Need Serious Help With Tar And Gzip!! Please!
 

Hello everyone. Well as the subject states, im having a bugger of a time figuring out tar and gzip files. Basically, I was trying to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on my RH 7.2 box. I was pretty sure I was doing it correctly, but when I thought i was done, there was no place on my desktop or start menu to start up Acrobat Reader. Let me try and recreate what I did:

Downloaded the file. File was something along the lines as linux-acrobat.tar.gz

So, from what I have read (and I may have it backwords or completely wrong) the command I did was:
tar -xzvf <filename>

It created the directory and I went in and read the Installguide.txt file. It told me to run a file, which I did and I walked through a little process; license agreement, directory to install.

So I thought that was it. But after that, there was no place for me from my desktop or startmenu to launch adobe acrobat.

If someone could please help me out here and tell me what Im doing/did wrong, I would be very much thankful.

Also, if anyone has a url on how to install software in tar and tgz format, that would be great as well.

Thanks everyone. Looking forward to your posts.

Jas

it won't add menu links by default, make them yourself if you really need them. always easier to laod things like that from console tho. fair enough if you don't want to use console tho.

but from a console just type acroread, and if it's installed right, it'll appear

In response to your question about how to install tar and tgz formats, some of them have some unique program to run such as the one you must mentioned in the install guide text file that came with that package. Most of them that ships the source will can be installed by running the configure script, the make utility, and the "make install" option.

After opening the package you will going the appropriate subdirectory created and run "./configure". Then you'll run "make", then you'd run "make install". There will be some Readme and other guide steps to assist you in customizing it and running the binaries.

I don't always run Linux in the GUI mode, but I believe you would locate the binary and manually add it to your desktop or GUI menu.

Finally, you can check the directory where you told the program to install the package for a binary file to run. If you run the program the say way you ran the install script (by typing in the name, "./filename") that should be an immediate start.

-- L. James

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L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
http://www.apollo3.com/~ljames