Installing from tarball: who? where?
Hi all,
I have another general question about installing software. (I have asked it before, but have never quite grasped this well enough to succeed.)
Some of the Linux magazines include a helpful blurb on the basic procedure, but I seem to need just a bit more information. I have noticed that some of my failed attempts to install from source have lead to "unowned files" hanging around in my /root or some other directory. I guess that might result from something I forgot to do when trying to unpack the tarball.
So: when you gurus of MEPIS install software from source, where do you go to unpack the tarball? What is the ownership/permissions for that directory and for the tarball before you unpack it? I take it that one should not run as root until the last step? Yet presumably the source should go in /usr/src or someplace like that?
feheeszeno
I do not install from source
I do not install from source too often, but when I do, instead of 'make install' I use 'checkinstall' (get it from the repos). Checkinstall will create a deb file and update the dpkg database, so apt-get will be aware of the installed app. That implies you can also easily uninstall or transport the deb to another PC.
Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question
And now I seem to have much worse problems
Hi, carlops,
Thanks, but my question was why on the few occasions I tried to install from a tarball, I wound up with directories containing long lists of unowned files. The instructions I have seen never mention what user unpacks the tarballs or where they are put, and I guessed that failure to guess the right answer led to my problem (probably this would not explain the larger problem, that I almost never succeed in installing anything from source.)
Actually, as of a few days ago it seems my problems are far worse: now it seems that I can't even use apt-get anymore. It looks like the repositories let me log in but then my connection hangs. Unfortunately I can't paste in the dialog from kpackage, the GUI I use because its "test" install feature has helped me avoid disastrous breakages in the past.
Has anyone been experiencing a similar problem with apt?
feheeszeno
I would suggest installing
I would suggest installing Synaptic for installing packages, it will show the dependencies and everything it will do before you commit them so you can stop before anything actually happens.
As for the repos, could you post the content of the /etc/apt/sources.list file?
My /etc/apt/sources.list
It just changed due to a suggestion made in another thread, but it now reads:
# See sources.list(5) for more information
# This file should be edited through synaptic
# Primary Debian package pool, free but often unstable
# deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib non-free
# MEPIS apt pool - specific packages available on-line
deb http://apt.mepis.org/3.4/ etch main
# mplayer
# deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ etch main
# deb http://security.debian.org/ sarge/updates main contrib non-free
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
# deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
feheeszeno