HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Overview

server (and if the home directory location is left at its
default), the home (login) directory for Thomas will be
/home/thomas.
/opt The /opt directory contains application software and other
system components of the HP-UX 11i operating system that
are not considered to be part of the minimum-level
installation needed for a viable system.
/sbin
Contains statically linked versions of critical programs
needed at boot time or when important shared libraries
have become corrupted. /sbin is available when the system
is not in multiuser mode and before the /usr file system
has been mounted.
/stand The /stand directory is part of the root file system (the
very first file system that is mounted during the system
startup sequence). /stand is a special directory that is used
by the boot loader to read the kernel file from disk and start
it running.
/tmp The /tmp directory is a temporary scratch directory,
particularly used before the file system mounted at /var
is available during system startup.
Some installations delete the contents of /tmp at every boot;
others choose to manually maintain /tmp. Either way, do
not store files in /tmp for long periods of time that would
be detrimental to lose. See also /var/tmp.
/usr
Contains many HP-UX resources that are typically not
needed to boot the system.
The files in the / and /usr directories are intended to be
for read-only use so that these directories can, if necessary,
be mounted from a network resource in read-only mode.
When HP-UX components and applications need to update
files, such as log files, those files should be placed in a
writable file system such as /var.
/usr/bin
Contains dynamically linked non-essential commands and
programs used by most users once the system is in
multiuser mode. The commands and programs in /usr/
bin are not needed in order to boot the system. These
commands are available only when the file system that
contains them is mounted.
/usr/lib Contains shared libraries used by the binaries in /usr/
bin.
The HP-UX Directory Structure 47