Introduction
	Everything on your VPS — programs, configuration, your web site, your mail — is a file somewhere in a single tree rooted at / (the root directory). There is no concept of separate drive letters as on Windows; external storage, if any, is mounted as a directory within this same tree. Your own files live under your home directory, written ~. This page is an orientation to that tree: where things live, how to move around, and how file ownership and permissions work. It applies to both FreeBSD 15 and Rocky Linux 10, with the differences between the two noted inline. For everyday commands and shell customization, see The Unix Shell.
	A Tour of the Top-Level Directories
	The single most important habit to build concerns where configuration lives, and this is the one place the two systems differ in spirit: On FreeBSD 15: software the system ships with configures itself under /etc, while software you add with pkg configures itself under /usr/local/etc. When this documentation says “edit Apache’s configuration,” it means a file under /usr/local/etc/apache24/, not /etc. On Rocky Linux 10: configuration for the base system and for anything you add with dnf alike lives under /etc — there is no separate /usr/local/etc tree to remember. Apache’s configuration is under /etc/httpd/. The major directories under / on a FreeBSD 15 VPS:  Path   Contains   /bin, /sbin   Essential commands needed even in single-user mode   /etc   Configuration for the FreeBSD base system (e.g. /etc/rc.conf, /etc/ssh/sshd_config)   /usr   The bulk of the base system: user commands (/usr/bin), manual pages (/usr/share/man)…   /usr/local   …everything you install yourself with pkg, including its own etc, bin, and www subdirectories   /usr/local/etc   Configuration for installed packages (Apache, Sendmail, Dovecot, Webmin, etc.)   /usr/local/www   Default document roots for installed web servers   /var   Frequently-changing data: logs (/var/log), mail queues (/var/spool), and more   /home (a link to /usr/home)   Personal directories for ordinary user accounts   /root   The root account’s home directory   /tmp   Temporary files, cleared periodically  And on a Rocky Linux 10 VPS:  Path   Contains   /bin, /sbin   Essential commands. On Rocky Linux these are symbolic links into /usr/bin and /usr/sbin (the “usr merge”)   /etc   Configuration for the whole system — both the base OS and software you install with dnf (e.g. /etc/ssh/sshd_config, /etc/httpd/)   /usr   The bulk of the installed system: programs (/usr/bin, /usr/sbin), libraries (/usr/lib64), and shared data (/usr/share/man)   /usr/local   Software you install by hand, outside dnf — empty on a fresh system; dnf packages never use it   /var   Frequently-changing data: logs (/var/log), the mail spool (/var/spool/mail), and web content (/var/www)   /var/www/html   Apache’s default document root — files here are served at https://example.com/   /home   Personal directories for ordinary user accounts (often its own LVM volume)   /root   The root account’s home directory   /tmp   Temporary files, cleared on a schedule and on reboot   /opt, /srv   Optional add-on software, and site-specific service data, respectively
	Navigating the File System
	A handful of commands cover most day-to-day navigation. Only the example path differs between the two systems — /usr/local/etc on FreeBSD, /etc/httpd on Rocky Linux: $ pwd # print working (current) directory $ cd /usr/local/etc # change directory (on Rocky Linux: cd /etc/httpd) $ cd ~ # go to your home directory $ cd .. # go up one level $ ls # list files in the current directory $ ls -la # list all files, including hidden ones, with details Filenames are case-sensitive on both systems (Index.html and index.html are different files), can contain almost any character, and traditionally avoid spaces — if you must use one, either quote the whole name ("my file.txt") or escape the space (my\ file.txt). A leading dot marks a hidden file or directory — for example, .ssh in your home directory holds your SSH keys and is hidden from a plain ls to reduce clutter, not for security (use ls -a to see it).
	File Ownership and Permissions
	Run ls -l in any directory and you will see output like this: $ ls -l -rw-r--r-- 1 youruser youruser 1024 Jun 9 14:02 index.html drwxr-xr-x 2 youruser youruser 512 Jun 9 14:01 images -rwxr-xr-x 1 youruser youruser 256 Jun 8 09:11 backup.sh The first column encodes the file’s type and permissions as ten characters. The first character is - for a regular file, d for a directory, or l for a symbolic link. The next nine are three groups of three — permissions for the owner, the group, and everyone else — each being r (read), w (write), and x (execute), or - if that permission is not granted. So -rw-r--r-- is a regular file the owner can read and write and everyone else can only read; drwxr-xr-x is a directory the owner can read, write, and enter, and everyone else can read and enter but not modify. The third and fourth columns are the file’s owner and group. The web server reads (and, for upload directories, writes) your site’s files, so those files often need to be owned by or readable by the account it runs as: on FreeBSD 15 that is the www user, and on Rocky Linux 10 it is the apache user and group. Rocky Linux note: you will see a trailing . after the nine permission characters (for example -rw-r--r--.). That dot signals that the file carries an SELinux security context; a + in its place would mean a POSIX access-control list (ACL) is set. Ordinary permissions still work exactly as described — the dot is just telling you SELinux is also in the picture.
	Changing Permissions and Ownership
	You change permissions with chmod and ownership with chown (the latter is root only): $ chmod 644 index.html # owner: read/write; group & others: read $ chmod 755 backup.sh # owner: read/write/execute; group & others: read/execute $ chmod -R 755 images/ # apply recursively to a directory and its contents # chown youruser:youruser file.txt # change owner and group (root only) The numeric form of chmod adds up read (4), write (2), and execute (1) for each of owner / group / other. 644 is therefore “owner can read and write (4+2=6), everyone else can only read (4)” — the standard permission for a web page. 755 is the equivalent for something that needs to be executable: a script, or a directory you need to be able to enter. TIP: A directory needs its execute bit set for anyone to cd into it or reach files inside it by name, even if those files are themselves readable. If a web page exists but visitors get “Forbidden,” check the permissions on every directory in its path, not just the file. On Rocky Linux, also check the file’s SELinux context — a second, independent reason Apache can be denied access to a file whose ordinary permissions look correct.
	Where Your Web Files Go
	The directory Apache serves your site from — its document root — lives under /usr/local/www on FreeBSD 15 and at /var/www/html on Rocky Linux 10. The usual permission pattern for web content is directories 755 and files 644, owned by you and readable by the web-server account above. The Apache page shows the exact chown and find commands for setting this, hosting multiple domains places each site in its own directory, and your access and error logs live under /var/log.
	Documentation
	The layout above is documented on the server itself: man hier describes the file-system hierarchy, and every command has its own manual page — man ls, man chmod, man chown. The same pages are published online at www.gsp.com/support/man/; on the VPS, man <command> is always the authoritative copy for the exact version you have installed.