bin. Stuff I can't really categorise I put in /etc, and all the stuff I use goes in /usr.
    • Oh, so this is why you shouldn't routinely log in as root. It also proves the superiority of WINDOWS! WINDOWS doesn't have /etc, /bin, or /usr! Heck, they don't even use that "/" thingy. You just put all your stuff in that desktop icon labeled "Recycle Bin" in case you want to use it again.
      • I seriously had a client doing that. She didn't know how to make directories so she drug things into the recycle bin so she knew where to find them.

        And - seriously - came to me complaining that she was losing files. I was thinking bad hard disk or virus or... well, not that.

    • Cron jobs (Score:2, Funny)

      by wild_berry ( 448019 )
      I do that too. Neat idea.

      I've also got cron jobs to rm -rf /bin/*.* every thirty minutes.

  • mkdir subdirectory (Score:5, Informative)

    by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:23AM (#10897216)
    Always make a directory and put the files you are dealing with in it immediately. Don't wait.
    • I wrote a shell script that automatically handles files found on key fobs or other portable storage.

      It checks /mnt/$DEVICE for three directories: bin, track and transport. It makes a backup of the bin directory, performs rudimentary version checking(md5sum) and snapshot backup on files in the track directory, and copies files from the transport directory to a timestamped directory under $HOME/transfer/transport.

      In my spare time, I'm improving it. It's currently a combination of three or four scripts, bu

  • a tmp filder and a storage folder. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tolan-b ( 230077 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:26AM (#10897231)
    Personally I have a ~/tmp and a ~/storage

    Anything that I don't need to keep goes in tmp. For example, downloaded RPMs that I just want to install, links to movie clips that freinds send me, most downloads (I move them elsewhere afterwards if I want to keep them), experimental compiles (moving the dir somewhere else if I keep it installed and want to keep the installer for cleaning it up later).

    ~/storage/ contains anything I want to keep. That includes project files, music, backups and so on.

    If I need to make space then ~/tmp gets a scrubbing, if I want to back up or move to a new machine then it's a simple case of copying ~/storage and any ~/.foo config stuff to the new box (or backup in case of a system re-install).
    • Yeah, me too. all the mess ends up in ~/tmp. I only clean that up when i feel like it.

      Daniel
    • <all other garbage>
      Mail
      Desktop
      Docs
      Devel
      eclipse
      <projects>
      MonoDevelop
      <projects>
      kdevelop
      <projects>
      others
      <projects>
      Trash
    • I love the tmp directory idea.

      I use a Documents folder for my docs (since GNOME and OS X both like to save things there). I have subdirs like "resume" and "school". school is organized by semester and class. Sometimes I put each assignment in a separate directory if it's (for example) a LaTeX document with lots of postscript graphics or datasets or such.

      I then use a ~/projects folder for ongoing projects.

      I have a ~/src folder for things like the kernel source.

      I usually use my homedir as temporary sto
    • I use a similar setup though I use desktop instead of tmp.

      Here's why, ifI have a bunch useless files lying around on my desktop it looks cluttered, everytime you log in you see your messy desktop. It forces you to keep it neat and organized.

      Other than that I have a bunch of primary folders, each divided into sub folders for different topics,etc.

      Images go under Photos, which are sorted by what kind of image, which can be broken down anther two or three times depending on exactly it's contents.

      Music, Doc

  • My organisation (Score:5, Funny)

    by shufler ( 262955 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:31AM (#10897270) Homepage
    This is easy. Pornographic movies go in the /vids directory, while pornographic images go in the /pics directory.

  • My home directory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yenya ( 12004 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:36AM (#10897291) Homepage Journal
    My home directory varies on different hosts, but I usually have the ~/tmp subdir for all the thrash (untarred packages of software, temporary scripts, etc). Then there is ~/public_html with my home page, and ~/bin (added to my $PATH) with various scripts and locally installed programs. On most hosts I also have ~/tex, ~/txt, ~/audio and ~/video subdirs as well. My primary mail host has ~/Mail with inboxes subdir. That's all (and bits of random crap here and there).
  • The most clutter in my directory comes from all the programs which for inexplicable and stupid reasons decide that configuration files go in the root of the directory. This is Stupid. There is no reason for it. If you are a developer, you automatically suck. Die. (seriously, geez!)
  • 3256 directories, 49,182 files
    76 directories (of which 16 hidden), 38 files (18 hidden) in the home directory itself.

    • Re:A tally (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      3,200+ directories of organised pr0n? Nice.

  • rm -rf * (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Mordant ( 138460 )
    usually works for me. ;>

  • Out of sight... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:43AM (#10897346) Homepage
    Simply give all your files names starting with '.'.

    • This is modded funny, but this is exactly what I do. Here's my advice: If you're using GNOME (KDE might have this setting as well; I don't know) you can find a setting that makes your home dir the desktop dir. (You can't find it on any control panel, but it's under the GConf key /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir). Then I delete the ~/Desktop directory 'cuz I don't need it anymore. (I know this goes against freedesktop.org standards, but hey -- it's my computer; I can do what I want with it.)

      Th

  • Here's how to do it.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:49AM (#10897391)
    This is my way.. I stick everything on the desktop, then when desktop is full I make a folder called stuff and move everything into it. rinse, repeat if you get too many folders called stuff2 stuff3 stuff50 whatever, just make a new folder and put all the other folders inside it :)

    • I have a single "Stuff" directory on the desktop. When I decide that it has too much crap in it, I go through it and move it all to a drive on another folder. There's a folder there /server/Work/Stuff that I stick it all in. I even have a folder in there called 'Done Stuff.'

