Installing from source -- "no such file or directory"
 

want to install Firefox and Thunderbird (both are tar.gz archives downloaded from mozilla website).
did the RTFM'ing (tuxfiles - chapter on installing software from source), where the instructions said (this applies to both Firefox and Thunderbird):

# tar xvzf filename.tar.gz
# cd filename
# ./configure
# make
# make install

Easy right? Yeah, right :-)
here's what I get:

# tar xvzf filename.tar.gz - OK
# cd filename - OK
# ./configure - bash: ./configure: No such file or directory

Here's the content of the readme.txt in Firefox directory (when unpacked):

For information about installing, running and configuring Firefox
including a list of known issues and troubleshooting information,
refer to: http://getfirefox.com/releases/

On the website, I haven't been able to find any pointer or explanation.

Any thoughts? What is causing the problem, some kind of a dependency conflict, or maybe a missing package? I am confused so any help will be appreciated.

I believe the new Firefox and Thunderbird (versions 1.5 and above) don't actually require building from source. I think you just downlaod it and untar it. Then type ./firefox (or ./mozilla-firefox, I don't remember which) from the directory to run it. Same for thunderbird. Also, in general, by convention you install a package like this into /opt or /usr/opt.

What distro are you using? Someone might have already created a package for your distro.

Is there a file named 'configure' in the 'filename' directory? Is the file chmod'd executable? Does the partition it is on allow execution of files?

pljvaldez:
thanks a lot for such a quick response - it's pretty incredible how fast I can get responses!
fyi, SuSe 10.0 is my distro.
when I did like you suggested (Thunderbird), I did not get an "installation" dialogue (in the form you'd be expecting this process to look like in Windows XP) - instead, it looked like Thunderbird was simply going through a setup procedure, asking my POP and SMTP servers etc.
is that alright? I checked in the "About Thunderbird" section and it says "version 1.5" so I presume the newer version has installed.
otherwise, I will concur with what you said - the fact it works is good enough for me - many thanks indeed

celejar:
no there isn't such a file in the directory.

Sounds like it's working right. Like I said, it doesn't require you install or build from source. You downloaded the binary file in the tar.gz and you just untar it and it should work (and sounds like it does). Same for Firefox. Now there may be some tricks later on that you'll want to do to make firefox your default web browser and make thunderbird your default mail agent. But those will probably be suse specific and I don't know much about Suse.

Anyway, if you ever want to uninstall Firefox or Thunderbird, all you have to do is delete the folder you untarred and it will go away.

pljvaldez:
nope, it does not work-well it works but not quite the way I would like it to. I'll explain:
# tar xzvf firefox.tar.gz
# cd firefox
# ./firefox
After this, Firefox starts up and you can see it's a newer version (1.5). BUT. Executing ./firefox, it seems, starts a firefox instance from WITHIN the Firefox directory, which directory is located in my home directory. Which I don't like. I'd much prefer having Firefox installed in a directory where it's supposed to reside (be it /opt/MozillaFirefox or elsewhere). I simply can't get used to having program directories sitting in my /home directory :-) And I somehow get the feeling it is not a good place for them to be.
Once I delete the Firefox directory, everything rolls back, i.e. I get the old 1.0.6 version which came pre-installed with SuSe.
Any thoughts?

You untarred the archive in your home directory, so of course it's going to be in there. Move it to wherever you like and then untar it there, e.g.

$ mv firefox-1.5.tar.gz /opt
$ cd /opt
$ tar zxvf firefox-1.5.tar.gz

tar probably has an option to untar to another directory, without having to move the file there but I'm not sure. You'll need write access to the directory you want to move to (and untar the file in), so you may need to become root.

Move that directory anywhere that you want and then run the binary. If you would like you can create an entry for it in your menu or elsewhere and just point it to the binary.

mv the folder to the /opt directory. You'll probably then have to uninstall the version that came with suse and recreate some symlinks to point it to the firefox you installed.

Or here's a thread with a link to the rpm for suse.

many thanks guys for keeping with me. I suspected I should have moved the program's directory to /opt but was not sure. I still sometimes think in a Windows logic. And sure enough, I have a long way to read!

cheers.

It does, -C, e.g.

P.S. The -v option to tar lists every file as it unpacks it. This slows down the process by 2 or 3 times since writing to the terminal is hugely slower than writing to disk. Thus, I personally never use the -v option since I've got better things to do. If I want to see what's in a tarball I just look at it with less before untarring it.