Hello All,

I am a very new user to Linux. I have Red Hat 9 running on a machine that shares Windows XP.
As every other new user, my main challenge is installing programs in Linux. I have had success with RPM's and have started working with tar files.

Yesterday, I successfully extracted aXine from source and was able to run the ./configure to attempt the installation. I was excited to see the terminal running the configuration for the first time, but I got an error. It read:

configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

So, I snooped around some Linux forums and figured I needed the gcc package on my system. I downloaded a bunch and can't get them installed.

I found that I actually have gcc296 on my computer at /usr/bin/

What do I do to get a compiler installed or the one I have in the $Path?


Thanks
utopia901

You can install gcc with an rpm. There should be one on your Linux CD's, if not, ask the great seer that is Google.
Check whether you have gcc installed with the command
gcc -v
If it says gcc: command not found then you don't have gcc installed

This gets asked alot.The best way is to find a rpm for your distro.If you really want or need to install from source you may run into dependency problems.Red Hat is a rpm based distro,there are source based distro's also.

Thanks for your quick replies!!
I tried downloading a bunch of gcc rpms. I have about 10 of them, which I have tinkered with.

Once I open one of them, it runs for a second then dissapears. I check my System Log to see if it installed and it hasn't.
From what I have read online, I seems I don't have a compiler installed. How do I install it?

Utopia901

first you want to remove that gcc-2.96, red hat 9 came with gcc-3.x. it's important that you install the red hat 9 gcc rpm's, not just something found at random on the net. Also note that gcc alone will not help you, you need a development environment ( the best place to get all of these is from your install cd's):

autoconf
automake
gcc ( for c)
g++ (for c++ - for other languages there are other frontends)
make
m4
binutils
sed
gawk
libtool
perl
python
bison
kernel-headers ( only required for some packages, note this is not the same thing as the kernel-source package and this package needs to be the original package from your red hat 9 install cd's or from a red hat 9 mirror)

here are a couple very basic rpm commands to get you going:

to upgrade a package ( you should also use this to install too):
to search for a package
see "man rpm" or do "rpm --help" in a console to see the full (long) list of options for rpm.

Thank you all for the help!

I looked in my installation CD and found gcc packages. I didn't find any g++ packages. I tried installing the gcc packages but they didn't work. I don't know what I keep missing here.

The rest of the packages you mentioned show up on my system log where the list of RPMs are. I can't find the kernel header one either.

The gcc runs for a second and dissapears.

A friend of mine mentioned that I needed g++ . But I really checked all my CD's and can't find it.

Help!!

http://download.fedoralegacy.org/redhat/9/os/i386/

it's the package called gcc-c++

edit: make sure you get the libstdc++ and libstdc++-devel packages too