      Of course, this is all garbage. Important data gets separated and stored in other places. I usually keep a copy of everything that hits my drive, with exception of the Ads and images associated with web surfing. /Download gets a lo

    • Many of my users seem to do this, actually. One guy's desktop is so cluttered its impossible to tell what his wallpaper is. He doesn't put stuff in folders; everything is right there on the desktop. Its bizarre.
    • The funny thing is that I do that all the time!!! After about a year I realize that I don't need it and delete it.

      Cheers,
      Adolfo

  • if u have to live in the shit you make... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:50AM (#10897396) Homepage
    ... you don't, for that reason i have my home directory as my desktop directory, so if my home is ugly, so is my desktop. it hardly ever is (or at worst my desktop is a list of to-do's

  • how I does it: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:51AM (#10897405)
    I have an XP Pro+sfu system for my main workstation, some of this might make a litte more sense in that context.
    I split my drive into three partitions;

    c:\ is for system stuff and the temp folder. I redirected all temp folder locations to c:\temp, including all the windows temp files, user profile temp folders, browser caches, etc. makes it easy to clean up and simple to retrieve stuff

    d:\ became 'Documents', redirected for all user profiles concept of 'My Documents', by registry hacks and system policy changes (makes new user defaults to here) that is broken up into folders named 'audio' 'images' 'documents' 'music' 'projects' 'online' 'sort' and a few others. This makes cli management of files extra easy to deal with. I use the root of each of these folders as an 'incoming' space for files of that type, with sub folders for longer term post sorting storage.

    e:\ became 'Programs', broken down into categories like 'av' 'dev' 'games' 'graphics' and 'net' with the root of the drive as the default program location for installers using that system variable. speeds up installing things tremendously, as I just need to add the relavent subcategory in place of the default that a wizard gives me usually 'c:\program files\(blah)' or 'e:\(blah)'.

    f:\ is another larger older and slower drive, on the second ide bus, called 'freezer', where I store zips, ISOs and the like. I also have a folder there called 'Bad Music' , where I store music that's shown up but isn't going to get listened too. For some reason, i can't delete crap music, but I don't want it showing up in my music players' lists (think "transformed man - william shatner" and anything by "styx", crap like that).

    last but not least, i keep a folder on the desktop called 'drawer' where I can dump accumulated files rapidly and sort them later. I usually put half of those in the trash. for little scraps and notes, I dump them all into one big file named '(sort date) - notes.txt' from the command line, using the command "d:\desktop\drawer\type *.txt >> notes.txt" and file that away. just have to remember to put titles and carriage returns in my notes. between windows search and google desktop search, i have no trouble bringing that stuff up quickly when I eventually need it.
    • i do nearlly the same thing.
      c: is OS, d: is documents (you dont need a reg hack to change the location of 'my documents')
      just right click and move

      great setup, easy to ghost the system drive without all the extras which are backed up elsewhere

  • the google way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iamcadaver ( 104579 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:53AM (#10897423)
    put it all in ~/public_html, and find stuff with google site://my_host/~myname

    Sooner or later, google will be right, you won't be able to keep up with all the accumulated crap that TiB hard drives and uber-pipe broadband and "smart" agents and tivo-like p2p this crap was downloaded because it's like the other crap you've searched for

    And we will love it.

  • Home dir solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by 44BSD ( 701309 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:54AM (#10897430)
    cd; find . -atime gt 30 -print | xargs rm -f

    Best when modified and run as root over luser dirs, of course. Quotas are for sissies.
    • Where's "-1: Psychotic"? Do you really visit everything interesting in ~ at least once a month? I haven't touched my resume in over a year, but I'd hate to lose it. Also, at least one of the following is true:
      • /home is mounted with noatime, or you use tar with the --atime-preserve flag or dump for backups.
      • You don't do backups, or do them less often than every 30 days.
      • You're not actually deleting any files because atime gets touched every time you run a backup.

      If you're relying on atime to pl

  • My layout (Score:4, Informative)

    by debaere ( 94918 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:59AM (#10897453)
    My home directory ussually looks like the following:

    ~/download - for all downloaded files. If I am downloading many related files I put them in appropriately named sub dirs
    ~/library - for any documentation downloaded from the net, and a copy of my O'Reilly CD Bookshelves
    ~/temp - for a temp directory
    ~/test - for temp files from tarballs and installations
    ~/bin - for locally installed apps
    ~/work - for a temporary work space when working on projects
    ~/devel - all personal programming projects
    ~/locker - any other files I wish to keep
    ~/Document - any office or other personal documentation.

    The only files I purposely keep in the root of my home directory (aside from the dot-files) is a running todo list of notes and tasks, all of which is contained in one file.

  • Check early, check often (Score:4, Informative)

    by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:09AM (#10897529)
    The only real way to handle it is to get in the habit of checking your home directory for cruft on a regular basis. Do what you can to save longer-term things directly to where they will be saved, but that will only mitigate the problem. If you can't remember to check, write a cron job which emails you if your home directory gets more than a certain number of files. Something very simple like:

    0 0 * * * if [ `ls -d $HOME/* | wc -l` -gt 20]; then echo 'Too much stuff!'; fi
    One problem which I have is the creation of temporary directories for archives. Most tar files, as you know, extract to a directory. So if I get package-1.2.3.tar.gz, I also usually have a package-1.2.3 directory lying around. Even if I want to save the original .tar.gz file it's pointless to have the directory there too. You might want to write a script which looks for those stale directories. Don't run it automatically, of course: just keep it in ~/bin or someplace so you can run it as step 1 of the cleanup process.

