The Different between android folders(bin, xbin, sbin)

Question

I've noticed that I have some directories inside my android phone which look the same.

What the different between /sbin, /system/sbin, /system/bin, /system/xbin?

Answer 1

1. /system is the main Android directory for storing immutable components generated by the build of the AOSP. This includes native binaries, native libraries, framework packages, and stock apps. It’s usually mounted read-only from a separate image from the root file system, which is itself mounted from a RAM disk image.

2. Android also includes many directories commonly found in any Linux system, such as /dev, /proc, /sys, /sbin, /root, /mnt, and /etc. These directories often serve similar if not identical purposes to the ones they serve on any Linux system, although they are very often trimmed down, as is the case of /sbin and /etc, and in some cases are empty, such as /root.

3. More than 150 command-line utilities are scattered throughout Android’s root file system. /system/bin contains the majority of them, but some “extras” are in /system/xbin, and a handful are in /sbin.

4. /sbin: In Linux, this would hold binaries essential to the system administrator. In Android, it contains only ueventd and adbd.

5. /bin: All native binaries and daemons built as part of the AOSP. All modules built with BUILD_EXECUTABLE are here. The only exception is adbd, which has the LOCAL_MODULE_PATH set to /sbin and is therefore installed there instead.

6. /xbin: “Extra” binaries generated by some of the packages that are built within the AOSP but aren’t essential to the system’s operation.

Thanks goes to Mr: Karim Yaghmour , The great ; The author of Embedded Android tutorial.