Creating and organising files

Not running Starting usually ~20 s

Step 7 of 10 · lab · 12 min

Finish a project skeleton

Directories and files on top of a skeleton a colleague started, without losing their work.

Situation

A colleague started building the skeleton of a new project, inventory, in ~/project and was pulled away to something urgent. They made some of the directories and left notes in docs. You have been asked to finish the skeleton.

Task

Make it so that:

~/project has the directories bin, src, docs and logs;
~/project/logs holds an empty file app.log — the service will write its log there;
~/project/README.md holds one line, the project name, inventory;
the colleague's notes in ~/project/docs/notes.md stay as they were.

Lab · on your own

No commands are given in this lab: type them in the terminal yourself. Goals are checked on the machine after every command.

Goals

0 of 4

~/project has the directories bin, src, docs and logs — not done yet
~/project/logs holds an empty file app.log — not done yet
~/project/README.md holds one line, the project name — not done yet
The colleague's notes in ~/project/docs/notes.md are unchanged — not done yet

Ctrl+Enter

Starts the machine node1 · Ubuntu 24.04

The machine is starting

Hints

0 of 3

Report a problem

Lab goals

0 of 4

~/project has the directories bin, src, docs and logs — not done yet
~/project/logs holds an empty file app.log — not done yet
~/project/README.md holds one line, the project name — not done yet
The colleague's notes in ~/project/docs/notes.md are unchanged — not done yet

node1 Ubuntu 24.04

Lab goals

0 of 4

~/project has the directories bin, src, docs and logs — not done yet
~/project/logs holds an empty file app.log — not done yet
~/project/README.md holds one line, the project name — not done yet
The colleague's notes in ~/project/docs/notes.md are unchanged — not done yet

Files and directories · picked for this lab

mkdir — creating directories

Cheat sheet

$_ — insert into the terminal

mkdir -p a/b/c a chain of directories
mkdir -p site/{css,js,img} several at once
mkdir -m 700 ~/.secrets with permissions right away
rmdir empty remove an empty one

bash

mkdir reports                     # one directory in the current one
mkdir a b c                       # several at once
mkdir -p proj/src/api             # -p: create the WHOLE chain (proj and proj/src too)
mkdir -p logs                     # -p also doesn't fail if logs already exists (handy in scripts)
mkdir -m 700 ~/.secrets           # -m: set permissions right away (here — owner only)
mkdir -v new                      # -v: print what was created (verbose)
mkdir -p site/{css,js,img}        # bash brace expansion → site/css site/js site/img
mkdir -p data/{2024,2025}/{01,02} # combinations: data/2024/01 … data/2025/02

Main options:

Option	What it does
`-p`, `--parents`	create parent directories along the path; not an error if it already exists
`-m`, `--mode=MODE`	set permissions right at creation time (instead of umask)
`-v`, `--verbose`	print the name of every directory created

rmdir

bash

rmdir empty                       # remove an EMPTY directory
rmdir -p a/b/c                    # remove c, b, a — if each one becomes empty
rmdir dir 2>/dev/null || rm -r dir  # if not empty — remove it recursively

rmdir deliberately only removes empty directories — that's a safety net. For a non-empty one you need rm -r (irreversible, double-check the path).

`mkdir: cannot create directory 'x': File exists`

The directory already exists. In scripts, use mkdir -p — it skips silently.

`mkdir: cannot create directory 'a/b/c': No such file or directory`

The intermediate directories (a, a/b) don't exist. Add -p.

`Permission denied`

No w+x permission on the parent directory. Check ls -ld . and the permissions — see chmod-chown.

The permissions aren't what `-m` specified

-m sets the resulting directory's permissions directly (umask doesn't apply to it), but the intermediate directories created by -p still get the regular umask.

Creating and organising files

Situation

Task

Signing in is needed to start the machine

rmdir

mkdir: cannot create directory 'x': File exists

mkdir: cannot create directory 'a/b/c': No such file or directory

Permission denied

The permissions aren't what -m specified

`mkdir: cannot create directory 'x': File exists`

`mkdir: cannot create directory 'a/b/c': No such file or directory`

`Permission denied`

The permissions aren't what `-m` specified