    Something like this might work:

    #!/bin/sh

    find "$1" -type f -name '*.tar.gz' | (
    while read tarfile; do
    basedir=`dirname "$tarfile"`
    tarbasedir=`tar tzf "$tarfile" | head -1`
    tardir="$basedir/$tarbasedir"
    if [ -d "$tardir" ]; then
    spaceused=`du -s $tardir | cut -f1`
    echo "$spaceused $tardir $tarfile"
    fi
    done
    )
    Then you run it as follows:

    % ./sm .
    3201 ./psybnc/ ./psyBNC2.3.1.tar.gz
    904320 ./download/BitTorrent-3.4.2/ ./download/BitTorrent-3.4.2.tar.gz
    14742 ./download/eggdrop1.6.16/ ./download/eggdrop1.6.16.tar.gz
    130583&nbsp ; ./download/mysql-4.1.3-beta/ ./download/mysql-4.1.3-beta.tar.gz
    29350 ./BitchX/ ./ircii-pana-1.1-final.tar.gz
    The output is in three fields: space used by the directory, the directory name, and the tar.gz file where we found the original. You can be asked to delete anything it finds with:
    % ./sm . | awk '{print $2}' | xargs rm -i
    If you want to be a little safer you can just delete the original .tar.gz files. Substitute $3 in the awk expression in that case. And finally, again using awk, you can delete only directories which use up more than a certain amount of space with something like '{if($1 > 5000) print $2}'.

    You can also whip something up using find to look for files which haven't been accessed in more than a certain number of days. Reading a file updates its atime, so that's a pretty secure way to find stale temporary files.

    % find ~ -type f -atime +60
    For real zaniness, add xargs basename, sort, uniq -c, and sort -n. That'll get you a breakdown of how many applicable files found in each directory and sort it for you.

    Ain't Unix awesome?

  • I create a folder called 'development', and put all development and test stuff in there. It gets to be a bit of a mess, but it keeps $Home clean.

    If I need to create a temp directory somewhere, I put it into 'development'.

    I have a docs directory for documents, and a personal directory for personal stuff (like my CV, annual leave forms, etc)

    After that, it's really a matter of discipline - getting used to not creating temp folders in $Home, and test files, etc.

    Over the years, I discovered that the more or

  • Right now? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:19AM (#10897614)

    First, file systems have supported a hierachy for awhile now -- use it !

    Second, sort as soon as you get the file.

    Third, seperate public files (things you won't mind sharing across the local network) from private files.

    Fourth, (a tip for windows users) keep a "zipped_programs" or similar directory. Build a hierarchy inside of it for task, program name, then version. It may look like such:

    /data/public/zipped_programs/internet/firefox/1.0/

    /data/public/zipped_programs/drivers/widget_9000/w in2k/v1.13/widget_9000_v1.13_2k.zip

    If I have a CD of software I've installed, I tend to rip it and keep it in its own directory, along with the serial/key in a seperate file. Then put the CD in a binder and store it somewhere safe. If you download a no-cd crack, store it as well. Congrats, you just made your life a lot easier.

    /data/public/zipped_programs/games/diablo/2/iso/di ablo_2.iso

    /data/public/zipped_programs/games/diablo/2/serial /diablo_2_serial.txt /data/public/zipped_programs/games/diablo/2/cracks /no_cd.zip

    Finally, manage your home directory as well. Seperate folders for seperate tasks. Include a ~/tmp/ directory, its useful.

    That is my system, across windows and linux, developed by me. It works well, and it makes any windows installs go quickly. In addition, since I'm on a dialup link, its nice to have a program archive for installing updates onto all machines on the local lan.

    I only have one complaint with the system, and its for linux -- I would prefer to have a method of keeping track of any changed configuration files, including versioning.

    Of course, there are many possible solutions to this problem. I'm leaning towards having a /custom directory, with a symlink of any file I've changed, and a script to check it all into RCS if there are any changes. So, for example, /custom/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 would be a symlink to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and the RCS file would be saved under /custom/etc/X11/.RCS/XF86Config-4,v

  • I just use:

    alias l='ls -lrt | tail -24'

    and then I only look at recent files, and I let the cruft run free. Additionally, I capitalize any long-living directory.

    Then I just tar up any files that are not capitalized direcories that are more then say 4 months old. I keep the lists of files keept in each backup (dvdr) in a Directory.

    I also just periodically, run a:

    du -sk * | sort -n

    and just blow away any big files or directories that are not important to me.
  • ~/bin - Programs I've written or found useful, but not enough to install to the entire system.
    ~/wip - Work In Progress - scripts that I'm working on or debugging with each having its own sub-directory, these are usually things I'm working on to make my life easier.
    ~/Documents - following the Redhat / Mandrake nomenclature, I keep all 'office' type documents under that main heading. Sub-folders for things that have more than one document.
    ~/Projects - similar to wip, but with things that generally have a dea
  • I like to use a case scheme to keep thing organized at the command prompt, with files in all lower case letters and directories starting with an uppercase letter.

