where is my command binaries and its configurations?

February 9th, 2008 mysurface Posted in Common, whereis | Hits: 30260 | No Comments »

When we want to find out the absolute path for a command, we will usually use which.

For examples, if I want to check out the absolute path for mplayer, I may do this:

which mplayer

But there is another command can search for the binaries as well as configs and man pages.

whereis mplayer

And it will return this:

mplayer: /usr/bin/mplayer /etc/mplayer /usr/lib/mplayer /usr/X11R6/bin/mplayer /usr/bin/X11/mplayer /usr/share/mplayer /usr/share/man/man1/mplayer.1.gz

It is a nice command that help us to discover its config’s path. But bare in mind not all command configs can be located by using whereis. I think the configs directories must have same name as the command.

I have installed the Cisco VPN client on my box, I forgot where is my profiles stored at, so I try to use whereis to help me. Eventually whereis fails to find the profiles path for me.

whereis vpnclient
vpnclient: /usr/local/bin/vpnclient /opt/cisco-vpnclient/bin/vpnclient

This Profile is actually store at /etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient

But whereis is still a very nice command to search for all files that related to a specified command.

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