October 2002
Intermediate to advanced
1154 pages
49h 36m
English
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Chapter 40. Software Installation
/usr/bin and Other Software Directories
The location for certain types of installed files is very important. For instance, on many Unix systems, binary files accessible by users are located in the subdirectory /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin . If the applications aren’t in these places, they may not be in the PATH environment variable and not easily accessible from the command line.
On my FreeBSD system, I’ve installed a utility called dos2unix
, a file-formatting application that
converts DOS newline character combinations to the
Unix newline character. I used the FreeBSD Ports
system to install the application, which automatically placed the program in my
application directory, in my case /usr/local/bin. When I
want to execute the application, I can run it from the command line without
having to provide the location of the file:
dos2unix some.txt > new.txt
This command reformats the newline character of the contents of some.txt, converting DOS linebreaks to Unix ones.
The /usr/bin subdirectory differs from the /bin directory located directly off of the main root directory. The /bin directory has basic installed binaries built into the Unix operating system, with commands such as cd to change directory and so on. When you install an optional software application, it should not install software in the top-level binary subdirectory, but in /usr/bin, instead.
According to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), subdirectories (Linux- and BSD-specific) ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.