i just installed a few proggrams with RPMs and cant find out where they got installed. im sure it something really simple.

/usr normally - depends on who you were logged on as

i had this exact problem a few days ago basically the packages can install in many places commonly /usr/local/ also /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. You can manuall set their install location but you don't REALLY need too...

The easiest way i found to locate installs either from packages or make install is first to run as su "updatedb" which create a fresh database of all files on your machine (although this runs auto every 24 hours(?) ) after updatedb you can use "locate <filename>". Once you've found the file simply call it using the full path or navigate to its install directory.

Hope that helps?

unlike windows, programs in linux are installed all over the place. Files of a particular type are located in standard places. For example library files will be locted in the lib directories and binary files will be in /bin or /sbin or /usr/local/sbin. The important thing to note is that files are installed all over the sytem not in one place like windows.

You can find out which files belong to a particular rpm package by typeing the following in a terminal

rpm -ql thePackageName

replacing thePackageName with the one of the rpm file you installed. This tells rpm to query (q) the package with name thePackageName and list (l) all the files associated with the package.

rpm -ql httpd

So this will list all the files that belong to the package httpd (ie the web server)

-jax

jax8

im just curious what lib files _actually_ are? Im found that bin and sbin are just runable files for either all users or su (sbin). Are lib files similar to dlls in windows?

yes.

lib stands for library.
bin stands for binary.
sbin stands for superuser binaries.

Like the name suggests the library files are like resources you have access to and can use when it is convinient.

You can use the same library file for a number of applications like dll files. The linux kernel has a heaps of library files that allow access to the file system such as saving files etc. If you have done any C programmming you would have included files into you program such as stdin.h or something like that. Including this file will give you access to function defined in those files.

p