[techtalk] ldconfig and solving your own problems (was last straw]

[kallicat at linuxfreemail.com]

Eric Richard Turner <turnere at cc.wwu.edu> wrote:
> Usually root has a really limited $PATH environment variable (the $PATH
> environment variable lists the directories that the shell will look in
> to find the commands and files you specify on the command line). 

Mine is really limited yes. In the morning with my brain working again,
I found ldconfig (in /sbin). Interestingly, I found out that which has
somehow been configured so that it doesn't check every directory on my
box... just the ones in my path. That is what mostly got me lost last
night. I'm used to a which that checks everywhere for executables, or at
least a bigger everywhere than root's path. I also found out (by
checking RedHat's website) that ldconfig was included in even the most
bare install, but that it was probably not run automagically in the init
or shutdown scripts.

On the whole this little adventure was a good thing. I'm going to see if
which is aliased in my .bashrc, and if it is, I'll fix the alias so it
searches a more reasonable path for what it is supposed to do. If it
isn't, I'll check the man page to learn more about it and see if I can't
find myself a command line option for what directories to look in.

I'm also going to subscribe to the WindowMaker mailing list (oh dear,
more mail, just what I need) because I found myself another interesting
problem and it's not in the FAQ...

Emily

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