I'm trying to invoke a script with a list of filenames collected by find. Nothing special, just someting like this:
myscript `find . -name something.txt`
The problem is that some of the pathnames contain spaces, so they get broken up into two invalid names on argument expansion. Normally I wou...
my question is... is it good action on stackexchange - answer on own Q, if found solution and can describe it in details? even if somebody in comments (not in A) give an idea which sent you in right way?
I have logged in to remote server via ssh and currently I am in "practice" directory as below. myuser@ip-xx-xxx-xx-xxx:/home/myuser/javafiles/practice$ I actually need to unzip a file that is downloaded on my local system to that practice directory(remote server) OR unzipping locally and moving the unzipped file to that directory.
@setevoy But the thing is I am in current directory in the server as I have shown above. Is there anyway to move local system file to the current directory without mentioning the remote location in the command?
@rick This kind of question is best asked on the main site. You'll also get many more eyeballs on it than the few people who happen to be in the chatroom. Who in any case may not be looking to answer questions.
Unless you think it is too simple to ask in the main site. I'm not sure from your description.
I'm not sure if there is a specific prohibition against very elementary questions in unix.sx.
@slm He doesn't seem that bad. Or am I missing something?
@rick: Ok. Well, one reason to post a question is that all the relevant info is in one place, instead of scattered across chat. I suggest (a) post your best attempt at the question (b) wait for feedback on the question. If you wait in the chatroom people can give you fast feedback.
@FaheemMitha Okay,thanks. The thing is as I don't know much LINUX things, I am not sure this could make up an eligible question that is why I asked here.
@rick - you don't have to put the link here. We see every Q that comes in and quickly try and assist if we can. Posting them here just pollutes the stream.
@setevoy because of the Darwin subsystem of Mac OS X (Darwin's userland is largely FreeBSD's userland), OS X has all the nice utilities: ssh, scp, ftp, even emacs and zsh.
@FaheemMitha there was a Meta question on this at some point. I can't be bothered to find it, as I only just woke up from recovering from my hackathon. but essentially, newbie questions are fine
@FaheemMitha I was at one called CodeDay. a friend and I made something in Meteor.js: sprint.meteor.com; it's a work in progress. I swear by Meteor now.
it wasn't a recent question, I don't think. it was pretty old IIRC
@strugee often it does, yes. It kinda freaks them out and they pass you on to the next poor schmuck down the line until you hit an actual engineer who can help. — terdon5 mins ago
@terdon man, I wish I knew that. I was once trying to call Dell about a legitimate bug in their BIOS (wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13 - essentially, all four primary partitions are filled, if you remove any it breaks NT boot, and the BIOS won't boot from a GPT flash drive, even if you have legacy BIOS support on the flash drive)
basically what happened was I got the main XPS support line, who passed me through to the hardware support department, who passed me through to the GNU/Linux support department, who refused to help me because the laptop didn't come with Ubuntu (even though there's a beefier version of the same laptop that does). so the GNU/Linux people passed me on to this fourth department who told me that "we're the support line for people who are having very weird, specialized issues. this will cost you $60."
A common response (in my experience) by support lines on being informed you are running "Linux" is to blame any problems you are having on that, even if it doesn't make sense.
@FaheemMitha I've experienced the same. we didn't have the fastest internet at my hackathon, so I had problems downloading the NPM database (NPM = Nodejs Package Manager; it turns out you can just skip this if you don't need local search), and the Meteor download took forever, so I spent ~6 hours working on a bash script while things downloaded. my friend would tell me that it was all GNU/Linux's fault (although thankfully he was just joking and would believe me when I said it wasn't)
@FaheemMitha like I said, he was just joking. but yeah, I understand what you're talking about, and have met a few myself
as a side note, I'm a huge fan of Emacs keybindings (as opposed to the arrow keys), and when I was hanging out with this friend - this was about 6 months ago - I mentioned that I had switched to Emacs. so my friend's dad goes, "Emacs? I think I used that like a decade ago or something"
I installed php5 in raspbian . it just executes basic php functions like echo, phpinfo etc. , When I write any user defined function, it gives blank output.
@HarshIT ask your question on main. (but as a side note, good job for explaining your question rather than asking if you can ask, then waiting for someone to reply.)