    Perhaps the biggest problem is applications that like to create temp files and applications that create dot files everytime you use them. Some applications will allow you to turn this behavior off but for the ones that don't, I use bash logout script to delete them.

  • sh (Score:1)

    by voot ( 609611 )
    why dont you just make a shell script and put it in bin that: moves your videos to ~/Documents/videos ... your music to ~/Documents/muzak ... ... txt files ~/Documents/writtings ... ... rpm(:P) ~/Rpm ... ... archives to ~/archives and you would be suprised how easy it makes stuff to find

  • Pedantic. (Score:3, Informative)

    by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:34AM (#10897757) Homepage Journal
    - ~/bin -- my own executables and scripts
    - ~/tmp -- gets nuked every time I log out
    - ~/public_html -- obvious
    - ~/Graphics -- pics 'n crap
    - ~/Funny -- obvious
    - ~/Mail -- imap folders
    - ~/Work -- anything work-related
    - ~/Docs -- well, docs
    - ~/Tunes -- mp3s and the likes
    - ~/Misc -- depending on the account

    I try to keep the "standard" folders and those containing my personal junk separated by capitalizing the first letter of the ones I tend to dump stuff into manually. I know it's utterly anal, but it's worked for me for > 13 years.

  • Another schema (Score:3, Funny)

    by kenthorvath ( 225950 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:37AM (#10897789)
    I usually keep folders labeled "audible," "visible," "legible," and "work,"

    That's funny, I was thinking of suggesting 'animal', 'vegetable', 'mineral', etc...

    Or perhaps using the 'Kingdom', 'Phylum', 'Class', etc... schema.

    • > >I usually keep folders labeled "audible," "visible," "legible," and "work,"

      > That's funny, I was thinking of suggesting 'animal', 'vegetable', 'mineral', etc...

      > Or perhaps using the 'Kingdom', 'Phylum', 'Class', etc... schema."

      Personally I have 14 folders in my home directory, corresponding to the 14 different file classifications:

      ThoseThatBelongToTheEmperor

      EmbalmedOnes

      ThoseThatAreTrained

      SucklingPigs

      Mermaids

      FabulousOnes

      StrayDogs

      ThoseThatAreIncludedInThisClassifica

    1. Buy new hard drive
    2. grep -r

    What else do you need?

  • To quote google (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:39AM (#10897797) Journal
    Don't sort - search.

    I disagree with them on this, although when my desktop or documents folder (yeah yeah, I have 'net at work only right now) get full I sweep them into a 'sort_this_junk_out' folder, then that gets swept into the next, then I burn a CD backup of my documents, and a year later find endless levels of forgotten detritus.

    I say, do what the photographers do. Sort by as much as you need.

    Work, Home, Play

    Play -
    Video
    Music
    Funny
    Pr0n

    Etc etc. Then have a download folder, and a sep install folder. Anything you want to keep move it to install or to work/home/play.

    Then setup a chron job to rm -rf ~/download/* every 48 hours.

    This forces you to buck up your ideas, and auto wipes shizzle you don't want. the chron could:

    rm -rf ~/furnace/*
    mv ~/download/* ~/furnace/*

    Which would give you a 92 hours period to save files.

    Just my arbitarily small denomination of the currency of your choice.
  • For the moment, I'm just letting everything go to pot. I just throw things in whatever directory is convenient, and hope that I remember where I put it later. I'm really looking forward to Spotlight on OS X.

    Personally, I think that in a few years time, heirarchical filesystems will be on their way out. With the current state of computing, there's little reason to have such a system when you can have a filesystem that does all the work for you. I've heard that the same functionality will be coming to Linux through ReiserFS (though I admit to not following that very closely since I'm obviously an OS X user).

    So, that probably doesn't help you much, but then again, it might. Just look around for a system that allows fast indexed searching of your machine so you don't have to keep track of this crap yourself.

    (Incidentally, it isn't only you. In one of the ACM's recent quarterly journals on Human-Computer Interaction, it found that most users are unable to keep track of where their files are because there are just too many of them. Also, it found that the search facilities currently in place in Windows and Mac (OS 9?) systems are entirely inadequate for the task.)
    • One of my users is apparently following your strategy: his home directory currently contains 2160 files. I've learned not to just type "ls" in that directory, since the sorting (alphabetical order) takes too long. He's also learned that the only way to find a file is to sort by date (ls -ltr). Since he usually remembers if he last modified a file today or a month ago, it doesn't take too long to locate it. Especially if you remember part of the name.

      My strategy? I've got folders like: Computer, Resea

    • Re:For now, I'm letting it go to hell (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:13PM (#10902322)
      Me too. I just thow crap in my home directories until 'ls' simply outputs too much stuff, and then I clean up.

      My personal machine is a mac as well, and my safari download location is my home directory. I actually like my home directory messy :) It makes a quick 'scp' easier because I don't have to type or remember the path either on the 'to' or 'from' machine. I always know where my current files are. Simply typing 'ls' is pretty much always useless. 'ls -lotr' is usually better. WIldcards really help.

      I consider stuff in my home directory as kinda temporary and/or immediate files. Meaning that I could be using them for the next couple of months or so. I find it too easy to use wildcards and to sort by time to waste my time cleaning up stuff. If someone mentions a PDF that they sent me last week I do ls -lotr *.pdf Odds are its near the bottom somewhere with a filename that makes sense.

