ok on ubuntu almost 95% times i tried to compile source file(.bz,.gz etc) using tar xvzf etc and till ./configure everything goes fine. but then i enter the directory of that software and try to make and make install (as a root ofcourse) but it says "makefile not found" even though i could see "makefile.am and makefile.in in every subdirectory. what could be problem then?? (ok its not always that thoose makefile are present but it do most of times). even the read me file asks me to do the same i.e. "make".

but now what i suppose to do??

It is strange that you say and till "./configure everything goes fine. but then i enter the directory". You should do the ./configure in the directory of the software.

Also, for someone to be able to help you, you should provide a specific example. Take one of the programs that doens't work, and list here the commands that you gave and the results.

MY MISTAKE:
./configure is done after entering the directory.
recently i downloaded clamav.tgz, i extracted it first using tar xvzf filename, then enter that extracted directory and do ./configure. then i become root using "su", and then i do make and got the message "makefile not found" although required makefile "makefile.am and makefile.in was present in every subdirectory.

although i have installed clamav cusing adept but still i want to know why thoose commands did n't worked as it had happened a numerous times.

when you become root, are you still in the correct directory?

some times i become root before everything, in this case i became root after doing the ./configure
and yeah i am still in the correct directory.

does ./configure ends correctly? no errors ?

yes repo it does, as i told its not the first time and i had tried it some 15 days back and now as i am growing up with ubuntu, i am not using this source files anymore although, i am curious why should it not work??

and if i am right, ./configure is just a checking process, not a mandatory one(correct me if i am wrong)

anyways could you help me regarding sound problem in ubuntu, it is much less than windows or other distos like suse.
ok i am going to post it here, it was posted on ubuntu forum but got no help.


thank you for your help

open alsamixer and see if everything is set OK

configure will create the make file

thanx for help and for the correction
but how to use alsamix, i just opened it using terminal and i don't know what to do next,

You should pay attention to the output of the configure script, each line of it. Typically it goes trough things one at a time and prints output like "X found, Y missing, Z ok, ..." and though it should stop at an error, it may well continue to the end even though not everything is as it should in your environment (depending on what's wrong). So read trough the entire output; if it's long, direct it to a file and use less (for example) to read it trough; see that everything is all right before going on. If something is not, fix it, re-run the configure script and so on.. When configure script finishes without errors, makefile should be present (given that you had a non-broken archive and you extracted all files from it) and you should be able to run it. Again, after 'make' read the output and see that everything is ok before continuing..

But really before going into all that, read the usually provided README and, if present, INSTALL files. They tell you what to do to compile the software; it is not always the "./configure && make && make install" process. It may involve automake, other install scripts or whatever the software creator has thought necessary..and in addition to that the files should tell you what you need in order to compile the software, and if it's some software, perhaps even the version or minimum version needed for it to work -- or maybe notes about some versions that are known to cause trouble. A usual reason for configure failing is that some program or library is not present on the system, or the script can't find it (in which case it can be told where it is).

Then another thing is what you can pass to the configure script as arguments. These should be documented in the README/INSTALL files, or if you run
or something similar; it may be that the default values won't do, that you need to override them by giving some special arguments to the script. In most cases you don't need to do that, but sometimes you do.

If the makefile indeed is missing (it's called Makefile, without suffix; capital M in most cases), it sounds like the previous step(s) didn't go all right. You may post the (relevant) output of the previous step(s) if you think it might help, but if it's hundreds of lines, try to cut it down a little..

Sometimes I find that source projects compile "easier" (with less effort) on some distributions than others; Slackware particulary has been a nice one. With some software it *might* matter that Ubuntu (for example) is meant to be more a "desktop OS" than a "developer OS", and so a lot of developer tools are not included in the default installation, which means that one needs to know what to install prior to trying compiling..especially because Ubuntu's installer won't ask you questions about package sets, so you can't just click "C/C++ programming" and have it there (not a bad move with Ubuntu, in my opinion).

navigate with the arrowkeys, and adjust the volume

thanx for sticking around, i think i will try but right know i am almost used to apt-get and adept.
hey could you take a look at the sound problem

thanx again buddy, i should have tried that but my problem is still there, i am looking at similar posts over net and it seems that i have to download some extra lib.
thanx once again

Ty the alsamixer, if that doesn't help, open a new thread for the sound problem.