[Freeciv] Re: rpm installation

[David Pfitzner <dwp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John dillick wrote:

> Well I'm running linux with the graphical interface, however most of what
> I do is in a terminal windows, because I'm not confortable with the gui
> yet. (strange huh?)

Nothing wrong with that, and lets not start a GUI vs CLI
discussion ;-)

> from a bash prompt logged on as root:
> /root]#civserver
> bash: civserver: command not found
> (ok... obviously not in my search path)
> /root]# cd /usr/games
> /root]# ls 
> banner  civ  civclient  civserver  ser
> /root]# civserver
> bash: civserver: command not found

Ok, now it becomes clear.  With most Linux distributions the
current directory is _not_ included in the search path by
default, as a security measure (who knows what nasty programs
might be in the current directory, which you may not want to
run accidently).

The are a number of things you can do:
 - add the current directory ('.') to your PATH 
   (not recommened, as above)
 - add /usr/games to your path: eg
      PATH=$PATH:/usr/games
   (eg, add this to your ~/.bash_profile or similar)
 - run using explicit paths:
      /usr/games/civserver
   or
      cd /usr/games
      ./civserver

A final note is that once you do manage to run civserver or
civclient like this, it will tell you _not_ to run as root,
but to use a normal user account instead (again a security
measure, since freeciv can interact with other machines on
the net).

> It should be noted that I'm a one month old linux user with limited unix
> experience previous to that.  I'm mostly proficient in windoze and other
> ms crap I've given up on.  I'm interested in doing some software
> development in this platform and freeciv looked like a fun place to start.

Good, welcome to Linux and Freeciv, and have fun!

-- David