      Now if something is important enough that I want to keep it semi-indefinitely, I put it somewhere where I can find it later, most likely on 2 different computers, and often one of them gets backed up.

      I thought of writing a cronjob to go and touch all of the file in my home directory that do not begin with '.' and are not directories and have a timestamp of older than 24 hours, and automatically moving junk to some directory after 14 days or so, but I havn't done that yet.

      I guess my point is that 1) besides my '.' files, I consier all files in $HOME to be basically temporary. Most of them are downloads which are located in safari's download manager for some time, and are also easily reobtainable. I don't mind the mess because filtering, grepping, sorting makes finding something trivial. Once things get "out of hand", I clean up. Sometimes I just move bunches of junk to a new dirctory called 'stuff' or something, and after its been in stuff long enough and I havn't needed any files from there, I just toss stuff. 2) I put important files in logical places where I know important files go. And, I always have at least one form of redundancy.
    • For the moment, I'm just letting everything go to pot. I just throw things in whatever directory is convenient, and hope that I remember where I put it later. ... I'm obviously an OS X user

      Heh. A year ago, I would have replied by commenting on how easy it is on linux (or any earlier unixoid system) to create directories and tell all apps to store their output files in the appropriate places. Then I got a PowerBook. The file system is chaos. Nearly every app has its own scheme for where to store files.
      • Interestingly, I don't think I've ever had your problem. Every application that I use that outputs a file asks me where I want to save it. I may just not be using the same applications as you, though.

        At this point, I'm intentionally just dumping files arbritrarily in a couple of directories. I COULD arrange them, but I'm actively not doing that.
    • Interesting. I rarely forget where i put files because i use a heirarchical filesystem. It's really quite efficient. I recomend it.

  • My $HOME (Score:4, Informative)

    by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @10:40AM (#10897811) Homepage Journal
    I have the following:

    bin - contains a set of script files that do personal things, plus a handful of binaries.

    doc - contains documents that I've created. Broken down quite carefully:
    doc/coding - personal projects
    doc/fandom - various groups and activities I do
    doc/karma - a large software project I work on
    doc/life - real world things: maps and notes about camp sites and dating ideas, family things
    doc/photo - photos I have taken organized by date (doc/photo/year/month/day)
    doc/photo/found - photos of friends I have found
    doc/projects - various projects I work on, the cast I direct, etc.
    doc/songs - songs I have written and notes on covers I perform
    doc/system - notes on hardware, software and my network
    doc/text - essays, stories, etc. that I have written
    doc/work - memos and invoices (actual work files are below

    ks - my primary work project, a large source tree

    pub - data files I've downloaded or ripped/encoded.
    pub/games - roms for emulators
    pub/image - very organized images from all over the place, from 10th century tapestries to scans of Manning's fetish lineart.
    pub/music - organized by genre
    pub/text - ebooks (first level is erotica, fiction, nonfiction, reference, rpg and scripts).
    pub/video - very very organized and quite deep. I've been encoding my extensive DVDs and VHS collection for quite awhile now.

    usr - contains system settings, in $HOME so I can sync (more info later)
    usr/etc/cron - network wide cronfiles, these sync everything and are symlinked.
    usr/etc/dot - all my dot files ($HOME/.*). rc files and config directories. I sync my settings and back them up.
    usr/etc/fileindex - index of pub (since pub doesn't exist on my laptop when I'm not NFSed to it).
    usr/etc - also contains hosts and ssh info.
    usr/install - tarballs and rpms to install everything the way I like it.
    usr/log - chat logs and the like
    usr/palm - my palm apps and backup/sync directories. I can drop text files in here and they appear as ebooks on my palm. Go KPilot!
    usr/share - contains various media and configuration files. Top level under this are ( desktop fonts icons kde kde.betty kde.riffraff ksubtle menu.betty music people sound wallpaper ). The kde.hostname directories are my configs for my laptop and desktop, and $HOME/.kde/share symlinks to them. Thus my kde config is backed up and synced. music here are startup/shutdown and alert music. people are face shots of individuals for use in PIM apps. icons is a personal set of icons.

    work - contains a directory for each client.

    www - contains a mirror for each of the sites I maintain (my personal ones - the professional ones are way too big).

    In addition to the above, I have a directory named pool on my laptop - that's media files (a few movies, tv shows, some talk radio programs) that I know I can delete without worry since they are in pub on the home file server. Stuff to watch when I'm waiting or bored.

    I also have a tmp, which on my laptop NFS mounts to tmp on my home server. It contains inbound and unsorted items. I get about four gigs, burn, index the disc and then move them into pub. I can recreate pub with my spindles and index.

    Finally I have a $HOME/betty on my laptop. My laptop's name is betty, and it contains anything that I downloaded directly to the laptop and I want to keep... sort of the opposite of $HOME/pool. Things here go to $HOME/tmp, and then go through the "burn/index/move to pub" cycle.

    As a result, I can find any file I want in nearly a terabyte of data that goes back 25 years, some of it Apple ][ files BBS logs. I am not done indexing my offline media - I need to get a high quality turntable for some virgin vinyl that has content that has never been released on CD. Plus some VHS tapes that have never been (and is unlikely to be) released on DVD. I also have a small collection of 16mm and 35mm trailers for various odd and cult films.

    For awhile I ou

  • Make directories and file stuff as you get it. Email attachments, USB drive files, floppies, CDs - don't just put them in your home directory.

