hello, when i in command prompt, when i type in gen-data and enter, it run's my program, but what if i try to find where this program at, are there easy way to find it instead do search, or try to search it in every path that was in my PATH variable.

thanks

type su and press enter, then enter your root password

then type in find / -name gen-data
It may take a minute, but it will be found.
You can also try gnome-search-tool and use that, if you would rather have a GUI...

"which gen-data" or "type -p gen-data" or "type -a gen-data" ...much easier than find.

"locate gen-data" is also better than find, assuming that the file is still where it was last time 'updatedb' was ran, which is normally cron'd for 06:13ish

don't hate. find works too... lol

johnyy, you may want to su into root and run updatedb before any of this. it won't hurt the machine if you don't, but man updatedb to see what the purpose is.

I like to use:

$su -
(password)
# find / -name 'filename'

I don't worry about if updatedb is current or if the thing I am looking for is in a limited pathway. Also, my computers aren't powered up at 06:13ish.

So it takes 15 seconds instead of 10. I'm ok with that.

i'd be pretty worried by a 10 second locate...
then again, a 15 second find is pretty amazing

matt@mercury:~$ time locate apachectl
/usr/sbin/apachectl
/usr/share/doc/apache/manual/programs/apachectl.html.en
/usr/share/doc/apache/manual/programs/apachectl.html.html
/usr/share/doc/apache/manual/programs/apachectl.html.ja.jis
/usr/share/man/man8/apachectl.8.gz

real 0m0.944s
user 0m0.760s
sys 0m0.010s

mercury:# time find / -name apachectl
/usr/sbin/apachectl

real 1m50.556s
user 0m0.550s
sys 0m1.410s

(apachectl is a random file i chose to locate, and i dropped the find after 2 minutes because i couldn't be bothered waiting)