How to fix the "whereis" command

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Before today when I were going to type in console the command whereis (and for example) fire then pressing [TAB] will complete the word to firefox, if I were going to type ama [TAB] that will be completed to amarok or I was presented with all the options beginning with “ama”

Now when I press tab the word after the command whereis is not completed anymore.

Do you know what can I do to fix the feature/command ?

The only change I have performed lattely is that I resized my home partition (I increased its size) and I also installed firefox 3.0.1

What could have caused this ? and how can I fix this ? :eek:

2

It’s simply that whereis was not programmed as one of the commands that take command completion. These are specified to bash when it starts up, in

/etc/profile.d/complete.bash

If you do:

complete | grep which

you should get:

complete -o default -c which

Now whereis behaves like which in taking a command also. Search in /etc/profile.d/bash.completion and find the instance of which, which is:

complete -A command ${_def}             command which nohup exec nice eval

Add whereis to that list. Or you can test it from the current shell by:

complete -o default -c whereis

after which you can do:

whereis fire<tab>

BTW I knew about programmable completion but your post spurred me to learn something new today.

PS: Make a note of this local change, so that you put it back after a version upgrade.

PPS: Here’s a nice tute I found:

CLI magic: programable bash completion » Linux by Examples

3

The problem is I dont have that file callled “bash.completion”

Should I create it and add the line you suggested ?

This is all what I have inside there:

Dixie7:/etc/profile.d # ll
total 228
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1547 Aug 18  2005 alias.ash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1438 Aug 30  2005 alljava.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1682 Jul 13  2005 alljava.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22772 Dec 21  2007 bindkey.tcsh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  8584 Feb 26  2007 complete.bash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 39715 Dec 21  2007 complete.tcsh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   574 Jun  4  2007 csh.ssh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1169 Sep 17  2004 csh.utf8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    51 Sep 21  2007 cvs.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    50 Sep 21  2007 cvs.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1037 Jan 29  2007 desktop-data.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   706 Jan 29  2007 desktop-data.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   180 Sep 21  2007 groff.csh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   179 Sep 21  2007 groff.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   352 May 31 15:33 gtk2.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   360 May 31 15:33 gtk2.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    91 Mar  7 08:55 krb5.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    91 Mar  7 08:55 krb5.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1731 Feb  1  2007 lang.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1556 Aug  2  2005 lang.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   152 Sep 21  2007 opensp.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   117 Sep 21  2007 opensp.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3010 Jan 29  2007 profile.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  2713 Jan 29  2007 profile.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    91 Jan 10  2008 python.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    91 Jan 10  2008 python.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    63 May 19  2006 qt3.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   117 May 19  2006 qt3.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   632 Jun  4  2007 sh.ssh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   911 Apr  8  2004 sh.utf8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   144 Sep 21  2007 via.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   142 Sep 21  2007 via.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   864 Sep 11  2007 xdg-environment.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   614 Sep 11  2007 xdg-environment.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12726 Oct  4  2006 zzz-glib2.csh
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11799 Oct  4  2006 zzz-glib2.sh
4

It’s complete.bash, the first instance I mentioned it I got the name correct, but I got it wrong on the second instance.

5

Forget it… I found it!

The correct filename is:

/etc/profile.d/complete.bash

not:

/etc/profile.d/bash.completion

PS: why in this forum the edit button has been removed ??? :mad: