grepping the script that starts the font server

sancho1980 · 05-16-2006, 11:11 AM

hi

i'm trying to learn about linux with this book "hands on approach" and it comes with exercises one of which is "use grep to find out which script starts the font server in the graphical run level"

my idea was to do

grep -i /etc/rc5.d "font server" S*

as all these files are normally commented but that doesn't find anything

can any one help me?

thanx

martin

tangle · 05-16-2006, 11:37 AM

You can try something like:
cat /etc/rc5.d/* | grep -i "font server"

Since /etc/rc5.d is a directory you need to include all files with *. cat will print all the files. | will pipe the output to grep. grep will display what it finds.

You can use the | with other commands too. Like ls /etc | grep fs.

sancho1980 · 05-16-2006, 11:46 AM

and if that still doesn't give me the result? does that mean the font server is not running? what's that font server, anyway?

i've read about pipes before but i'm still not very familiar with them; i find it a bit hard to understand the difference between arguments and standard input; maybe you can provide some clarity here...

thanx,

martin

tangle · 05-16-2006, 12:01 PM

If you want to know if the font server is running type ps aux | grep font.
When I run that command I get this:
# xfs: Starts the X Font Server
# description: Starts and stops the X Font Server at boot time and shutdown. \

I do not have X installed on this machine. So the font server is not installed.

A pipe just pipes (sends) the output of a command to another command. Pretty much that simple. So the output of the cat command is sent to the grep command to check for and thing that says "font server".

tangle · 05-16-2006, 12:03 PM

Forgot, I mostly use Slackware, but I believe all the startup commands are in the /etc/init.d directory. So try cat /etc/init.d/* | grep -i "font server".