    Make a temp directory for any scratch pad stuff or files you know are short term. Learn to work with them there. Any products of your work get sorted and moved to known directories. Then every so often delete all the files in the temp directory.

    Make a clean directory tree that you can navigate over and over. I have four main folders: temp, company, personal, a
  • It seems that nobody has mentioned the simplest way to keep your home directory neat and orderly... Don't make a mess. It really is much simpler to think about what you're doing before you do it rather than after the fact. Start put with a list of directories that you know that you will use.

    Personally, I have a downloads, documents, gentoo, pictures, scripts, and work.

  • For instance, I have a volume mounted as /usr2. It's stuff that's generally available to whoever uses my system. The most important areas of /usr2 are

    /usr2/audio/lossy
    /usr2/audio/lossless
    /usr2/aud io/incoming
    /usr2/torrents
    /usr2/torrents/incomi ng
    /usr2/tmp

    It's pretty self-explanatory. The majority of my data is in /usr2/audio. Everything in /usr2/audio/lossy and /usr2/audio/lossless is sorted by artist and album (or date of show). /usr2/audio/incoming is a mess... stuff I've ripped, downloaded, etc.

  • I put a tmp directory in my home directory. Anything I don't need to hang on to permanently goes in there. Every month or so I just wipe it out and create it again.

  • Story time (Score:5, Funny)

    by illuminatedwax ( 537131 ) <stdrange@nOsPAm.alumni.uchicago.edu> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:01AM (#10898066) Journal
    This is about a professor of mine from the University of Chicago who is a head honcho at Argonne Labs. Apparently, he's had a reputation for some years of having the most disgusting ~home directory. They eventually made a game about it: what they used to do was somebody would type 'ls' and someone else would get on a bike. Then they'd hit enter and they'd try to do laps around the server room until the ls stopped. I think their record was something around 14.

    --Stephen
  • I routinely use about 5 machines, on different networks.

    first off, I made a top-level directory to put all my 'data' type files in. that directory has lots of subdirectories, and when I create a new file I always create it in the right place, so it starts out organized.

    under that top level directory, I have a directory called 'config'. under config is a subdirectory for each machine I use. then all my ~/.* files are symbolic links into the appropriate top/config/machine/ directory. that way, on any mach

  • Make it read-only (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chemisor ( 97276 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:03AM (#10898083)
    The best thing I've done to my home directory is to make it read-only. This way I can prevent all those unnecessary configuration files that nearly every program wants to write, even if it really has no configuration data that's different from the default (what's up with that, developers?) And, of course, if I am ever dumb enough to try to write something at the root level, I get a polite reminder.
  • I have:
    ~/bin - for my scripts, small programs (one binary) etc. in my $PATH as first...
    ~/build/rpm and ~/build/src - rpm is my rpmbuild root env (linked with web/nfs server to serve packages) src is for stuff i play with compiling from source (testing before it goes as rpm)
    ~/doc/priv and ~/doc/work - obvious...
    ~/mail/ - also obvious...
    ~/tmp/ - for all temporary stuff like downloads etc.

    other things like videos, media, pictures etc. are shared abve my home directory - so I don't keep them in my ~ - I keep t
  • drwxr-x--- 2 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Nov 12 12:50 cvs/
    drwxr-x--- 3 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Sep 14 17:21 Desktop/
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswerdfe 9 Sep 5 21:08 docs -> Documents/
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswerdfe 27 Aug 31 13:22 Documents -> /mnt/win_c2/howie/Documents/
    drwxr-x--- 2 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Sep 10 08:01 drives/
    drwxr-x--- 11 hswerdfe hswerdfe 4096 Nov 17 21:11 install-files/
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswerdfe 16 Sep 1 12:17 music -> /mnt/win_d/music/
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 hswerdfe hswe
  • ~/dev - All my dev projects go under here
    ~/downloads - All my downloads
    ~/downloads/nzb - NZB related things go here
    ~/media/music
    ~/media/video
    ~/work - This is staging area for all my ~/dev projects
    ~/src - If I compile anything from src that I didn't write, it goes here
    ~/tmp - general crap. I prefer to use this instead of /tmp
    ~/docs - Resumes, papers I have written, and notes of things I don't want to lose

    I have been toying with the idea of automatically mounting my encrypted usb keys and syncing data back
    • Oh... and this directory is automounted from another server. And it even is my home directory in windows as well, so it works out well.

  • I have ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by daveewart ( 66895 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:49AM (#10898585)
    I have:
    • ~/bin - binaries and scripts for my own use;
    • ~/cfg - various config files, such as for kernels and Eterm;
    • ~/docs - documentation;
    • ~/iso - disk images;
    • ~/kernel - kernel build trees;
    • ~/music - oggs;
    • ~/procmail - I have a bit procmail configuration, all the files sit here. This should probably be ~/.procmail;
    • ~/progs - programs and scripts I'm writing;
    • ~/public_html - my local web stuff;
    • ~/src - program build trees;
    • ~/tex - LaTeX stuff;
    • ~/tmp - temporary files, cleaned out automatically every 30 days;
    • ~/misc - other stuff not neatly fitting into any of the above, but to keep them out of ~;

  • Don't make little files! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erikharrison ( 633719 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:55AM (#10898657)
    The real trick is to USE APPLICATIONS! Don't keep notes in temp files, or little files with peoples phone numbers. Use a sticky note app, use a contact app. You'll find that they not only keep your home directory clean, but these developers have thought of all the things you can do with that info, and made most of it pretty easy.

