Problems with PATH

English Programming/Scripting
#1

I’m new to openSUSE, just came from Ubuntu, and I’m having some problems with openSUSE missing some obvious paths.

For instance, checkinstall is installed to /usr/sbin but I have to actually type /usr/sbin/checkinstall in order to run it.

xxxxxx@tipping-point:~/sopcast/src>echo $PATH
/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/games:/opt/kde3/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin:/usr/lib/mit/bin:/usr/lib/mit/sbin:.:/usr/lib/qt3/bin

I’m also having problems during compiling. I’m compiling QSopcast which requires qt3 headers and the source is complaining about the file missing. I did a ‘locate’ and I definitely have the file installed.

Here’s the error from compiling:
header.h:6:19: error: qvbox.h: No such file or directory

and here’s ‘locate’:

xxxxxx@tipping-point:~/sopcast/src> locate qvbox.h
/usr/lib/qt3/doc/html/qvbox.html
/usr/lib/qt3/include/qvbox.h

This is really simple and any help would be greatly appreciated. Should I just edit /etc/profile or is there a better way? (I know /etc/profile is system-wide but these are things that I would like to be system-wide) Thanks!

#2

As far as the path problem, sbin should only be in roots path. That is what the s in sbin stands for, super-user. So that is normal, expected behavior. If you want to change it, you can change it in either /etc/profile (system-wide) or ~.bashrc (per user), by adding the following statement
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/sbin:.

On the compiling problem, you can add the path for lib files in the configure script,
./configure --libdir=/usr/lib/qt3/

You may need to add the subfolder include, I’m not sure, I’ve never installed the qsopcast program, so I may be off in the details.

Edit: you may also be able to symlink the missing file into the directory where it is expected. Or, you can check the configure --help to see if it has an option to specify the qt3 lib path.

#3

Thanks! I didn’t know that’s what the ‘s’ stood for. Anyway, there’s no ‘configure’ for this app, just ‘qmake’.

EDIT: I tried adding the /usr/lib/qt3/include to the include path in ‘Makefile’ and got a little farther but am now running into this error:


main.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, char**)’:
main.cpp:47: error: ‘srand’ was not declared in this scope
make: *** .obj/main.o] Error 1
#4

I do not know the product, but when it is installed in /usr/sbin as the intention of the maker, it is not the intention to be called by a normal user, but only by root, which has /usr/sbin in it’s PATH.

When on the other hand it is a program for the normal user it should not go into /usr/sbin. Adding /usr/sbin to a normal users PATH is not a good idea. The user may end up executing programs that are mentioned for root only and get error messages.

#5

Did you also install qt4-devel? There could be a conflict with the qmake from qt4 and qt3. Try to use the qmake in /usr/qt3/bin/qmake.

The other error you received could come from an incompatibility with the new gcc 4.3. They cleaned up some include files so that sometimes it is necessary to add more includes.

hope this helps

#6

Yes, I’ve also installed qt4-devel.
I tried running /usr/lib/qt3/bin/qmake and that definitely works better. I’m getting the same error (but without having to add the include into the ‘Makefile’ manually)

I’ve looked it up and I think it IS a problem with gcc 4.3. I’ll look into getting those missing includes in there. Thanks for the help!

For the time being I just found a binary and installed it. I’ll wait until GCC gets that squared away.