i'm a new newbie. this question will make this obvious.

i have redhat 8.0, i am set to recieve an ip address from a dhcp server. where do i go to see the ip address that has been assigned to me? (e.g. ipconfig)

Only one letter different from windoze - "ifconfig"

when i try to run ifconfig from the bash shell it tells me "command not found" do i need to install this utility?

nilbog,
It is not in your path, try '/sbin/ifconfig'. The "system binaries" (/sbin or /usr/sbin) are not normally in a regular users' $PATH. Try 'echo $PATH' to see yours. FYI, It is usually in the root's path though, use 'su -' to switch to the root user. (the dash on the su command reinitialized the enviroment for root, which includes the $PATH variable.)

Another way to find commands is to use locate or find.
'locate ifconfig|more'
or
'find / -name ifconfig'
The find method actually searches the filesystem, so it takes longer. locate uses a database. Use man (manual pages) to find more info (i.e. ;man find').

I usually change the path, on my logins.

Hope that helps,
chris

Thats good advice - you could also add that to update the locate database you run "updatedb" (can be put in a cron job).

Another command for finding specific programs is whereis. "whereis ifconfig" shows "ifconfig: /sbin/ifconfig /usr/share/man/man8/ifconfig.8.gz"