[lug] Ethereal - installing problems

[John Karns]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005, Trent Turner wrote:

> I have started to figure out that stuff gets stuck in /usr/sbin, so I'm
> not as dumb as I think sometimes!

You might want to seek out some reading material for Linux newbies.  The 
subject was recently discussed on this list, so you could have a look at 
the list archive (believe it was in December).  Most system executables go 
in one of the "bin" directories.  /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, or /usr/sbin. 
The "sbin" dirs are usually limited to root access, thus contain 
executables which are considered inappropriate or risky for ordinary 
users.  The convention is not to have the "sbin" dirs appear in the PATH 
of ordinary users.  Many distros also create a "bin" as a subdir in each 
users home directory, as a convenient place to put favorite scripts.

One utility which can help to familiarize one with the filesystem layout 
is the (Norton Commander inspired) midnight commander (mc) utility.

The default config for many distros includes having "updatedb" run every 
day or week.  The utility builds a catalog of files on the system, which 
is rapidly searchable via "locate".  You may have found what you were 
looking for by doing something like "locate ethereal | grep bin", which 
would have turned up tethereal in the /usr/sbin directory.  "man locate" 
for details.

-- 
John Karns