Hi everyone.
I'm trying to install an app called kstars (it's my first try at installing something)
I untarred ok and read the install notes.
It mentioned that I should ./configure with the prefix of $KDEDIR.

I got this using 'which konqueror' Is that right?
and then did ./configure --prefix=/usr

This seemed to work ok. I then ran 'make'

This ends up with the following lines

make[1] leaving directory '/home/karl/kstars-0.6/kstars'
make*** [all-recursive-am] Error 2

That's it ! What am I doing wrong ?
I've tried several times with no sucess

I also have 2 other real newbie questions:
1. How do you read a file, like install from the terminal window?

2. Assuming I get an app to install how will I run it? I understand you don't get exe files like in windows so what should I expect?

Any hints, tips or help gratfully received.

I can't answer all your questions well, but I will try.

I believe Error 2 is a file not found error. Make is trying to find a file that isn't in the place it expects. Presumably you have the wrong path for $KDEDIR, $KDEDIR does not exist, or there is a typo in the path. Try running echo $KDEDIR to see what it returns.

As a sidenote, anything in all caps preceeded by a dollar sign is an environment variable setting. You can use the echo command to display just the single variable, or use env or set to show what variables are set in your environment.

1. To 'read' files from the terminal window, there are a few options. The first would be cat. Example:

cat filename

If the output is more than a screen, it will keep scrolling. You can use the more command to display output one page at a time. Example:

cat filename | more

The second command would be the more command alone if you anticipate the output is longer than a page. Example:

more filename

A third command would be the editor vi (short for view). With this very powerful editor you can move around within the document and search for specific words or phrases as well. Example:

vi filename

If you get trapped in a vi session, hit the escape key, followed by the colon key followed by the letter q followed by the exclamation point (!) and hit enter. This will exit the vi session

I am sure there are other ways to read files, but these are the most common. For more specific detail, run the following commands:

man cat
man more
man vi

2. *nix does not suffer from the same problems that plague windows executable files, meaning a file doesn't have to have a .com, .exe, or .bat extension to run. Any file on a *nix (this includes unix and linux) can be marked as executable. This means you can run it by just typing the filename at the command line, assuming it has executable permissions.

Here is a link to some info regarding file permissions. There is too much detail for me to go into to explain it.

www.linux.com/howto/Security-HOWTO-5.html

You use the chmod command to change file permissions, so do a man chmod to get more info on that.

Hope this helps.

Ryan

That's great, thanks very much for taking the trouble to answer.

I'll have to go away and try your suggestions.

It could be a problem with the configure step, such as a missing dependency. Have a look at config.log in the source dircetory for any error messages or warnings.