acroread command giving error

iamjayanth · 10-31-2008, 07:21 AM

Hi,

My acroread command is giving the following error.

ERROR: Cannot find installation directory.

When i look in the /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/ directory an exicutable file named acroread is there.
When I type ./acroread from that directory it is working. What can i do so that I can type acroread command from anywhere and run acrobat reader. Can i use any aliases.

thanking you,

colucix · 10-31-2008, 07:24 AM

It looks like the acroread command/link does not point to the correct executable. Try the command

Code:

type acroread

to find it out.

iamjayanth · 10-31-2008, 07:29 AM

When I give type acroread following line is displayed

acroread is hashed (/sbin/acroread)

what that means?

Thanks for the quick replay

pixellany · 10-31-2008, 07:33 AM

Is /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin in your PATH?

The error message, however, implies that the "acroread" you are running is a script that points to the acroread binary. Do this to find out what is where:

find / -name acroread

iamjayanth · 10-31-2008, 07:51 AM

When I type

echo $PATH

The following lines are displayed.
/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/arm/2.95.3/bin:/usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin

then i checked my /usr/bin directory I have an exicutable file there named acroread. When I type ./acroread there it also gives the same error.

ERROR: Cannot find installation directory.

The path to the acroread exicutable file I mentioned earlier is in the PATH variable . But still my acroread commands are not working.

colucix · 10-31-2008, 08:36 AM

Usually the acroread executable is the one you mentioned in your first post: /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/acroread. Under the directory /usr/bin you have a link to the executable, since /usr/bin is usually in every user's path:

Code:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/acroread 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 Oct 13 09:53 /usr/bin/acroread -> /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/bin/acroread

Anyway, for some reason you have another link or executable under the /sbin directory, which is named acroread. This will be executed, due to the fact that /sbin is the first encountered in the PATH environment variable, before /usr/bin. Indeed the shell looks for commands in the directories specified in $PATH following the same order: the first executable encountered is the one actually executed.

In short, you have to find out where /sbin/acroread comes from, what is it and eventually delete it. Or create an alias to force the execution of /usr/bin/acroread:

Code:

alias acroread='/usr/bin/acroread'