Greetings, Earthlings. I just subscribed.
I haven't actually tried out Puppet yet, but I just downloaded the Learn
Puppet VM.
On Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:11:17 AM UTC-7, gfda...@gmail.com wrote:
> *bash: puppetca: command not found * I get this no matter which
> command I try to run.
> *^---- "Bourne Again Shell"*
>
In your home directory on your Linux box are some "hidden" files and
folders, whose names all start with a dot or period: "."
The files aren't really hidden, it's just that there is a convention that
documents whose names start with dots aren't displayed unless you
specifically request such display.
In a terminal program such as xterm, gterm or kterm, you can see all of
your documents, including your "Dot Files", with the "ls -a" command.
Most likely you already have a document called ".bash_profile". You may as
well have documents called ".profile" or ".bashrc".
When you're using a terminal program such as gterm, there is a command
interpreter running inside the terminal that searches for and executes each
command when you type its after the "$" prompt. For example:
$ emacs
... will launch the emacs text editor.
However there are several places where these programs can be placed. For
regular (non-administrative) users, these are generally:
/bin
/usr/bin
/usr/local/bin
You don't want bash to have to search your entire hard drive to look for
executable files. Instead, bash will search a preset list of directories
(folders). That preset list is in your PATH environment variable. You can
find out what its present value is:
$ echo $PATH
Placing "$" in the front of a shell variable will result in the value
stored in the variable being substituted for where you named the variable
itself.
Each directory in your PATH is delimited (or separated) by a colon
character - ":".
You don't generally want to remove existing items from PATH. Instead, you
usually want to add new items to its list. bash will search the list from
beginning to end, so if two programs with the exact same name are found in
two different directories in your path, the one whose directory is named
before the other will be the one that actually gets executed.
It's common for one to install personally-developed programs in a directory
called "bin" in one's home directory. It's path can be abbreviated as
"~/bin". "~" is shorthand for "my home directory". You can prepend it to
your PATH like so:
$ export PATH=~/bin:"$PATH"
The double-quotes are needed only if there are space characters already
present in your $PATH. If you're sure there won't be any spaces, you won't
need the quotes.
On your own box, substitute the directory where you placed the puppet
executables for "~/bin" in the command line above. If bash stops
complaining, then you got your new $PATH right. Now place the same command
line in either ".profile", ".bash_profile" or ".bashrc". However, leave
off the initial "$" shell prompt:
# ~/.profile
export PATH=/path/to/puppet/executables:"$PATH"
One can - and often does - have shell variables that aren't also
environment variables:
export TERM=vt220 # $TERM is an environment variable
myname=mike # $myname is a shell variable, but it's not in the
environment
The difference between the two is that the environment is inherited by
subprocesses. That is, if you launch a new program from within bash, that
new program will also know what your $PATH is.
Google for "UNIX shell tutorial". There are lots of really good tutorials
out there.
There are other UNIX shells, other than bash. Bash is a Free Software
clone of the original AT&T Bourne shell "/bin/sh", but with lots of
features from the Berkeley C Shell "/bin/csh" added to it.
Ever Faithful,
Mike Crawford
mdcrawf...@gmail.com
CyberneticEntomologist on GitHub and the PuppetLabs sites
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