Installation of apps "the basics"
 

Im using suse 8.2 for a while now on & off...and have managed to do various things on it i.e. samba, mounting, and installing apps but i havent really fully understood the different ways of installing applications and the types of them.

For example: whats the difference between src.rpms & rpms, tar files and where they get installed to where should you run them, do they have to be run from a exact location? Im abit confused, bless the person who answers my awkward questions :)

I'll take a stab at it.

RPM - Precompiled binary form of the program along with header information telling the RPM program how to install it.

SRC RPM - It's actually an RPM of the source code for the program: the rpm manager must compile it to install it.

TAR - A "tarball" (*.tar.gz, *.tgz, *.tar.bz2) is just a collection of files. Generally, if you download a tarball, it's the source, which you must then compile and install. Usually, all you need to do is:
Not all programs use this format, but so many do. Make test is optional and not supported in all makefiles. The "z" in the tar command tells it to uncompress with gzip, substitute with "j" for .tar.bz2 and "Z" for .tar.Z.

I hope this has answered some of your questions.

Great stuff....one quick question...how do i know where the programs will be installed either of the file types, as recently i downloaded amsn, it was the src.rpm all i did was

rpm -ivh amsn.src.rpm

I looked for the program everywhere and evenually found it under the srpms folder under the suse linux 386 folder, in there were just a bunch of tar files???i think

Well, honestly, I'm not sure though I'm sure someone else will help you. I've never really worked with an RPM based distribution :) My guess is all source rpms end up in that directory and binary rpms end up in standard locations (libs in /lib, bins in /usr/bin, etc.)

Ok no probs...but for example if i downloaded a source tar file of an install do i have to uncompress it in the shell commands and can i compile it anywhere i prefer on the system?

*.src.rpm end up in /usr/src/packages. This is devided into several subfolders. The structure of these folders may become evident if you study the process of building rpm packages (see man rpm ;) ). After compiling the package, the binary rpm can be found in /usr/src/packages/RPMS.

But to make matir's point clear: you cannot install a *.src.rpm the usual way with Yast! It will not appear as 'installed' in the rpm database. Always try to get *.ix86.rpm packages (they make life much easier ;) )

RPMS are packaged as binary rpms (eg package-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm) and source rpms (eg package-1.0.0-1.srpm). What you installed is a source rpm thats supposed to be rebuilt into an rpm. You need to install only binary rpms unless you need to recompile the source rpm for a specific reason.

Thanks alot guys....