Cygwin commands don't work

Question

I'm sorry that my question seems rather vague but this is the entire problem i'm facing. I tried installing an rpm package on cygwin after downloading it from the website but i always get the same error

-bash: rpm: command not found

and I have reinstalled it twice, but i always get the same problem, and it's not just that, i can't even use simple commands like ls. Even if i write ls I get no output. This is what my screen looks like.

User@User-PC ~
$ rpm -ivh avr-binutils-2.17tinyos-3.cygwin.i386.rpm
-bash: rpm: command not found

User@User-PC ~
$ locate rpm | grep bin

User@User-PC ~
$ 

User@User-PC ~
$ ls

User@User-PC ~
$

what do I do to fix this?

Answer 1

First, locate does not auto-update itself; you must run updatedb periodically to get the current list of files. For optimal speed and usability, add the --prunepaths and --prunefs switches.

Second, try echo $PATH to see the current path, and call ls with a fully-qualified pathname: /bin/ls -l

I suspect ls is set to an invalid alias or internal function (bad command parameters). Check the contents of ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc, and ~/.profile .