/opt/lampp/lampp start Not Accessible

[Philip G. Duffy]

Perhaps I need some help in ruling out a cause of this problem in XAMPP. I believe mine is a standard install in /opt/lampp and I can do an ls -l of that directory which identifies the existence of the lampp script with rwx permissions for the user. In addition, I am logged in as su, so I should be able to do anything that is possible with that script. When I enter the command lampp start, I get the error, 'Command not found'.

I have never seen such behavior in the Unix/Linux operating systems before, but perhaps I am missing something very basic. Can anybody identify the problem, or even assure me that I have something really seriously wrong in my OS?

I appreciate any assistance, ideas or even condolence.

Phil

[Wiedmann]

When I enter the command lampp start, I get the error, 'Command not found'.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html#378

[Philip G. Duffy]

Prefixing lampp start with the absolute path /opt/lampp is important. Normally changing directory to /opt/lampp and then issuing the command lampp start will generate the 'Command not found' response because the normal behavior of Linux is not to allow commands to be executed from the current directory for security reasons. During my investigation of this, I came across the following in a reference book on Linux:

"Note that the current directory . is not listed [in the PATH]. It is important that the current directory NOT be listed for reasons of security. Hence, to execute a command in the current directory, we hence always ./<command>.”

It appears this is yet another instance of differences between Unix/Linux and Windows, since the latter allows a command to be executed from the current directory.