Okay, I'm stumped. The only servers I've ever worked with have been Slackware machines, and now I'm helping out some folks who have something else entirely. I'm trying to get the only text editor I've ever used (jove) installed, but I can't compile it (cc: Command not found).

Now, I've configured, compiled, and installed stuff on the Slackware machines I've used, so I know a little. And if I'm not mistaken, this means that the makefile didn't find a compiler.

So, I downloaded the latest gcc. But it needs a compiler as well. Yay. Catch 22s are fun.

So in my searching, I found this in /proc/version:
Linux version 2.4.9-e.65 (bhcompile@tweety.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 2.96 Now, I haven't ever really used /proc/version (since all the machines I've dealt with have been identical), but this seems to indicate to me that gcc _is_ installed on the machine (and it also seems to indicate that this is a RedHat box, but correct me if I'm wrong). I did a "find /* | grep 'gcc'" and didn't find anything.

Could this mean that my ssh login simply doesn't have permissions to use gcc (this is my first time using ssh rather than telnet or just shell, too, so this isn't familiar territory either)? Or is there more to it? And if this doesn't necessarily mean that gcc is installed, how can I install gcc without a compiler and without physical access to the machine (to install from the RH or whatever disks)?

Thanks in advance (yet again) for the help!

The gcc version in /proc/version just indicates which version of gcc this kernel was compiled with, and the "red hat linux 7.2..." indicates what machine the kernel was compiled on.
Kernels can be redistributed after compilation, so you still know nothing about which or whether there is a gcc on that particular machine...

Try the command "which gcc" or "whereis gcc". But since your "find" didn't turn up anything, there's probably no gcc on the system.

What you could try is to download binary package of gcc and extract it manually... With some luck this could be found on the web. If there is choice, pick a "statically linked" version: the executable will be a bit bigger, but there will be less problems with libraries etc...

Good luck!