I'm not sure why unix.stackexchange.com/q/110154/4671 was downvoted. It seems a reasonable question, and quite literate compared to some of the stuff we see here.
@FaheemMitha yep. they both think it's super outdated and old, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and told them that the latest release was (at the time) three months ago
@slm unbelievably amazing. I have all these projects that I've been meaning to make, but couldn't be bothered to learn Rails or Express.js or anything. now I don't have an excuse
the one pain point was that the package management isn't really tracked in version control at all, AFAICT. that made for a lot of comparing Meteor(ite) package installs when one of us got weird behavior and the other didn't
@slm they provide free hosting at *.meteor.com. it has limits, obviously, but it's really nice. basically all you need is meteor deploy foobar.meteor.com
I want to install a second version of Python on Redhat Enterprise License Linux. I have been searching the different StackExchange sites as well as Google for how to do this and come up with five different methods:
Download the source from and build and install it with ./configure, make, and ...
he needs to break it up. Also there are management apps for having multiple versions of Python, ruby, etc. I've written that up at least 5 times now in diff. answers here, so search first would be another reason.
@slm I don't think the answers need to be that long. One can simply state ones preference. I would answer it, but I don't use RH and the poster has not provided sufficient detail for anyone to make a specific suggestion.
If you want to cover all the bases, and address all the issues he raised, then yes, I guess it would go on for a bit. I notice some of the high rep users here try to answer questions more generally, which is good practice, but does require more effort.
@FaheemMitha - I use all the RH distros and his Q is too complicated to answer in a reasonable amount of space. Plus it has a bit of opinion + discussion in it which will make the A's less valuable, IMO. I know these Q's are viewed as answerable, but keep in mind the nature of the A's that might get developed for a given Q. If a lot of ppl can provide various A's that's tell you that the Q hasn't specified itself enough.
If he left it at the 1-5 list that Q wouldn't be as bad, the whole 2nd 1/2 is really the issue.
@FaheemMitha - I think we try to do it the most here mainly to cut down and having the info peppered throughout many Q&A's. I hate this aspect of SO where the answer to my Q is locked in 10 different threads.
Background:
Since I develop python programs that must run on different python versions, I have installed different versions of python on my computer.
I am using FC 13 so it came with python 2.6 pre-installed in /usr/bin/python2.6 and /usr/lib/python2.6.
I installed python 2.5 from source, and ...
Note: the following post may include controversial opinions, so please
note that they are only my opinions, and not intended to offend
anyone.
I'm being programming in some form or the other since around 1999. I
initially used R, and then later, around 2004, mostly switched to
Python.
For many ...
Q's on SE should always be answerable (by 1-2 A's). If they aren't then that's a smell that they are opinionated in the nature of responses that they'll generate, which isn't the purpose of SE sites. I've used those Q's on SO where they ask things like...
We obviously have the personnel to tackle at least some aspects to these types of things. Ala a best practices or (here's what I do to do task X in my day to day) focusing on tools, workflows etc.
Well, the scicomp people complained my question read like a blog post. I was just trying to provide context. One of the comments rudely said they didn't want to hear my life story. Or something like that.
@FaheemMitha - yeah I have a hard time thinking of Q's to ask the SE oracle, b/c I know how to search so well that I can usually find enough of the A before hand. So I usually will look through our site and if I see a gap, I'll make the Q and then provide the A myself.
most ppl write the A to the OP and that's it. These though helpful to 1 aren't as useful to everyone else, so when writing an A I try to write to both groups.
I'm told that SE is working on making the blog, but they're having some problems with their Wordpress install in general. It is happening though — Michael Mrozek2 days ago
@FaheemMitha - I'm a software engineer, but I've always known a lot about systems, b/c usually problems were rooted there and if you didn't understand how those things worked, you were stuck. So I was the guy that would figure those things out.
@FaheemMitha They do, but I do these things so that I can expand my understanding, it just so happens that knowing how to do things usually means you can get a job, since you know how to do this stuff.
