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. > > > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