    Really, I kept all my numbers in a file, yadda yadda yadda. "I don't need no stinking calendar app". But once I used it, I realized that, in fact, I did. Try it

    • Re:Don't make little files! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:22PM (#10901581) Homepage Journal
      But make sure the applications you use have good standards for import/export, or are open source with comprehensible code in a language for which you have some hope of proficiency.

      Otherwise, when the application programmer goes away, or the company goes out of business, you can be stranded with your data in a lot of obscure (probably binary) formats that are now useless. Of course, you only discover this kind of thing after an OS upgrade or something that breaks the old application...
  • I works exacly the same as your real life desk. After a day's work you put everything in a desk and it is clean.

    but..

    Both my $HOME and my desk are a mess......
  • I have the bad habit of putting stuff I want to keep in a directory named temp. I usually keep stuff for 2 or 3 days in /tmp as well. This habit came to bite me when I installed debian which, by default, deletes stuff in /tmp/ at every reboot. I lost some important files. Rather than stop doing this, I configured debian's tmp maintenance subsystem so that stuff there is kept for 10 days. :)
  • Nothing says, "I have too much junk" than one of these [google.com] in your home's server room.
  • I have the same problem but I'm trying to improve it..

    I use Tomboy [beatniksoftware.com] to take care of my simple notes. Addresses, meetings, etc.. I eventually copy out of there and put into Evolution.

    I recently told Firefox to download everything to ~/downloads/. I make a mess out of this.

    ~/projects for anything coming from CVS or home-grown.

  • like...iTunes!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nege ( 263655 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @02:59PM (#10901235) Journal
    I struggle along with my file organization...I try to keep everything in several main folders (Music, Movies, Pictures, Code, Documents), but invariably it requires maintenance and diligence on my part to adhere to my storage policies.

    I think that an iTunes-like interface for your whole hard drive would be highly beneficial to manage the myriad files people have these days with those 200GB HDDs.

    What I am thinking about is an interface like iTunes. Back in the windows days, I would organize my mp3s like any other files - you keep separate folders for genres (or artists, or however you wanted to sort it) all under an mp3 directory. Then you use that structure to create playlists in your fav mp3 playing software.

    Fast forward to the days of iTunes - I hardly know where my mp3 files are located - I have a huge library list which is full of metadata that helps me to locate individual songs, or songs of a certain type or genre. The iTunes software takes care of storing them on the hard drive and organizing them in a way that is meaningful to itself. I have way more power and flexibility in creating my playlists since I can do smart searches through the db list of songs.

    Of course, the major drawback here is you have to now keep up with metadata. While I think some clever means of doing this can be conceived (when you purchase a song from the iTunes store, it comes with meta-data already attached), some work will always be put on the user if you expect to have some customized results.

  • What I Have != What I'd Like (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:01PM (#10901273) Homepage Journal

    So I have a few directories like ~/bin , ~/msc , ~/tmp and ~/project_abbrev .

    What I'd like though is multiple views of my data, like VFolders in Evolution, where an entirely different organizational structure could be applied to an entire directory tree.

    That way, if one view has names associated with the underlying file formats ~/pdf , ~/jpeg , ~/ppt , etc. then, another view might have ~/today , ~/yesterday , ~/mold_covered .

    Frequently, I'll have one application that I use for multiple projects. Sometimes, it's really convenient to have multiple project files for the single application all in the same place (because it's easier not to rebuild Rome from scratch).

    Some of these files could be huge. And while I know about symbolic links, those have to be created by hand.

    And, yes, even in the Google sense, having some organizational structure with Score by match and Score by Most Recent grep 'Video Card Perf' would also be nice.

  • meta information in filenames (Score:3, Interesting)

    by digitalsushi ( 137809 ) <slashdot@digitalsushi.com> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @03:18PM (#10901522) Journal
    I'm writing this as the clueful user, neither the newbie nor the guru.

    I have always had an issue with the few attributes that can be assigned to a file with a linux system. I won't bother going into my file heirarchy like everyone else has because it is very similiar. I will say that I have a 'www' folder that is available on the web. This is most frustrating!!! Why should I have to maintain a seperate tree for stuff I want online? What happens when I have yet another division I want? Files that are also on the samba network, or, files that are pornographic? Files that are recipes I want shared on Kazaa? each one splits it up more, and provides a need for duplicate files in multiple locations.

    horrible!

    i want to set meta information about the file. I want to

    chmod +web portman.jpg

    in my home directory and have it show up as a available on my website!

    I once thought I could implement this in the filenames. Each attribute could be unique and part of the filename.

    mv portman.jpg portman.web.jpg

    mv portman.web.jpg portman.samba.recipes.web.jpg

    et cetera. i never did it. maybe cause its dumb. i there was something that can do what i want to do.
  • Well, it worked for me at least, using KDE. It didn't help me manage a bajillion dot files, but it made certain I kept things in order. Nothing like having chaos stare you in the face to instill a natural desire to tidy up.

    Sad thing is I'm on OS X now and I don't know any way to do that in Aqua. I hate having shortcuts on my desktop to folders in ~

    • Sad thing is I'm on OS X now and I don't know any way to do that in Aqua.

