I have a very dumb question which I think is ultimately about configuring bash. Is this the right place to ask?

The site, probably

or you can complain about the problem and someone might go "oh, that silly thing" :D

Feel free to share your question or describe your problem! Everyone here is more than happy to help out with bash configuration issues. Often, what seems like a "dumb question" can be a common issue, so don't hesitate!

Thanks for volunteering us, @Oak lol

@Michael No problem, @Michael! Happy to help in any way I can. @XanderHenderson, go ahead and let us know what you're facing with bash—let's see if we can troubleshoot it together.

-_-

Its your bot :D

I think that's one reason why new people sometimes get upset when they ask a question on SE and don't get the response they expect. The site sets them up for unrealistic expectations and doesn't do a good enough job of communicating the fact that SE is a community of volunteers

lol

@XanderHenderson's a math mod and someone I'm familiar with

He probably gets the SE model more so than the average random passer by

@JourneymanGeek Oh I'm not singling him out, Oak's response just made me think of that lol

Yes, that could be a problem :D

@JourneymanGeek It was more a question of "Is bash config on topic on Super User?" (I don't really know the scope of the site). It sounds like it is, but I am guessing that I am not going to be able to formulate an acceptable question without some help, and I suspect that there is already an answer on SU which I haven't been able to find.

In any event, I do a lot of stuff with LaTeX on a Mac. Files get compiled using some crufty old makefiles that I barely understand anymore. Recently, I got a new work computer, and had to reinstall TeX (I'm using the texlive package from MacPorts).

In old versions of this package, the command line utility which converts .ps files to .pdf files was called pstopdf. In the current version, it is called ps2pdf. Is there something that I can throw into .bashrc (or maybe .profile, which is where MacOS seems to want to keep shell configuration stuff) that will make things work without having to edit all of my makefiles?

Or is the shell configuration not even the right place to try to fix this?

ah

I think you need either an alias (proper way) or a symlink (improper way) ?

so yeah, probably the shell/bashrc

Don't ask me why its on SO

I did the symlink approach last week, but I honestly don't remember why I did that and not an alias :D

@JourneymanGeek The question was originally asked in 2012. Did SU exist back then?

uhh, yes?

Ah! That does it. MacOS keeps things in .bash_profile, not .bashrc!

Arg... stupid Apple. I thought alias was the right thing to do, I was just editing the wrong file. :/

and I think in this case talking about it was useful :D

Thanks.

(googled for Create alias Mac )

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, the problem with that is that Apple called symlinks aliases for a very long time (they still do, I think...).

Yes, just checked. They still do.

Don't get me started on apple, just don't :D

So I was getting a lot of noise. But, also, it turns out that the correct file to edit was .bash_profile, and not .bashrc.

I'm not quite sure when that changed, and I don't know why I have a .bashrc at all. :/

ah

I was also assuming that OS X is about as similar to linux as a proper oldschool unix

similar enough to understand, different enough to trip you up :D

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, MacOS is a certified Unix system, built from BSD. It is POSIX compliant, but not Linux. :D

lol

And it has all kinds of stupid Mac-isms.

I was working with HP-UX for a bit

@XanderHenderson My dad has an imac, fun of the recent screen incident aside, its different enough that I end up needing to google stuff a lot :D

@JourneymanGeek Indeed. Though, to be fair, I haven't had a Linux box in 25 years.

currently I have uhh....

somewhere under half a dozen ? :D

(I had an Apple G3 running Yellow Dog Linux in 1999---I gave up on Linux in about 2003, when I realized that I was spending more time futzing with the OS than actually getting work done.)

@XanderHenderson ah, I like futzing with things :D

Switched to OS X around then, and haven't really looked back.

@JourneymanGeek I like to do actual work. :D

Oh its gotten me a few jobs :D

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, but I'm a mathematician, not a computer wizard.

I want a machine that Just Works™.

And I've been using Apple computers since about 1988, so I have a lot of workflow that has accumulated in the last 30+ years that I don't want to have to export to some other OS.

Which is fair :D

But also means I'd be looking for stuff... differently

pun entirely intended

Heh.

I had an iMac for a while. I remember paying to upgrade the OS

pretty sure upgrades are free

@Michael That was pretty standard practice... you had to pay for Windows updates, too.

the display on dad's died 5 days after the warranty ended :D

Apple would generally charge to upgrade from one major version to another (e.g. from OS 7 to OS 8).

had to do some uh... support wrangling to get it done for free :D

Yeah, the days of non-free OS updates lol

I think they stopped doing that around X version 3 (10.3).

@XanderHenderson macos/osX has been free. Likewise windows since 10

Not early versions of OS/X

I think I paid like $20 or something to upgrade

Also, not a mac guy :D

It was installed via DVD too

Oh, shoot... the internet says that Apple was still charging $129 for OS upgrades until around 2010, and 10.8 was the last non-free upgrade (costing around $20).

Yeah, this was a while ago

Then I couldn't upgrade anymore because the hardware was too old and it had the max amount of RAM (4GB)

@Michael Yeah, something something 32 bit memory addresses something something.

It was a 64-bit OS. I have a memory of being disappointed that I couldn't install more than 4GB RAM though.

I upgraded it from 2 GB at one point

By the end of its life, it was really slow. Increasing to 8 GB would have helped with that, but I still wouldn't have been able to upgrade the OS

@Michael Weird. I remember there being limits on the amount of RAM which could be installed, but these were always related to the hardware limitations of a 32-bit processor.

@XanderHenderson Yeah, 32-bit maxes out at 4 GB. I don't remember why I was thinking that I couldn't install more than 4. Maybe it was a limitation of the motherboard or something.

Maybe it was a 32-bit OS, idk

@XKCD XKCD #2976 Explained: Time travel is a common sci-fi/fantasy plot, in which someone from one era is sent forward or backward in time to another era. Normally, the travel itself goes off without a hitch, with the usual threats to the time traveler being what happens after they arrive at their destination. More rarely, a time traveler might encounter some hazard because of where their time travel method has deposited them.