Hi.
Twice now I installed applications from tarballs that required daemons.
It surprised me that in both cases the /etc/someapplicationname.conf was not copied after the ./configure make make install
neither were the /etc/rc.d/initd/somedaemons

So I ended up copying files from the tarball into the right places in /etc and doing a chkconfig.
I know about urpmi and easyurpmi. But sometimes well I go ahead with tarballs.

Anyhow, is this because the locations in /etc are distro specific, so make install cannot copy these files in the right place?
Is it me, or most (all?) INSTALL.txt or README never talk about that finishing step in the installation process to do with the daemons or conf files?
Did I miss something in the documentation?

I am not an absolute newbie anymore, so I can live with this. But it strikes me that the lack of information on this topic may be an unnecessary hurdle for newbie when they start compiling applications from tarballs.

PS: I am talking of clamav 0.87.1 and snort about 1 month old

so after you did a make install, nothing was installed? Did it throw any errors? find out where it put what you installed, the daemons and configs...

You often need to pass an option to the configure step to get a conf file in a place like /etc/. Usually running something like will spit out all the possibilities for the configuration. One of the options you will find in clam AV 0.87.1 in this way is you have an option called "--sysconfdir=", so if you pass in the configure step, you end up with the configuration file clamd.conf in the etc directory.

As for the startup scripts, that varies greatly by distrobution. Some put startup in /etc/rc.d/init.d, some in /etc/init.d, some symlink those 2 directories to each other, some have different locations based on startup levels, so it can be tricky. Often if the make install doesn't give startup installed, there will be a startup script in the install tarball, and you just need to find the right location for it on your system. You can also just create a simple little shell script to do it, and again, find the right place for it.

Peace,
JimBass

Hi, thanks for your replies

No, the whole make install works ok, (I sometimes use checkinstall as well)
clamscan --version for example returns the right version.
It is daemons scripts and conf files that do not get installed

Thanks for the tip. I kind of know about this, but never used it.
I have all my conf files in /etc, so I never bothered changing that option.
I assumed default option should be fine.

Actually you have a point, the conf could have gone to /etc/clam/ for example.
I was looking in /etc and was frustrated that the old conf file had
not been superseeded automatically
(I am not always removing the older version first)
I will have a look again.

Jimbass, this is confirming my "fears".
I could not see how tarballs dealt with that; whereas packaged binaries like
rpms and other do deal with this, but then they are distro specific.

This indeed what I am doing in practice. Copying the daemon from the tarball to the right place.
Thanks for confirming that this is normal.

In conclusion, maybe there is a user error about the conf files.
But there is definetely a "learning issue" about installing daemons.

I was looking at a learning point for newbie, and also whether daemons installation
is documented enough for newbie in tarballs. You are going to say
maybe newbies should not mess with tarballs... or if one use tarball then
one will have learnt that there is daemons files to copy.
I learnt this by trial and error. I am sure some more information could
be added to tarballs to help people learning about this very point.

I will try to come back to the tarballs in question, read the doc again,
and when I have time submit a patch to the documentation.
The pdf for clam is rather comprehensive, and I read it quickly a few times.
I just think the INSTALL or README files could do with just a bit more info
or a reference to the ad-hoc section of the main documentation.
Do you think I have "a point", I mean do you think that newbie's learning experience
can be improved on this topic of installing daemons?