Directory Traversal

I’m working on an easy machine, but I’m a complete beginner trying to build my skills. I started by running nmap scripts on this box and found out about Tomcat and the tomcat-users.xml file.

Now, I remembered directory traversal from the videos I’ve watched over the past weeks but I couldn’t for the life find out a good explanation on google on how to execute it.

To make things worse, a page I found just gives the URL for you to copy and paste in your browser without any explanation. I thought directory traversal worked by typing /…/…/…/… to go back to the level of the file you needed to access and then adding the filename but this is totally not related to the answer in the write up. =/

Is there a good resource where I can learn about this in depth?