MacOSX for Unix geeks?!?

[stefmit]

stefmit,

Glad you found a solution. I'd urge you to use Apple's version of X11 instead of the one available through Fink (unless they're pointing to Apple's X11).

Apple's has Open GL acceleration, integration with Aqua, etc. It's FASTER! Go to -> http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/ (thanks to cfleck).

Doug

Took your advice and got it to work Thank you! I tested as my first app ethereal. I still do not quite understand the mechanics of launching this stuff in Mac: if I am in a "Mac" terminal window, and launch
$ startx
then in the newly created terminal (under Apple's X11) I can launch any X11 program (e.g. ethereal).

If I go by the "book/instructions" way (i.e. Applications>Utilities>X11.app), any application I try to run cannot be found (a path issue of some sort, I would guess). I checked my .profile, and I have the proper "pointer" to /sw/bin/init.sh (I am running bash, of course).

[mr. k]

Etheral can't do anything unless it runs with certain privileges, it has to be able to read a system file somewhere that a normal admin user can't read. Is there any way to use it as root, or give it a new group and authorize that group for reading the certain file? It doesn't do me a lot of good right now...

[stefmit]

Etheral can't do anything unless it runs with certain privileges, it has to be able to read a system file somewhere that a normal admin user can't read. Is there any way to use it as root, or give it a new group and authorize that group for reading the certain file? It doesn't do me a lot of good right now...

You are right, but this is not what I am talking about. Launching ethereal is not necessarily related to being able to read off of an interface - I am just talking about the GUI here. In any case, I do "su -" in both cases - and if starting X with startx ethereal is found by both "regular" user, as well as root. If starting X through the "menus" (Applications>Utilities>X.app), neither the user, nor the root (after "su -") could find the executable - and this is what I was refering to.

[rhg]

Do an echo $PATH in the xterm to see what the PATH is set to. If it doesn't contain /sw/bin you probably didn't source (i.e. execute in the calling shell context by putting a . in front of the script) the /sw/bin/init.sh script in .profile:
. /sw/bin/init.sh

[stefmit]

Do an echo $PATH in the xterm to see what the PATH is set to. If it doesn't contain /sw/bin you probably didn't source (i.e. execute in the calling shell context by putting a . in front of the script) the /sw/bin/init.sh script in .profile:
. /sw/bin/init.sh

Actually I had/have . /sw/bin/init.sh in the .profile, but it did not do any good. On the other hand, you were right about the $PATH (how come I didn't check it ;(!!!), so a 'export PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin' in the xterm fixed the problem. I will have to look into the init.sh, to see what is supposed to do, but I can also manually append /sw/bin to the PATH, anyway ... good ... thank you!