Midnight Commander: where to open

grautu · 04-24-2007, 04:53 AM

Hi!
The Midnight Commander opens by default at /home/<user_name>/ as a working directory. Could anybody please teach me how to set it in order to open the root directory when launching? I was not able to get this setting neither by its control panel nor by searching throughout the file /home/<user_name>/.mc/ini (while a file such as /etc/mc/mc.ini does not exist at all in my system). Also it was of no help to search within /etc/bash.bashrc while a file /home/<user_name>/.bashrc does not exist.
Thanks in advance!

slakmagik · 04-24-2007, 05:03 AM

you can create a .bashrc which aliases mc to 'mc / /' if you want. May have side-effects, I dunno. mc usually remembers the last working directory in the left pane, though - and there shouldn't be much to do in /.

b0uncer · 04-24-2007, 05:04 AM

At least the file .bashrc can be created, if it doesn't exist, with

Code:

touch .bashrc

if it's not used, it might not exist. Simply create a new, empty file with the above command and it's there

but I don't think it has much to do with midnight commander..

Likewise you can create a mc.ini file with a touch command or by copying an "example" file from somewhere. It seems to me that there are these files on your system (or should be; quoted from http://www.chm.tu-dresden.de/edv/mc/...ual1.html#56):

Quote:

@prefix@/lib/mc.hlp
The help file for the program.
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ext
The default system-wide extensions file.
~/.mc/ext
User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration file. They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ini
The default system-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used only if the user lacks his own ~/.mc/ini file.
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.lib
Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this file are global to any Midnight Commander, it is useful to define site-global terminal settings.
~/.mc/ini
User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.hint
This file contains the hints (cookies) displayed by the program.
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.menu
This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
~/.mc/menu
User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used instead of the system-wide applications menu.
~/.mc/tree
The directory list for the directory tree and tree view features. Each line is one entry. The lines starting with a slash are full directory names. The lines starting with a number have that many characters equal to the previous directory. If you want you may create this file by giving the command

find / -type d -print | sort < ~/.mc/tree

Normally there is no sense in doing it because the Midnight Commander automatically updates this file for you.
./.mc.menu
Local user-defined menu. If this file is present it is used instead of the home or system-wide applications menu.

The @prefix@ depends on your system. It can be nothing or it can be /usr/ for example; in the first case the paths would be like /lib/mc/mc.hint, in the second case /usr/lib/mc/mc.hint etc..got it? So, if you can't find your files under /usr/lib/, try /lib or some others

Read the system-wide config files trough, if there are some options that you find useful. I didn't find an exact configration parameter to set the start directory, but if it exists, it's either there or mentioned in the manpage:

Code:

man mc

loginz · 04-19-2013, 12:42 AM

Hi! If it still interest for anyone i have solve this problem by standart mc resourses.
There is a section of options in my panels.ini file in .config/mc directory that called [Dirs]. There is two options in it:

Code:

[Dirs]
other_dir=/home/grandma/games
current_is_left=false

They will help you as they have to me)