[NTLUG:Discuss] Shortcuts

[Jim Wildman]

Couple of things here.

The PATH variable is set up when you login.  It lists all the places
the shell (bash) will look for a program.  There are both system wide
PATH settings (in /etc/profile and others) and user specific PATH
settings (in ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile).  root typically has a
slightly different path than normal users, since many system level
programs are in /sbin or /usr/sbin and you have to be root to run them
anyway.

The reason why ./ (or just .) is not in the default path is because it
can open a security hole thusly...  Someone with access to your account
could add a file called 'ls' in a directory that you change to, and
then if "./" is the first element of your path, this new "ls" would be
executed instead of /bin/ls.  Which is not a good thing.

A symbolic link is a pointer to a file that already exists.  This
saves having multiple copies of the same file in different places.
Links are created using the ln command.

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Jim Wildman                                            jim at rossberry.com

On 23 Aug 2001, Patrick Parks wrote:

> On Thu, 2001-08-23 at 19:03, Fred James wrote:
>
> > Just a touch more detail:
> > In any given Linux/Unix directory there are two special files, . and ..
> > (dot, and dot dot).
> >
>
> Ok, That makes sense to me, so how would I make a file execute in any dir I am in, like when I am logged in as root, and I can type
> linuxconf from any directory that I am in and it executes? Is this called a symbolic link? Sorry to flood the list with newby questions, but I am a newby :)
>
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> |     Patrick Parks      |
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