Apps :: how to start apps?

Im running a dsl 4.2.5 harddrive install on an a very old computer
(so old that i cant find another distro that will even boot up on it)

the first thing i did was install firefox 2.0 from UCI in the mydsl extension browser

also i got abunch of other extensions from the browser like jre_1_5_0 and openoffice.org and limewire and zsnes

but anyway i have noticed that when i startup i get error messages saying

Quote

cannot find /tmp/mydsl......

(or something like that)

i have found this fix for the error messages after reading some of the posts here on the forums

Quote

OK. This seems to do the trick...

In /usr/local/bin/exitcheck.sh currently line 33 reads:

sudo rm -rf /tmp/mydsl.installed

Change this line with the following two lines:

sudo rm -rf /tmp/mydsl.installed/*
sudo rm -rf /tmp/mydsl.menu/*

my problem is that the only way i know of to start thees programs is from the mydsl menu

and lately ive had to go to /tmp/mydsl when i start up and run the .uci files agian in order to make them show up on the menu

im pretty sure theese programs exist elsewhere on my computer besides in the /tmp folder but i cant figure out how to start them

ive gone to /opt and found a firefox2.0 directory as well as a firefox directory but in both cases if i go into the directory i see only a regular firefox executalble
in other words if i run firefox in the /opt/firefox-2.0-gtk1/ directory
it still starts up firefox 1 that came with dsl 4.2.5

so basically im afraid to do the fix that was suggested earlier because i have no idea how to actually start the programs without goin to the mydsl menu and nothing usually shows up in the menu unless i go to /tmp/mydsl and run the .uci again

im sry about the newb questions but can someone please help me out here

also i dont know if it makes a difference but im using fluxbox window manager instead of jwm

UCI extensions are mountable compressed applications. They work much better for frugal and other installs than traditional hard drive installs. You can make them persistent in /opt. I wrote how I do it here (scroll to the part about UCIs). In a nutshell: load them, copy their entire directories once mounted to a temporary directory, unmount, then rename (mv) them back to the mount point directory name.
http://lucky13linux.wordpress.com/2007....a-point

I thank you for the response but man im so far lost right now.

you say run this this command first ?

Code Sample

#for mydsl in *.dsl; do mydsl-load $mydsl; done

exactly as is?

as you can tell i have no idea what the hell im doing right now

is there anyway you can dumb the process down a couple notches so i can understand?

(like for instance what exactly would i do step by step for a fresh download of the app firefox-2.0-gtk1.uci)

i mean i get the cp and mv commands and i know how to cd to /opt but i have no idea what the $ infront of $mydsl means and the *.dsl (i should change this to *.uci right?)

do i remove the # sign ?
(thats to comment something out isnt it?)

like i said i have no idea what the hell im doing, ive been a windows user up untill about 4 months ago when i decided to switch to ubuntu after hearing about it from a friend
(i liked ubuntu so much i started learning about other distros which is how i found DSL for this old computer that was sitting in the basement for about 8 years)

so far i love this distro, it brought my junk computer back to life!
i just have to learn some of the basics obviously

Okay, that loop will load every file with a .dsl extension. Yes, you can use it if you have multiple UCI extensions by substituting uci for dsl --

for mydsl in *.uci; do mydsl-load $mydsl; done

The # isn't part of the command but signifies the command prompt itself (and usually as root but you want to be user dsl to load extensions). You'll also see others including >, %, and more commonly in Linux $. Yes, the # comments out in scripts and some languages.

The rest of the process is as described. You want to use "cp -Rp" to make a temporary copy of the entire application's directory tree. Then run mydsl-load on each UCI again (or use the loop above again) to umount. Then mv the temporary directories back to where they belong. That will do the trick.

The only "junk computer" is one that can't boot due to hardware failure. If it boots or can be made to boot, it can be put to good use.

thanks man, i actually understand what that did now!

by the way how do you make custom menu entries?

ive figurd out how to make desktop icons but i would like to have my own menus like you did

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