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Asked: 2019-05-16 07:24:12 +0800 CST

How to know the path of a particular software?

  • 772

Context: I'm trying to make an application automatically start when I login. For this I need to select the path for the application.

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Here are the paths I already looked into:

  • /sbin
  • /usr/sbin
  • /usr/local/bin
  • /usr/share/

If this may help, the application I'm trying to find is called "ScreenCloud" and I downloaded it from the Ubuntu Software Center.

But I cannot find it, is there any way I can know where is installed a particular software? Because even if I found for this one, I would like to avoid having the same issue in the future.

software-installation software-sources paths startup-applications 18.04

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Find the path of an executable

    Best way

    • type executable

    Check out this question to learn more about how type is better. (Thanks, comments!)

    Other ways

    • whereis executable
    • which executable

    Those commands only search in the PATH variable (echo $PATH), thus they are not valid in some cases (built-in functions, aliases, or bash functions, and more).

    • 16

  2. Find command location inside or outside of path

    Assume you want to find the location of uname, a program that lists system information. If you want to know what directory the top level command is stored in you have a number of options:

    $ which uname
/bin/uname

$ type -a uname
uname is /bin/uname

$ command -v uname
/bin/uname

$ locate uname
/bin/uname
    (... SNIP dozens of Windows files on C & D ...)
/usr/lib/klibc/bin/uname
/usr/lib/plainbox-provider-resource-generic/bin/uname_resource
/usr/share/man/man1/uname.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/oldolduname.2.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/olduname.2.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/uname.2.gz

    Locate advantages

    The last option locate returns all files containing uname not just the program that is run from the command prompt.

    The advantage of locate is it will find commands not in your search path. type -a (preferred over simple type) and which will only find commands in your search path. To see your search path use echo $PATH.

    Take for example this answer in How to start screencloud? :

    Try...

    /opt/screencloud/screencloud.sh

    The locate screencloud command will find it but which screencloud and type -a screencloud will not because:

    • The full name is screencloud.sh and only locate command searches on partial match.
    • /opt/screencloud probably isn't in the search path. which and type only look for executable files in search path.

    Note: This is an older answer. Modern ScreenCloud is called with screencloud.

    Locate's advantage over the find command is it can be hundreds or even thousands of times faster. Also running find starting from / will give many permission errors you won't experience with locate.

    Locate disadvantages

    If you just installed the program today you will need to use sudo updatedb to update locate's database.

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  3. Use the following command to list all of your $PATH directories:

    echo $PATH | sed 's/:/\n/g'

    Use the following command to find the full path for screencloud:

    for i in $(echo $PATH | sed 's/:/\n/g'); do find $i/screencloud* 2>@1; done

    If you used apt, apt-get, or the Ubuntu Software Center to install the package, you can use the following command to find the full path:

    dpkg -L screencloud | grep bin

    Assuming you used this repository, you should be able to find screencloud in /usr/bin/.

    The full path is:

    /usr/bin/screencloud

    or

    /usr/bin/screencloud-*

    However, if you used the snapcraft store according to the link you provided in your question, then the path would be under the following directory:

    /snap/bin

    more info

    Also, please remember that Ubuntu is case sensitive so you must use all lowercase with no capital letters.

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