Fedora Core 5 Java
Nigel Henry
cave.dnb at tiscali.fr
Thu Jun 29 21:53:54 UTC 2006
On Thursday 29 June 2006 19:53, Jeanette Russo wrote:
> Right, you need to follow the directions on the Sun site for
> installation of the java plugin.
>
> http://www.java.com/en/download/help/5000010500.xml#rpm
>
> I was wondering what a symbolic link is and how you make one?
Hi Jeanette. Re symbolic links, I'll give you an example. Ihave Gkrellm
installed ,which is a GUI system monitor, CPU useage, network traffic, and so
on. There is a plugin available to display the IP address of your machine, so
I install it, but I dont see the IP address. After a bit of conversation on
the mailing list I see that I need to create a symbolic link to the binary
that the plugin needs to use to display the IP address.
The plugin is looking for a binary named "ip" which happens on Fedora Core to
be in /sbin. It is looking in /bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin, but can't
find it, so gives up.
The "ln" (link) program creates a way for the plugin to find the binary it's
looking for. (see, man ln, but it's not too helpfull)
For my example open the Konsole (in KDE) su to root, and type ln -s . "ln" is
the link program, and the "-s" is to create a symbolic link. You now have to
add 2 path's. the first one is the path you want to link to, and the second
is the path of the link.
This is how it is for creating the symbolic link so that my Gkrellm plugin can
find the "ip" binary.
ln -s /sbin/ip /usr/local/bin/ip
The first path /sbin/ip is where the actual binary resides. the second
path /usr/local/bin/ip is the link I am creating to link to /sbin/ip
In my case you will in /usr/local/bin now see a binary named "ip" with an
arrow pointing toward it. Hovering the mouse over it you will see at the
bottom of the window "ip->/sbin/ip, which shows that the link is pointing
to /sbin/ip.
The IP address is now showing in Gkrellm, because the plugin has found a
reference to "ip" in /usr/local, and the symbolic link has connected it to
the binary in /sbin.
These machines are just machines. You often have to, as it were, trick them
into doing stuff.
Post back if I havn't explained it well enough.
Nigel.
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