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After a installation via aptitude, how does one actually run the program? (via nautilus or even terminal)

for example, i'm now trying to use a program called pulseview. for this i installed a package called sigrok using sudo apt-get install sigrok

sigrok is already in the repository. The sigrok package also contains pulseview. I believe sigrok is the CLI and pulseview the GUI, but that assumption could be wrong.

The installation worked perfectly, but how do I now run the program?

What I have tried

  • I first searched for the application, but didn't find it. I also tried to find it via Software Centre but no luck there :(

  • I then tried to see if installation actually worked by doing the same again. It informed me that the latest version was already installed. then i thought i might need to install pulseview seperately, via aptitude. but also on that i got informed that the latest version was already installed.

  • So tried (sudo) ./sigrok and pulseview but no such file or directory (as one would expect).

Sorry to ask someting, which will probably be so obvious, but when I search for topics the explanation stops after the install line and no added info on how to run it. I actually thought I had made a similar topic before, but even in that topic there was no answer on this part.

Thanks in advance.

Nathan Smith
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Matthieu Kints van
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2 Answers2

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Sigrok is a metapackage which pulls in pulseview, the GUI (as you thought), and sigrok-cli, the command-line interface to sigrok. To run the GUI, (located in /usr/bin/pulseview) it should suffice to run pulseview (not ./pulseview) because /usr/bin is on your search path.

Nonny Moose
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  • oke, that is usefull to understand, something i then clearly yet don't understand is the exact meaning of ./ – Matthieu Kints van Aug 03 '17 at 16:45
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    ./command runs the binary file named command in your current working directory. – Nonny Moose Aug 03 '17 at 16:48
  • additionally something i don't understend, is why do i NOW find pulseview in a search under applications while it wasn't there before. I have the feeling (and had this before) i need to run a program at least once before it ends up in a search in applications, which would be strange. do i need to restart nautilus or something after an install to find te program? – Matthieu Kints van Aug 03 '17 at 16:48
  • I doubt it. It showed up right away for me. Either it was a glitch or it was in the process of adding it to the menu. – Nonny Moose Aug 03 '17 at 16:50
  • oke. that is thus something i understoon completely inverse.. my thought was that: "program name" would look locally, and ./program name in the standard search path. – Matthieu Kints van Aug 03 '17 at 16:51
  • well, that is strange then.. as i said, i have had this problem before, without doubt (and i doubt myself quickly, but not on this) and this glitch would have been then there in several distribution installations. none the less. i have learned a lot from you and am happy i have this digitally available, for if i would ever forget, but i don't think that will happen ;) again. many thanks for your time and input! – Matthieu Kints van Aug 03 '17 at 16:55
  • sorry i thought i already did :/, definately helpfull and very deserved checkmark ;), and as i did afterwards i realise that only one of the 2 aswers an be checkmarked, as i check mark the other it disappears from the first so thats why i tought i already did so. made sure it stayed on your though ;) – Matthieu Kints van Aug 03 '17 at 17:09
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As Nonny Moose commented, when you install a new package via apt or aptitude, unless you deliberately install the package elsewhere, it will install to the default location (/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin are quite common). This path is included in what's called your PATH.

When you run a command from your terminal, it will first check your PATH for what you are looking for. If you specify a path (as you were doing with ./my_file), it means "Look in this directory and run this file".

As you can see in this example, I asked my system to tell me where exactly it would find sigrok if I asked, to which it tells me where it looked and failed to find it (because I don't have it installed).

$ ~: which sigrok
/usr/bin/which: no sigrok in (/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/home/user/bin)
Nathan Smith
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