Sorry for the long winded reply, but this is pretty important security stuff.
It is neither simple nor strange. I deduce that you are running xwp as root.
You should _not_ run programs as root, you should do only system administration
as root. Running arbitrary programs as root opens you up to trojan horse
programs: programs that can do all sorts of bad things as root but cannot do
nearly as much damage as an ordinary user. It also opens you up to "oopses" --
like where you ment to type "rm -rf a*" in the root directory and you instead
typed "rm -rf *" :-(. Root can do a _lot_ of damage inadvertantly.
The reason I deduce you are running as root is because ./xwp means "run xwp that
is in the current directory." Root rarely (and should _never_) have "." in the
path (echo $PATH) because it opens up major security holes -- someone could
leave a trojan horse program "ls" in their personal directory and you, as root,
may be in that directory wondering what is in it. If you type "ls" and your
path includes "." before "/bin" ("/usr/bin"?), you will execute the trojan horse
"ls" rather than the intended "ls". As an aside, I'm harping on trojan horses,
but other programs exist that could be normally innocent and not malicious but
could cause unintended side effects when run by an unsuspecting sysadmin as
root.
OK, now that I got that off my chest, you probably are running xwp as a normal
user and am wondering why I'm lecturing you :-). If you are running as a normal
user, the solution is also simple: 1) continue to use ./xwp. 2) Put "." in your
path. 3) Put xwp in a directory in your path (/usr/local/bin is a good place to
put locally installed programs that didn't come with your distribution). If you
are running an unintended copy of xwp (although I suspect not), you are picking
a xwp from a directory in your path that is before the intended directory. If
this is the case, type "which xwp" and it will tell you the offending path.
gvb
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject: Re: Wordperfect for Linux
Author: "Leon Wood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 12/20/98 10:57 PM
-----Original Message-----
From: marvin stodolsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: December 20, 1998 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: Wordperfect for Linux
>Open Wordperfect with the xwp in wpbin, not wplib.
Thanks for the help. I found out what the trick is on the Corel news
server. You have to type ./xwp, not xwp. A simple but strange annoyance.
Leon
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Subject: Re: Wordperfect for Linux
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