I'm rubbish at Linux, so this is probably an easy question...
I want the executable here:
/root/hiphop/hiphop-php/src/hphp/hphp
To be run when I type:
hphp
How do I set that?
alias hphp=/root/hiphop/hiphop-php/src/hphp/hphp
The environment variable called PATH will tell your shell where to look for executables. If you add a line like this:
export PATH=$PATH:/root/hiphop/hiphop-php/src/hphp
to your bashrc ( assuming you're using bash )
then that directory will be scanned for executables every time you enter something on the command line.
alternately, you could add a symlink from a location already in your PATH to that file ( which is probably a better idea ).
ln -s /root/hiphop/hiphop-php/src/hphp/hphp /usr/sbin/hphp
EDIT: also it looks like this is a program you've compiled yourself via configure/make (or similar). there is probably a make target called install which you can use to copy the file to /usr/local/sbin ( or something like that ). you will need to be root though.
Related
I have a bash script which i want to call from any directory, but i don't want to add the directory it is in to PATH as it is filled with lots of other scripts which will just clutter.
The script in question manipulates environment variables, so i have to source it.
I tried creating an alias
alias aliastoscript="/path/to/script"
source aliastoscript #This does not work says no such file
I also can't copy the script itself to a different location as it depends on the directory structure and other scripts in the directory.
So i tried a symlink to a location already in path:
ln -s /path/to/script /directory/already/in/path/myscript
But this does not work either:
source myscript #says no such file exists
Can anyone suggest how i achieve this? And why does the symlink approach not work?
If it makes any difference, i am using a zsh shell on ubuntu 14.04
EDIT:
The answer given below works, but i also wanted to know why the symlink approach was not working.
Here is the sequence of commands
ln -s /path/to/script /directory/already/in/path/myscript
#Now there is a symlink called myscript in a directory which is in PATH
source myscript arg1 #This throws an error saying no such file myscript,
#but it is not supposed to happen because myscript resides in a directory which is in PATH
EDIT 2:
I just figured what i was doing wrong, the symlink i created, i had used relative paths, totally stupid of me, using absolute paths it worked like a charm.
Try replacing:
alias aliastoscript="/path/to/script"
with:
export aliastoscript="/path/to/script"
You have a $ missing in front of the variable name.
source $aliastoscript
You do not need soft link for the source. The complete file name should work. Better is
source /path/to/script
I want to add a small script to the linux PATH so I don't have to actually run it where it's physically placed on disk.
The script is quite simple is about giving apt-get access through a proxy I made it like this:
#!/bin/bash
array=( $# )
len=${#array[#]}
_args=${array[#]:1:$len}
sudo http_proxy="http://user:password#server:port" apt-get $_args
Then I saved this as apt-proxy.sh, set it to +x (chmod) and everything is working fine when I am in the directory where this file is placed.
My question is : how to add this apt-proxy to PATH so I can actually call it as if it where the real apt-get ? [from anywhere]
Looking for command line only solutions, if you know how to do by GUI its nice, but not what I am looking for.
Try this:
Save the script as apt-proxy (without the .sh extension) in some directory, like ~/bin.
Add ~/bin to your PATH, typing export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
If you need it permanently, add that last line in your ~/.bashrc. If you're using zsh, then add it to ~/.zshrc instead.
Then you can just run apt-proxy with your arguments and it will run anywhere.
Note that if you export the PATH variable in a specific window it won't update in other bash instances.
You want to define that directory to the path variable, not the actual binary e.g.
PATH=$MYDIR:$PATH
where MYDIR is defined as the directory containing your binary e.g.
PATH=/Users/username/bin:$PATH
You should put this in your startup script e.g. .bashrc such that it runs each time a shell process is invoked.
Note that order is important, and the PATH is evaluated such that if a script matching your name is found in an earlier entry in the path variable, then that's the one you'll execute. So you could name your script as apt-get and put it earlier in the path. I wouldn't do that since it's confusing. You may want to investigate shell aliases instead.
I note also that you say it works fine from your current directory. If by that you mean you have the current directory in your path (.) then that's a potential security risk. Someone could put some trojan variant of a common utility (e.g. ls) in a directory, then get you to cd to that directory and run it inadvertently.
As a final step, after following the solution form proposed by #jlhonora (https://stackoverflow.com/a/20054809/6311511), change the permissions of the files in the folder "~/bin". You can use this:
chmod -R 755 ~/bin
make an alias to the executable into the ~/.bash_profile file and then use it from anywhere or you can source the directory containing the executables you need run from anywhere and that will do the trick for you.
adding to #jlhonora
your changes in ~./bashrc or ~./zshrc won't reflect until you do
source ~./zshrc or source ./bashrc , or restart your pc
I want to make the following kind of reference:
"ls" command, for example, is universally available in most *nix environments. User can type in from anywhere to execute the scripts.
So, I write script "x". I want to make sure that from wherever the user type in x, the actual script "x" is referenced.
Thus, if I have script "x" stored in home/user/Desktop directory, I should not have to reference the script as follow:
home/user/Desktop/x
I should be able to do:
x
Thanks!
