Home Directory

Your home directory is your own, private directory on the Uberspace host. It is a directory with the same name as your user account, stored within the /home directory. So if your Uberspace account is named isabell, you home directory is /home/isabell.

What Should I Put Here?

The general rule is: Anything you don’t want anyone else to see, especially any files you don’t want to be accessible by the web server.

Default Files and Folders

~/.bash*

The .bash_profile, .bashrc and .bash_logout files are the configuration, startup and logout scripts for the Bash Shell. .bash_profile is a script that is executed when you log in via ssh and will include .bashrc. If you want to run any commands automatically whenever you log in, add them to .bash_profile. .bash_logout is executed when you log out. After your first login, .bash_history will be added automatically and logs all you shell commands so you can re-run them later.

In many contexts, the tilde ~ can be used as a placeholder for your home directory.

~/bin

Within the bin directory executables installed by custom tools or written by yourself can be stored. They can then be called like normal commands.

~/etc

The etc folder is reserved for configuration files of any kind:

  • etc/certificates shows your certificate files for https.

  • etc/php.d contains your custom configuration files for your php.

  • etc/services.d contains the configuration files for your services.

  • etc/userfacts shows your userfacts where we store specific Uberspace configurations.

~/html

html is a symbolic link to your documentroot. Anything in there is accessible to the web server, and thus to the public.

~/logs

A directory to store log files.

~/Maildir

This is the mailbox for your system mail username@uber.space. By default this email address just forwards to your personal registration mail address and you dont need ~/Maildir.

~/.maillimit

We will automatically add files here when using sendmail to ratelimit the email sending.

~/.my.cnf

This is your mysql settings file.

~/users

Your additional mailboxes. This folder only exists if you set up mailboxes with uberspace mail user add.

~/.passwd.cdb

The configuration db (binary) for your mailboxes, this will be added with your first additional mailboxes and controlled by the mail system.

~/.qmail

The .qmail file controls your username@uber.space system mailaddress and forwards mails to the registration mailaddress.

~/.qmail-*

.qmail-* files (“dotqmail files”) are used to add email aliases or forwarding addresses. Instead of using those file you should use mailboxes.

~/.spamfolder

Despite the historical name, this file includes scripts not only to handle incoming spam but also to use SIEVE and plussed mailaddresses etc.

~/.ssh

The .ssh directory contains your ssh configuration.

~/tmp

A directory for temporary files.

~/.zshrc

The configuration file for the Z Shell.