🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <16248@watdragon.waterloo.edu> hwolkowicz@poppy.waterloo.edu (Henry Wolkowicz) writes:
>I can no longer access latex on poppy. It seems the path has changed. How
>should I change my path command? And for a more general question:
>how does showpath and searchpath work? What do I do if I want to find
>a file but have no idea where it is?

You don't appear to read uw.mfcf.system - the change was announced
August 24 along with information on how to solve the problem you have
run into.

You have commented out the PATH setting with searchpath in your .cshrc
and set it manually - this is the source of your problems.

The showpath and seachpath man pages should tell you how they work.  If
they don't tell you what you need to know, use gripe to complain about
the man pages or see a consultant.

Finding files - depends on what kind of file you're looking for. See
the man pages for which, fwhich, whereis, and find.

If you don't read the system news, and you don't use showpath or
searchpath, we can't help you.

In article <16261@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jmsellens@watdragon.waterloo.edu (John M. Sellens) writes:
>If you don't read the system news, and you don't use showpath or
>searchpath, we can't help you.

	The relevant article in system_news is no longer available.
	Observe the following little experiment:

	First, I start with a typical path, as it might be set by a user
	who doesn't know about showpath...

1/1 watdcsu % echo $path
/u2/dmcanzi/bin /usr/ucb /bin /usr/bin
1/2 watdcsu % man showpath
man: No entry for showpath in the manual.

	Then I use showpath...

1/3 watdcsu % setenv PATH `showpath usedby=user standard`
1/4 watdcsu % man showpath

SHOWPATH(1)                User Commands               SHOWPATH(1)

Name:
     SHOWPATH - Display and format the names of various search
     paths.

	... etc.

	In order to find out how to use showpath, you have to use
	MFCF's modified man command.  In order to get access to MFCF's
	modified man command, you have to use showpath.

-- 
David Canzi			"All my life's a circle." -- Harry Chapin

For the past several years, accounts created on MFCF machines and/or
those created with the mkusers command have been provided with
.cshrc/.login/.profile files that use searchpath and that call
read_system_news.  These files also contain a warning that they
shouldn't be changed before reading the relevant man page, which
explains why searchpath and read_system_news are important.

In article <16285@watdragon.waterloo.edu> jmsellens@watdragon.waterloo.edu (John M. Sellens) writes:
>
>For the past several years, accounts created on MFCF machines and/or
>those created with the mkusers command have been provided with
>.cshrc/.login/.profile files that use searchpath and that call
>read_system_news.  These files also contain a warning that they
>shouldn't be changed before reading the relevant man page, which
>explains why searchpath and read_system_news are important.

In other words, if a user gets into trouble, tough noogies.  He should
have *obeyed*.

Why not just make the showpath manual page available to the ordinary
man command, as has been done already with the .cshrc man page?

Perhaps, as a general principle, if MFCF installs a locally created
command in a standard directory (ie. /bin), then the man page should be
installed in a standard directory (ie. /usr/man/man1) too.

-- 
David Canzi

In article <499@shine22.watshine.waterloo.edu> dmcanzi@watshine.waterloo.edu (David Canzi) writes:
>In other words, if a user gets into trouble, tough noogies.  He should
>have *obeyed*.
We don't mean it like that.  It's just that in order to use MFCF commands,
you essentially must use either searchpath or showpath to set your path.
Things change from time to time and we need some way to notify users, so
if they don't read the news, we can't tell them that things are changing
and they will end up in trouble.  We're trying to say "do it this way,
or you'll have trouble", people don't do it that way, and then they are
surprised when they end up in trouble.  I don't see a way around these problems,
but if anyone has any ideas, we'd be glad to hear them.

>Why not just make the showpath manual page available to the ordinary
>man command, as has been done already with the .cshrc man page?
There are lots of historical leftovers that we have added to standard
directories.  The .cshrc man page is but one of them.  New systems
(e.g. Sun OS 4.0, Dynix, MIPS) don't have any local additions to
standard man directories, and as few as possible to other standard
directories.

>Perhaps, as a general principle, if MFCF installs a locally created
>command in a standard directory (ie. /bin), then the man page should be
>installed in a standard directory (ie. /usr/man/man1) too.
Makes sense to me.