>Maybe I don't understand something here. Is the file system "/" a partition? Also only two of the programs with links discussed Linux. But I think I'm using ext3 or is it ext2??? How do I find out?
>John

Yes. '/' is the 'root' partition, assigned to a chunk of HD. If root is the only assigned partition of the HD then all others, like /bin, /user, /var, /etc/, /dev, etc..., are just directories, even though they are often refered to as 'partitions'.

You have a file in /etc called 'fstab', or File System TABle. Mine looks like this:

/dev/hda2       /                  reiserfs     defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1       /boot              ext2         defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder  auto         ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0
/dev/cdrom      /media/cdrom       auto         ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0
devpts          /dev/pts           devpts       defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3       /home              reiserfs     defaults 1 2
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy      auto         noauto,user,sync 0 0
proc            /proc              proc         defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc1       /usr               reiserfs     defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc2       /var               reiserfs     defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc3       swap               swap         pri=42 0 0
/dev/sda4       /media/zipdrive    auto         noauto,user,sync 0 0

Any 'partition' not in fstab is merely a subdirectory of a partition that IS in fstab. All partitions and/or subdirectories begin with '/' except swap, but '/' alone is the root partition. Swap can be /swap, but if it is then it is a directory which is also the swap partion.

My root partion is ./dev/hda2
Another chunk of my primary HD is the /dev/hda1 partition and is assigned to /boot. I have a second HD, hdc, which is divided into several chunks. One chunk is hdc1 and is assigned to /usr. The partition sda4 is my Iomega Zip250 drive. The partition /dev/cdrecorder is my PlexStor 4832 CDR. The first floppy drive is always /dev/fd0 and the second is /dev/fd1.
Any partition which is of type 'auto' is one that automatically detects the file format and mounts appropriately.

There are two kinds of links: soft and hard. Here is a URL which explains the difference: http://www.linuxdoc.org/LDP/gs/node5.html See section 3.11 and following.

Your Linux system has more than one kind of file. You can determine what kinds of filesystem you have by doing "cat /proc/filesystems" from an xterm.
You will probably see ext2, minix, msdos, vfat, iso9660, nfs, reiserfs, etc... depending on your install. If you have ext3 it will be in the list. If it is more than likely one or more partitions (but not necessarily all of them) use ext3. I don't know if RH defaults to ext3, but I do know that SuSE defaults to ReiserFS setting on top of ext2.

HTH,
JLK