Posted on No Comments on Find where executable is installed to

Find where executable is installed to

Often when writing a script, I want to put a hashbang (#!) at the top so that I can execute the file, but I can never remember where the binary for python or php is installed to. An easy way to find out is to use the which command:

mark-ubuntu$ which python
/usr/local/bin/python

Another nice command is whereis which will “locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command”:

mark-ubuntu$ whereis python
python: /usr/bin/python2.6-config /usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/bin/python /etc/python2.6 /etc/python /usr/lib/python3.1 /usr/lib/python2.6 /usr/local/bin/python2.7-config /usr/local/bin/python2.7 /usr/local/bin/python /usr/local/lib/python2.7 /usr/local/lib/python2.6 /usr/include/python2.6 /usr/share/python /usr/share/man/man1/python.1.gz
Posted on No Comments on Flash Player 10 on Ubuntu 64-bit

Flash Player 10 on Ubuntu 64-bit

There’s a wad of tutorials out there on how to to install this plugin, but I’ve found they either don’t work, or over complicate things.

If you haven’t already found it, download the Flash Player 10 64-bit plugin for linux. Then,

tar xvzf libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.10/plugins

You might be running a different version of Firefox by the time you read this tutorial, so bust a “locate firefox | grep plugins” to find the appropriate folder.

Posted on 1 Comment on Extract (almost) any archive type

Extract (almost) any archive type

After getting tired of trying to remember “tar xvzf”, I wrote a little script for extracting almost any file type via the linux command-line. You can copy and paste this script into a text editor like gedit and save it to “/usr/local/bin” for convenience. I called mine “untar” since it doesn’t seem to be taken. Remember to `chmod +x ` so that you can execute it. You may need to `sudo apt-get install unrar` if you don’t already have it. I’m sure you can see how to add other file types from this example.

#!/bin/sh
me=`basename $0`
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "usage: $me <files...>"
fi
for file in $@; do
    bn=`basename $file`
    case $file in
        *.tar)
            tar xvf $file;;
        *.tar.gz|*.tgz|*.tar.Z|*.tar.z)
            tar xvzf $file;;
        *.tar.bz2)
            tar xvjf $file;;
        *.zip)
            unzip $file;;
        *.rar)
            unrar x $file;;
        *)
            echo "$me: $bn: unkown filetype";;
    esac
done