Red Hat NETSCAPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 6.0 - CUSTOMIZATION User Manual download pdf (Page 269)

17.2 Locating Files and Directories 257

Quite a few “shortcuts” bash uses, aren’tthere?

Each one of these helps bash customize the environment for you.

Among the most important environment variables is the PATH environment variable – which deﬁnes

what is known as the default path.

The PATH environment variable for our account billy might look something like this:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/billy/bin

It looks crowded, but the PATH statement is a great signpost, which points to where programs can be

found.

Tip: Remember the reference in the previous chapter to the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy

Standard)? The PATH statement is set according to that standard, and programs are

installed in directories in accordance with the FHS as well. The end result is that the

PATH statement will enable bash to automatically ﬁnd nearly any program, assuming it

has been installed in accordance with the FHS.

17.2 Locating Files and Directories

There will be times when we know a ﬁle or directory exists but we won’t know where to ﬁnd it.

Searching for a ﬁle or directory can be made much easier with the locate command.

With locate,we’ll see every related ﬁle or directory which matches our search criterion. Let’ssay

we want to search for all ﬁles related to the finger command.

locate finger

The locate command uses a database to check for ﬁles and directories which match the string

finger.

Tip: To learn more about locate,readthelocate man page by typing man locate

at a shell prompt.

It’s a handy command which works very quickly – as long as the database is up to date. That database

is automatically updated on a nightly basis, from cron.What’s cron?It’s a small program that runs

in the background, performing various tasks – such as updating the locate database – at regularly

scheduled intervals.

1 2 ... 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 ... 299 300

No comments

Red Hat NETSCAPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 6.0 - CUSTOMIZATION User Manual Page 269