Hi all - right - first ever linux question so please be gentle!

I've been an IT consultant for over 20 years over on the "other side" and somehow have managed to avoid Linux for my entire career. I finally decided it was past time I had a go, as my company's software is java based and cross-platform.

I generally demo our software on VMWare but Windows is such a bloat that it's a bit of a nightmare to demo, and have seen some of my colleagues' demo on Linux and it is just so much faster.

We have a corporate RHEL license so I had a RHEL Deesktop version 5 CD, built a VMWare image and installed with no problems at all.

I then tried to install VMWare tools which straight away tells me I am missing a c++ compiler. I also tried my own companies' software installer and this also requires this package.

So it looks like what I need is the gnu c compiler package, but I am at a loss as to exactly what package to download, from where, and how to install it?

I am sure something like this should be obvious but I've googled til I'm blue in the face and still am drawing a blank! I found and downloaded gcc-3.4.6.8.src.rpm but that doesn't install.

Help!

Thanks in advance,

Ken

Hey Ken, welcome.

Does it not install or doesn't install what you want it to? It probably puts the source FOR the compiler in /usr/src/redhat/something-or-other.

Anyway, yum is a great tool.

You got it! Enjoy Linux.

The package name for Redhat EL 5.x is ' gcc-c++ '

# yum install gcc-c++

Oops, sorry.

Hi
If you want the whole GNU c compiler pkg. simply type:

'

If you ONLY want to install gcc-c++ do what the previous post says.

By the way, the pkg you downloaded by yourself was the source rpm, not the binary.
Just let yum do all the work.

I found similar advice elsewhere online and tried it with no joy - here's what happens:

#yum install gcc
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
This system is not registered with RHN.
RHN support will be disabled.
Setting up Install Process
No package gcc available.
Nothing to do

I get the same error with g++ and gcc-c++.

I am logged on as root.

Update - also just to point out I found the gcc rpm's on the CD but that didn't help either - if I try and install e.g. gcc44-4.4.0-6.ei5.i386.rpm I get an error like:
Missing Dependency: libgomp.so.1 is needed by package...
Missing Dependency: glibc-devel>= 2.2.90-12 is needed by package...

I do not have these packages on my CD. there is no libgomp at all, and the nearest to glibc-devel is glib-devel which is 2.12.3 so not >=2.2.90 as stated.
I tried http://www.rpmfind.net and can't find what I need there either.

gcc44 is the less usable of the choices.

The system gcc is version 4.1.2
disk2 : gcc-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm

disk 2 : libgomp-4.3.2-7.el5.i386.rpm

disk 2 : glibc-devel-2.5-34.i386.rpm , which is >=2.2.90
where " >= " means 2.2.90 or a later version.

from my Redhat EL 5.3 index :

grep gcc 53-RHEL-disk-*
53-RHEL-disk-1:libgcc-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:compat-gcc-34-3.4.6-4.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:compat-gcc-34-c++-3.4.6-4.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:compat-gcc-34-g77-3.4.6-4.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:compat-libgcc-296-2.96-138.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:gcc-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:gcc-c++-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:gcc-gfortran-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-2:gcc-java-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-3:gcc-gnat-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-3:gcc-objc++-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-3:gcc-objc-4.1.2-44.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-3:gcc43-4.3.2-7.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-3:gcc43-c++-4.3.2-7.el5.i386.rpm
53-RHEL-disk-3:gcc43-gfortran-4.3.2-7.el5.i386.rpm
.....

But with no Redhat support : You are advised to install the
free version of Redhat EL 5 instead , which is CentOS 5.4 .
Then all packages can be installed with # yum install <package>.
.....

P.S. : glib is the 'g'-library, glibc is the 'libc'-library
... two completely different things.
.....

Because your problem is related to your license, you have 2 options:

First is to license your RHEL (If you have not paid for subscription then pay it ad register RHEL on RH Network.

Second is, as already suggested, to install CentOS 5.4 (DVD's came out last night but there is no announcement yet on the main site). It is 100% binary compatible with RHEL of the same version (RHEL 5.4), but also 100% free to use.

CentOS is not an option because - compatible or no - it has not been certified by our QA department for use with our software, so I can't demo our software to customers on that platform. Just one of those corporate policy things.

Anyway - initial problem now solved - finally found the person in our ITS department who has the user/password for our corporate subscription and got registered, but by that point I'd given up and reinstalled Red Hat, and selected all of the development options which of course fixed my initial gcc problem.

I then ran into some other problems as it appears "shared drives" on VMWare don't work with RHEL and the software I need to install was on a USB drive so I had to install NTFS support. That was much less painless with the RHN registration sorting out the dependencies.

Now got to a point where I can begin the installation and of course now the VM has just randomly stopped seeing the network! AaaAAAaaRrrgh! I know Windows is frustrating but this is just doing my head in.

I use Sun Microsystems VirtualBox (open source) for my office PC and notebook. I do not like VMWare, and everything is working with VirtualBox, both network and shared files (you need to install Guest Addons for that (need development tools ;-) ).

Hey, maybe you also need something like Guest Addons to install in VMWare.

For my server, I use KVM (I have KVM version 84 for CentOS/RHEL 5.x) with accompanying tools, but Host must be Linux.

Ken_1969, welcome to LQ and Linux. Sorry you're having a tough time of it.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest advantages of FOSS is the freedom part, and with your mandated RHEL use and (hopefully resolved) licensing issues you're missing out on half the fun and most of the control. The take home message (for me) is that bureaucracy can make even a good OS behave badly.

I haven't seen VMWare randomly stop seeing the network and I have no idea about why shared drives don't work on RHEL. You could install samba on the host and add a network card between host and client and accomplish the same thing. What I mean, of course, is that I could do it using slackware (or CentOS I'm sure), I don't know if RHEL and your IT people will let you install samba....

I think he uses Windows host, and RHEL guest, since he mentioned needed NTFS support (kmod kernel module for ntfs from elrepo repository or fuse- ntfs-3g from RPMForge is all you need for NTFS support, 5-10 minutes max) and main problem was RHN license disabling him to upgrade and install needed packages. Once development tools are installed and VMWare tools are compiled and installed, everything should run smoothly.

Ken, RHEL is not the distro you can just jump in and not have issues, but ones you master the importing things you will be very happy with it. My suggestion to you is to also follow CentOS community forums and tutorials, since (for the sake of the argument) you can install CentOS, change just several packages (release rpm, rpm with yum repo files and few others, update/upgrade and your CentOS will be converted to purebred RHEL system. All third party repositories for CentOS 5.x and packages for it are marked "el5" and fit both distro's without exception.

Hmm, good catch, you're probably right. Still, he could probably still set up a separate virtual network card to his host to communicate with the infamous "Windows network". I have to say my experience with the Windows network is that it works unpredictably whether in this situation with a client VM or even with several Windows machines.

I do maintainance of ~100 Windows-es in several company's in my town. I do not see much issue concerning their networks. Not as good as Linux of course, but I hardly have any problems with network. VMWare should not pose any problems either.

We just have to wait and see what is next problem.