this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Best practices for navigating file structure via terminal? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Father_Redbeard@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I've just started my Linux journey earlier this year. As a goal to learn how to self-host applications and services that will allow me to take back some control of my data. Immich instead of Google Photos, for example.

I have a local server running Unraid and 22 docker containers now. And then a VPS (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) running two apps. I've learned a ton but one thing I can't seem to wrap my brain around is navigation through the file structure using only terminal. My crutch has been to open a SFTP session in Cyberduck to the same device I'm SSH'd to and try to figure things out that way. I know enough to change directories, make directories, using Tree to show the file structure at different levels of depth. But I feel like I'm missing some efficient way to find my way to files and folders I need to get to. Or are y'all just memorizing it and know where everything is by now?

I come from a Windows background and even then I sometimes catch myself checking via explorer where a directory is instead of using CMD or PowerShell to find it.

I'd love to hear any tips or tricks!

EDIT: I've been using Termius because they have a great Android client, but I wasn't about to pay $5/mo for sync. Especially to sync to someone else's cloud. Which led me to Tabby, which I understand has quite a large footprint resource-wise. But I guess I either don't know enough yet to be mad about it or it hasn't impacted any of my systems negatively yet. No Android client though, but you can bring your own sync solution and it has a handy little shortcut to SFTP to the current directory you're in. Between that and stuff like ranger, it's made it so much easier to learn my way around!

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[–] bahmanm@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

That's a good question 💯 In my case too, it took me some time (read years 😂) to figure out what I'm comfortable w/.

I can think of 3 major ways that you can navigate the filesystem while being able to drop to a shell when you need it:

  • If you're familiar w/ Emacs, you can either:
    • Use dired and tramp on your machine to access/navigate the target machine.
    • Install Emacs (emacs-nox) on the target machine, SSH and then run emacs-nox and voila! No need for tramp in this scenario.
  • Use Midnight Commander (mc) which offers a TUI pretty much like Norton Commander (nc) from the days of yore.
  • Get used to the semi-standard structure of the file system and just use plain Bash (cd, pushd & popd) to move around. That is
    • Understand what usually goes into common directories (like /usr/share or /opt) and try to follow the same pattern when rolling your own software installations.
    • Learn how to use your distro's package manager to query packages and find out where things, like configurations and docs, are stored. Something as simple as rpm -q --list is what you usually need.

HTH