Many times the info on the internet becomes old and outdated, but it persists so when you start to try and do X you'll run into it. By making that kind of A to a Q, even creating that Q you're making a "beacon" that says, "hey all that crap is now wrong, ignore it"
@FaheemMitha that's basically the reason why the self-answer checkbox is a thing
@slm oh, I see what you're saying now
I find that SE is an especially good place to talk about Unix history. I mean, where else else would you put those questions? certainly not on e.g. the Arch forums
@FaheemMitha well, it was an approximation. I meant the style - some are "why does such-and-such work this way" instead of dealing directly with Unix history
@strugee The BSD/GNU userland question definitely qualifies as historical. Good answer by Bruce Edigar, though it could more complete/detailed. Upvotes for both.
no I'm careful, I don't just randomly vote on stuff, I look at the A and if it's a good one I'll vote it up, that's my normal process, but I like to focus on regulars and give them the recognition for good A's.
Braiam's too
I'd rather give the votes to ppl that participate regularly vs. someone new. If an A is awesome I'll make a note and come back to it on another day too.
@slm I feel the same. only 31 rep to go... although I did get a shiny new badge for the BSD/GNU userland question
@slm what's your normal limit for voting on one person's stuff? I started looking at questions from @Braiam but stopped at like 3 because I wasn't sure when the system would start reverting votes
I think people overstate the GNU userland thing. GNU stuff is a tiny portion of the stuff on my system. it is a tiny part even of the stuff i use regularly, and i use both gcc and emacs.
@FaheemMitha sometime I'm going to write a script or somesuch to determine what portions of systems come from where. it'd be interesting to see results for both source and binary
@FaheemMitha Usually if someone writes 1 good A they're likely to write many others, so I like to find them and see those too. The UV'es serve to pull up good stuff above bad, and also reward the OP for their effort.
@strugee - asking OP's to accept Q's is easy 15's too.
I am on Linux Mint 15 (Mate). I installed Compiz following the steps in this tutorial. Then due to some problems I faced, I decided to disable it. So I executed the following command:
metacity --replace
Then removed compiz --replace from the Startup Applications and reverted org > mate > desktop
augh! I'm on a tablet and keep going back to some tab that's been unloaded, then upvote something and get an error that my vote's locked in place. so I refresh and it turns out that the cache has screwed with me and I've already voted on half the stuff on the page.
@slm yeah, I saw that - thanks. I do it sometimes when I notice but I don't usually check to see if Qs are accepted. usually it happens when I feel narcissistic and start browsing my answers :)
@strugee - yeah I saw that one and wondered if I should delete it or something.
That was an early A from me when I first started on the site too.
I guess it's good to have it more for the anti-answer than the answer.
I have no OSX practical exp. and was dealing w/ the issue from a Unix only perspective, but knowing that in certain situations on OSX you don't want to do this is valuable.
@slm heh, clearly you're more active than me (I've actually been here longer). it was the correct solution from someone who hasn't used Homebrew; I think it's fine.
So me voting that one up is actually a good thing from the perspective of promoting the better general solution, though the OP was able to accept mine since it solved his specific issue, or at least allowed him to work around it.
@strugee - do you know offhand how to make the default size of windows when you "put" them to N,S,E,W? in GNOME?
I think it's like 100% vertical and maybe 50% of that height for the width.
There's a plugin for GNOME called put windows, but it wasn't working for me.
I'm trying to invoke a script with a list of filenames collected by find. Nothing special, just someting like this:
myscript `find . -name something.txt`
The problem is that some of the pathnames contain spaces, so they get broken up into two invalid names on argument expansion. Normally I wou...
I want to install a second version of Python on Redhat Enterprise License Linux. I have been searching the different StackExchange sites as well as Google for how to do this and come up with five different methods:
Download the source from and build and install it with ./configure, make, and ...
Background:
Since I develop python programs that must run on different python versions, I have installed different versions of python on my computer.
I am using FC 13 so it came with python 2.6 pre-installed in /usr/bin/python2.6 and /usr/lib/python2.6.
I installed python 2.5 from source, and ...
netcfg is deprecated. Upgrade to netctl and try again.
I am on Linux Mint 15 (Mate). I installed Compiz following the steps in this tutorial. Then due to some problems I faced, I decided to disable it. So I executed the following command:
metacity --replace
Then removed compiz --replace from the Startup Applications and reverted org > mate > desktop 
