> Exactly what I do. But then how do I access these programs that are
> documented as running from the desktop? Like this software manager
> people are talking about.
Well, I don't run 8.0 here, and having checked my 8.0 repository of RPMs
(I downloaded 8.0 but so far haven't gotten around to doing an install/
upgrade) I don't see any software manager. My guess it's in another
ftp archive and not "part" of Mandrake. 7.2 has MandrakeUpdate (and the
RPM is actually called MandrakeUpdate-7.2.i586.rpm, so that is fortunate).
Some of this is osmosis. You might have heard of a particular name of a
program and you can use 'rpm -qa | grep programname' to tell whether or
not such program has been installed. But if all the menu says is "Manage
Programs" (or what have you) it's kind of hard to see (without delving into
the menu entries themselves, of course, which isn't helpful in your case
because you're not running that particular desktop in the first place) what
the program is actually called. After a while, for instance, you might find
out that Bastille does something useful, but there's nothing even in the
program name that really triggers an 'aha - that's for building doghouses!'
experience :) or what have you. So, some of this is just learned by
osmosis, having been exposed to it for sometime.
Is there a systematic way, using the tools available on the command
line to get this information? Well, I'd say a qualified yes.
'apropos' is useful to bring up executables and other items that fit a
general description. For instance, 'apropos update' gives:
gnc-prices (1) - update stock prices from online sources for gnucash
Tcl_LinkVar [Tcl_UpdateLinkedVar] (3) - link Tcl variable to C variable
Tcl_UnlinkVar [Tcl_UpdateLinkedVar] (3) - link Tcl variable to C variable
Tcl_UpdateLinkedVar (3) - link Tcl variable to C variable
Tcl_UpdateLinkedVar [LinkVar] (3) - link Tcl variable to C variable
Tcl_UpdateLinkedVar [Tcl_LinkVar] (3) - link Tcl variable to C variable
Tcl_UpdateLinkedVar [Tcl_UnlinkVar] (3) - link Tcl variable to C variable
bdflush [update] (8) - kernel daemon to flush dirty buffers back to disk
chkconfig (8) - updates and queries runlevel information for system
services
chpasswd (8) - update password file in batch
dbmmanage (1) - Create and update user authentication files in DBM format
doupdate (3x) - refresh curses windows and lines
But that gives man pages as well as executables so it may complicate things.
And it assumes that the program is installed, has a manual page, and that
someone has recently run the command that builds / updates the apropos
database.
You'll need to experiment, but you can use 'rpm' to do some of this
stuff - for instance, a bit of shell to check the descriptions of various
(installed) rpm's would look like:
# (for i in `rpm -qa`
do
rpm -qi $i
done ) | grep -5 update
The braces take the whole output of al those separate rpm -qi's and
run it through a pipe to grep. rpm -qi is useless if the package isn't
installed - then it just spits out 'package such & such is not installed'
and quits. And, you can't simply query a set of RPMs say on the CD -
because the *.i586.rpm suffix confuses rpm, since package names are not
the same as the filenames that denote them.
I'm hoping others will chime in with better/different ways of doing this.
> Laura (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
> (617) 661-8097 fax: (801) 365-6574
> 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
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David E. Fox Thanks for letting me
[EMAIL PROTECTED] change magnetic patterns
[EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk.
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