      Try Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager, and in that go to Users and your login ID. Under there, you'll see a setting for your Home directory that you can edit. I've never tried setting it to my Desktop or changing it at all, so maybe try it on a test account in case it all goes pear-shaped. But that's a way of doing it, anyway.

  • CVS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by macdaddy ( 38372 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @04:49PM (#10902770) Homepage Journal
    I once read an article about a guy who put his entire home directory in CVS. This strikes me as a possible solution to clutter. Need a directory to work on a bunch of test images? Create a new CVS module and stuff the files in that. I like the idea although I'm not good enough with CVS to pull something like that off. I'd like to try it someday though. Does anyone have any links to articles, HOWTOs, guides, etc on using CVS or RCS to keep files and directories organized?

  • Flat and Alphabetical (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrisatslashdot ( 221127 ) <spamforchris@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @05:56PM (#10903554)
    I used to try to store everything in deep heiarchies with complex organizations, both electronic and paper files. After reading David Cole's 'Getting Things Done' I reorganized everything into a very flat structure. Everything goes into a folder with a descriptive title at the root level. This works suprisingly well, again in both the PC and the real world. I end up with lots of folders many of which have only 1 file or paper in them. But stuff is so easy to find. When finding a file/document I can usually go strait to t it. Even if I can't, I rarely have to look in more than two folders.

    Maintaining a complex heiarchy requires the user to keep a mental map of the heiarchy in mind to find stuff. Using a very flat system only requires the user to be able to use the alphabet. Using my complex heiarchy system used to make me feel organized and smart. Now my system is quite dumb but it works so much better.
    • Can you provide some example of this? I'm finding my organization of multiple folders quite hard to organize mentally. I'm doing increasinly larger projects (at school and privately) which will need more organization. Thanks!
      • Well I used to have things organized like:

        Projects
        Engineering
        Plant 1
        Widget Machine A
        Widget Machine B
        Plant 2
        Capital Projects
        New Widget Capper Line
        Downloads
        Applications
        Documents
        Misc

        and so on

        Now my system is like this
        Widget Machine A Plant 1
        Widget Machine B Plant 1
        New Widget Capper Line Plant 2
        Downloaded Applications
        Downloaded Documents
        Downloaded Misc

        and so on

        in the above examples each line is a directory/folder.

        So I may not remeber if the 'Wid
  • I use a pretty simple system where I use a temp (or sometimes a scratch) folder, and then I allocated a folder for each project. (These usually have subfolders for notes, documents, code, and other bits of information. I try to create all of my folders first and then create the files in the appropriate locations. Where useful, I'll create symbolic links from one project folder to related projects, and vice versa.

    I also have a weekly cron that throws out everything in the temp folders to keep me from fil
  • My home directory is where i store all the useless things (the important ones get files to a ZIP drive).

    Usually, i use the folloing directories:
    src ... Getting things done and compiling tarballs
    tmp ... vim backup files
    temp ... most useless stuff goes here
    download ... all the downloads that don't fit above
    x ... nameless WORN junk (write once - read never)

    All more important files get into the folders they are supposed to be in the first place (like /usr/bin /usr/share/docs).

    After years in software developm
  • It depends on your personal preference but I think sorting files according to filetype is wrong. Better to sort according to the content of the file.

    For example: a text file can be a book but so can an audio file (audio book). If you sort according to filetype they will end up in a different directory. Even if they're the same book.

    In my directory structure they're in documents\books because they're both books. I have .txt .pdf .html and audio files in there because they belong together.

    There will always
  • Like Yahoo or other web-directories do. Sort of. For example:

    ~/bin
    ~/scripts (for occasionally-used scripts not in your $PATH, so as to avoid cluttering TAB-completed executable namespace)
    ~/economics (for us Econ nerds)
    ~/code (for personal programming projects)
    ~/texts (for various textfiles. Make subdirs for categories here too, e.g. tech, lovelife, journal, etc.)
    ~/pr0n (guess... also subcategorize by vids and pics)
    ~/kismet_dumps (for wardriving)
    ~/school (or ~/work - for things related to your boss (whe
  • ~/CS for my computer science programs, ebooks etc.. ~/system for any programs or other themes I download that I haven't extracted/installed yet. ~/school for all my homework, sub-dirs by subjects ~/Music -- self-explanatory ~/blends for all my Blender [blender3d.org] files, with subdirs relevant to type of files (materials for textures, rendering for images in progres...) and most of the other stuff, well, since my windows C:\ drive is a mess with all those windows dirs anyway, I just put things randomly in it... Still boo
  • One thing I've started doing to manage my huge inbox is to create yearly archives instead of using project-specific subfolders. I figure that searching by sender in the corresponding archive is fast enough not to bother with classifying all my email.

    Now to get to the topic of this thread, I think the same idea could be applied to the file system as well. Create a very simple directory hierarchy (work, fun...) that includes a "archives" subdir.

    "archives" would contain subdirs named after the year of the fi
  • C:\ = Moon HD. System and installed programs. Nothing else.

    D:\ = Mercury HD. Random crap that I never really go through anymore - mostly stuff left over from porting and backups.

    E:\ = Mars HD. Music. Fifty-someodd gigs of music are on this drive, sorted by series/artist then album.

    F:\ = Jupiter HD. Anime stuff. Root-level directories are simple - Fansubs, Music Videos, Doujinshi, et cetera.

    G:\ = Venus HD. Installers for programs, their dependent files, and backups of map files and such for games.

    H:\ =

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