find filename after an install

sporkit · 06-14-2004, 04:09 PM

heres something thats always bothered me about linux. i often times find myself looking for the command name that runs the program i just installed. for example linneighborhood uses the command LinNeighborhood to launch its program. i tried a few different things till i just happened to stumble upon it.

im wondering if there is like some type of standard place to find instructions for launching an app after i install it. i always read threw the README files and install files. but often its just skipped.

any suggestions?

bulliver · 06-14-2004, 05:22 PM

Well, one problem is that your locate DB only gets updated once per day (usually) so you can't use 'locate' to find it right away. You can use 'find' but it will take a very long time because it looks at every file on your system.

If you keep in mind that all executables go into a /{s}bin directory, you can try something like:

Code:

APP="program_name"; for i in /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin ; do ls $i/*$APP*; done

where you replace "program_name" with what you just installed. This is not fool proof however, as you may need to change "program_name" a few times with differrent capitalizations etc...

HTH

sporkit · 06-14-2004, 07:10 PM

hmm, well thats interesting. i know ive asked a few linux uesrs at my school and they usually just guess too. i figured something this basic would be easy to find. too bad. :/

bulliver · 06-14-2004, 10:32 PM

Well, usually a guess will work, in probably 90% of software packages, if it's called "foobarbaz-3.14.tar.gz" the name to start the app is "foobarbaz" but not always.

slakmagik · 06-15-2004, 12:20 AM

Just a note, of course, that you can run 'updatedb' (as root) whenever you'd like.

And, depending on your package management system, you can probably query what was installed and look for whatever ended up in a bin directory. Like if I compile 'xlockmore' on Slack and install it with checkinstall:

Code:

~
1017>> cdp                                                                     

/var/log/packages
1018>> grep bin xlockmore-5.10-i386-1                                          
usr/local/bin/
usr/local/bin/xlock
usr/local/bin/xmlock

In that case, guessing 'xlockmore' would be wrong but that or just looking in the source directory and seeing what executables were produced by the compile process and/or looking at the makefile in the 'install' section to see what was sent where would do. I'm sure rpms have some kind of query option.

I was thinking this was different somehow when I started writing this post but I guess it's just a variation of what bulliver said.