Being a genuine newbie (defecting from MS) I have five basic questions:Don't be that afraid to carry out functions as root. Most prepackaged apps (RPM's and the like) infact expect the installer to be root. The suggestions against using root as the default login are simply to reduce the chance of deleting or altering critical files by accident. If you are concerned, login as root only when installing :-)1) do I need root rights to install programs? I suppose that it depends on
the path of installation - but I am unsure as to how to specify them. Most
programs when installed seem to "choose" their paths. I was told that it is
dangerous to log on as root - hence I would like to find a way to make ALL
my installations logged as a user and not as a root.
On the other hand, there ARE apps which can be installed happily as a standard user. Star Office, will allow this, as will many other apps. The only caveat is that you will have to place the files in a location that the user has write access to...
ls -la|more will display the file permissions of any directory your user has access to. It will display something akin to this:
2) how can I check the rights of a user?
-rw-r--r-- 1 nlilly grounlil 607 Mar 8 17:32 directions.txtThe string of letters and dashes provides the information you seek. For example: -rw-r--r-- 1 nlilly grounlil 607 Mar 8 17:32 directions.txt
drwx------ 2 nlilly grounlil 1024 Jan 26 16:12 diskhog
drwxr-xr-x 3 nlilly nlilly 1024 Mar 26 2000 djpim-1.02
drwxr-xr-x 2 nlilly grounlil 1024 Jan 20 01:35 england
drwxr-xr-x 4 nlilly nlilly 1024 May 25 2000 gossip
-rw-r--r-- 1 nlilly grounlil 104095 Feb 9 10:57 libstdc++-2.95.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
drwx------ 2 nlilly nlilly 1024 Apr 27 2000 mail
says that the owner nlilly has rw- (read and write but not execute) permissions, groundlil has r-- (only read) and everyone else has r--. Form more information on this read the ls manual (type "man ls" at a command prompt).
type "env|more" at a command prompt.
3) how do I check the status of a variable? for example, I can set
"history=220" - but do I check the status of history
That depends. If the app was installed by using an RPM, then as root, typing "rpm -e <the rpm name>" will remove it. If the file was directly compiled and installed, then refer to the config file of the src. Poring through it will generally tell you what was installed and where.
4)how do you do an "uninstall" of an installed software. How do I know
where all the files were installed?
"./" is what is called a relative reference referring to the directory that the prompt is in.
last question:
some programs are started by the command ./nameoftheprogram
Applications, when lauched, must be explicitly identified. If the app is found in a directory that is already in your user's search path (for example the /usr/bin directory ) then just typing the name of the app will launch it. If, however, the app is in some other location (for example the home directory of the user) then you have to provide the path to the app. There are 2 ways to do this: absolute referencing and relative referencing. Absolute referencing states the path to the app from the root of the system (eg. "/home/toulon/.august/August" ). Relative references only describe the path from the directory that the command prompt presently resides in. If, for example, the command terminal window has just been opened, the command prompt will reside in the home directory of the user. If the app to be launched also can be found there, then the relative path would be "./<the app name>"
what does this mean? were can I find help on the ./ command?
many thanks!
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