Am a newbie to Linux. I am trying to build sane-backends from source. Ubuntu-Breezy Badger.
1. Following the directions given elsewhere on this site, I got as far as ./configure when the
error: no acceptable compiler found in $PATH
popped up.
I dont know how to modify $PATH to include /usr/lib/gcc.

2. Also the command "man make' got me "no manual entry for make." Found a make.gz or some such in man(1) but was told I dont have permissions to extract it.

I would be grateful if someone explained how I can work around this rude behavior.

treader

/usr/lib/gcc is not the executable gcc, it is library files. The gcc program that should be in your $PATH is usually found in /usr/bin/gcc, which on my system is a symbolic link to /usr/bin/gcc-4.0.

The fact that it isn't in your standard $PATH is somewhat odd for a Debian based system, but I guess it can happen. I thought that only occurred in Fedora/Redhat systems when you configured it for desktop only.

In any case, the way to resolve it is to open up synaptic or a terminal and update, then install gcc. If /usr/bin/gcc already exists, then try and see if /usr/bin is not there, although it always should be.

Peace,
JimBass

Thank you, JimBass.
After opening the graphical file viewer, and expanding the file system tree, I found that this distro never installed gcc. I found gcc-4.0.deb on the cdrom I burned from the download, but have no idea how to install that kind of file.
I still don't know how to modify $PATH, but thats kinda not an issue right now.
I reviewed as much as I could stand of the install log, and it seems that the feller Ubuntu assigned to build the install method did nnot have his dependencies in anything like the proper order.
At this point, I am going to download the latest Ubuntu distro, and see if they have repaired the mess.
Why am I going through this heartburn? I got a used Procomm cd tower server at auction, and Ubuntu is the first os that recognized all 105
cdrom drives.

Once again, thanks.
treader- one step at a time

Dude you're talking about reinstalling because you don't have one file installed? All you need to do is go to the directory where the .deb file is, and install it. .deb is a debian package installer. The command to install the file (if the name you gave is correct) would be to become root, and issue the command Now gcc has many dependencies which you may not have. I would suggest using apt-get or aptitude to install gcc. The command to do that (from any directoy) would be:
Peace,
JimBass

I have not responded because I installed RoboForm on my Windoze computer (I don't yet know how to connect Linux to the the internet, absent any Linux assistance from my ISP) The instructions supplied with Roboform do not match with the program behavior, allowing me to lock myself out of various sites with strong password protection

I am now running Dapper Drake Flight 5 Alpha on the other machine, and after visiting wiki.ubuntu.com/CompilingEasyHowTo I found that a file named build-essential is not installed by default. Once installed, I can both read man pages and install sane-backends. The os still doesn't know that the scanner is there, but one step at a time.

apt-get depends on the machine having internet access, right? It doesn't, and I still haven't got samba-server & samba-client to talk to the Windoze machine.

dpkg appears to be helpful. Must read the man page on that.

Thank you for your patient assistance
treader

Apt-get does indeed depend on internet access. You can also have apt-get try to find what it needs on the CDRom that you installed from, but what you need to install gcc "might" not be there. In the 4 or so years I have been working on linux machines, I have never had to work on one without internet.

The fact that samba client can't talk to the windows machines and you don't have internet sounds like they come from the same problem. Internet usually requires going out of your network card and into your /hub/switch/router or what have you, and samba also requires going out the same network card and into the same hub/switch/router etc.

I suspect that either ubuntu doesn't recognize your network card, you didn't configure the network card correctly, or you may have some physical problem, like a bad network card, bad cable, or bad port in the hub.

Assuming you have a normal internal network card, and not anything fancy like a usb card, or a wireless card, try issuing the command The last line of my lspci says: Look through your lspci, and see if it finds any ethernet card. If it does, then check if it is the card you have. If it doesn't find the card, then you have the root of your problem. Normally ubuntu is pretty good about hardware detection, but nothing is perfect. You could try running knoppix or any of the other live-on-cd linux distros, and checking if they auto-detect and correctly use your ehternet card.

If it is something like you set your card to accept a dhcp address, but you don't have a dhcp server running on your router or whatever, than that is also a major problem. try doing and seeing what your IP address is. If you get an actual address from /sbin/ifconfig, can you ping the gateway? probably not or you would have internet.

By the way, samba client usually works fairly easily out of the box with just a little configuration. Samba server is not so friendly. That's not to say you can't do it, but it seems like you're pretty new to linux, and getting samba server running is not a basic operation. If it is just a simple workgroup kind of thing then it isn't too bad, but if you have some higher level thing like a domain running, and you want samba to replace the domain controller, you're in for a major uphill battle. Replacing an existing domain controller with a samba box was probably the toughest thing I have ever done on linux.

Peace,
JimBass