Android 4.0.3 File Systems

Android Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Android 4.0.3 Emulator File System Hierarchy

This section describes file system hierarchy used by the Android 4.0.3 emulator system.

On an Android system, file systems are mounted into a single file system hierarchy.

After connecting to the Android 4.0.3 emulator with the "adb shell" command, I used "cd" and "ls" shell commands to explore the file system hierarchy. Here is what I see:

/ - Base file system
 cache - Folder used as scratch pad by the system
 data - Folder for USER Data stored as a separate partition
  anr
  app - Folder for user installed application package .apk files
  dalivk-cache
  data - Folder for application data with package name as sub folder
  local
  ...
  system
 default.prop - File with default system settings
 dev - Folder of device pointers
  block - Folder of block device pointers
  ...
  null
  tty1
  tty2
  tty3
 etc - Folder for program configuration files
 init - File with initial execution code
 init.rc - File with initial configurations
 proc - Folder for running process pointers
  ...
  cpuinfo - File with current CPU information
  diskstats - File with disk statuses
  ...
 root
 sbin - Folder for binary executable codes
  adbd - File with Android Debug Bridge Daemon (adbd) executable code
 sys
 system - Folder for the operating system files - read only
  app - Folders for pre-installed application package .apk files
  bin - Folder for system binary executable codes
  build.prop - File containing configuration settings
  etc - Folder for configuration files
  framework Folder for JAR and ODEX files of Android framework
  fonts - Folder for font files
  media - Folder for media files
  xbin - Folder for binary executable files.
 sdcard - Folder for files in the removable SD Card.
 mnt - Folder for file system mount points