aliases, forward.map, and ndomain.map are typically softlinks to some other common directory such as HT.STD. Also syslog.conf and ttys. You can create machine classifications, which I call 'HT.XXX' directories, to hold common files for a particular functional machine class. total 8 drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 Jan 26 10:56 . drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 512 Jan 26 10:58 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Jan 26 10:56 CVS lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 17 Jan 25 10:27 aliases -> ../HT.STD/aliases lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 21 Jan 25 10:27 forward.map -> ../HT.STD/forward.map -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 263 Jan 24 18:27 fstab -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 750 Jan 24 18:29 ipfw.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 100 Jan 24 18:35 motd lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 21 Jan 25 10:27 ndomain.map -> ../HT.STD/ndomain.map -rw------- 1 root wheel 464 Jan 25 13:53 rc.conf.local -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 283 Jan 24 18:33 resolv.conf lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 21 Feb 9 01:09 syslog.conf -> ../HT.STD/syslog.conf lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 14 Feb 9 01:08 ttys -> ../HT.STD/ttys