# /sbin
**/sbin** holds system administration binaries: tools used to manage the machine that are typically run as root. The distinction from `/bin` is intent: `/bin` contains tools any user might need (`ls`, `cat`, `cp`), while `/sbin` contains tools for system configuration and maintenance (`mount`, `fsck`, `iptables`, `ip`, `init`). In practice many `/sbin` tools can be read and sometimes executed by non-root users; the separation is conventional rather than enforced by permissions.

```
/sbin/init          PID 1: the first process started by the kernel (or a symlink to systemd)
/sbin/mount         mount filesystems
/sbin/umount        unmount filesystems
/sbin/fsck          check and repair filesystems
/sbin/mkfs          create a filesystem on a block device
/sbin/ip            configure network interfaces, routes, tunnels
/sbin/iptables      configure the kernel packet filter (legacy; nftables is the successor)
/sbin/fdisk         partition table editor
/sbin/modprobe      load kernel modules and their dependencies
/sbin/shutdown      halt or reboot the system cleanly
```

Like `/bin` and `/lib`, `/sbin` is a symbolic link to `/usr/sbin` on distributions that have adopted the merged `/usr` layout. On such systems `ls -la /sbin` shows `sbin -> usr/sbin`.