You want to add the directory to your PATH. E.g.
PATH="$PATH:/home/user/someDirectory"
You can add this line to .bash_profile to do it on startup. However, you probably shouldn't add Desktop to the path because some browsers download to there by default (though it shouldn't be executable by default).
You can also put your script in an existing directory that's already in your path such as /usr/local/bin or create a symlink there to your script's location.
cp /home/user/Desktop/x /usr/local/bin
or
mv /home/user/Desktop/x /usr/local/bin
or
ln -s /home/user/Desktop/x /usr/local/bin
Don't mean to be obnoxiously repetitive, but this is my first time answering a question, I can't reply to someone's already-good answer, and I think they are missing some important bits.
First, if you want to make sure everyone can access the script, you'll need to be sure everyone has execute permissions:
chmod a+x /path/to/script.sh
You'll also want to make sure it's in somewhere $PATH references (as the other answers mentioned):
echo $PATH # place the script in one of these directories
I would personally prefer /usr/local/bin, since that's considered the place for custom global scripts. Something the other answers didn't mention is that, if you do want to use a directory besides one in $PATH (say, /opt/myscriptfolder/) you'll want to add another PATH entry at the end of /etc/profile:
PATH="$PATH:/opt/myscriptfolder/"
By putting this in the end of /etc/profile, all users will receive this modified PATH variable on their next login.
I have a program written in C, which is named computeWeight.c and to compile it i use the following code
chaitu#ubuntu:~$ gcc -Wall -o computeWeight computeWeight.c
//to execute it:
chaitu#ubuntu:~$ ./computeWeight
Do i have any mechansim where i can directly use as mentioned below,
chaitu#ubuntu:~$ computeWeight
Should i be changing any permissions on the executable to get this?
You need to add "." to your path. Some people regard this as dangerous, though. See for instance http://www.arsc.edu/support/policy/dotinpath.html .
The $PATH variable define the places where linux would look for executables (try typing echo $PATH in a terminal). You need to put that file in one of those places. One way is to add a bin folder in your home directory, put the executable file there, and add this line (which adds the bin directory in your home folder to the search path) to your .cshrc file so that it'd be executed for every shell:
set PATH = ($PATH $HOME/bin)
With that said I don't think typing ./ is that bad.
export PATH=$PATH:.
I'm pretty new to programming for Linux environments, so I don't exactly know what to search for in order to answer this question for myself. I need to understand how applications set the shell to accept a certain command to start them. For example, you can start Firefox from the command line by executing the command: firefox.
I don't know where this is defined. Makefile? Configure script? In the source code itself?
Any resources / reading on Linux programming tidbits like these would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you.
Firefox is launched by the command "firefox" because there is an executable file in one of the folders in the $PATH environment variable called "firefox".
Are you talking about the PATH variable? It seems like you are.
In linux, you should be able to type: "echo $PATH" (without quotes) and get a ":"-separated list of locations where programs are located (like firefox).
If you need to add something to your path, you should be able to do:
export PATH=$PATH:/another/directory
In your shell (which is most likely bash)
You can also type:
which firefox
To display the location of the firefox executable.
Typically the shell is going to have an environment variable called $PATH set. This is just an ordered list of all the directories to look when somebody types in a command. As soon as it finds an executable file (by which I mean a file for which you have execute permissions, not a file ending in .exe) with the same name as whatever was typed, it will run that file. Common directories in $PATH might be /bin, /usr/local/bin, ~/bin, etc.
So, when you type 'firefox', the shell looks through all the directories in $PATH until it finds /usr/local/bin/firefox, which it then runs. To make your own programs run the same way, you'll either need to put them (or a symbolic link to them) in a directory that is likely to be in every user's path (/usr/local/bin/ is a good choice), or you'll need to get your users to add your program's directory to their $PATH.
For a more complete description, see the Wikipedia article about the $PATH variable.
As an alternative to the modification of $PATH mentioned earlier, you could also copy or link your executable in one of the directories already in your $PATH. more specifically, /usr/local/bin/ is available on most UNIX system for pretty much this purpose (installing software outside the default package management of the operating system).
It has to be in the path as everyone else mentioned, but you might also need to make it executable with something like this:
chmod +x /path/to/file
And if it's a script there's usually a shebang at the top that tells the os what to use to execute it:
#! /usr/bin/python
Often, large packages are installed in /opt with a wrapper script or link somewhere in the PATH. For example, on my system, Google Picasa is installed in /opt/google/picasa and there is a symlink at /usr/bin/picasa to /opt/google/picasa/3.0/picasa
Firefox is at /usr/bin/firefox on my system and that's a symlink to /usr/bin/firefox-3.0 which is itself a symlink to /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.11/firefox.sh - That shell file fumbles around until it finally runs /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.11/firefox (unless it finds a reason to do something else). That, finally, is a binary executable. So /usr/lib is where firefox is installed, for me.
You can use this command to find out where a program is:
type -a firefox
Then, you can find out what kind of file it is using this:
file /usr/bin/firefox
Also see the Filesystem Heirarchy Standard for more information about recommended locations for files and programs.