help running and installing a program!
 

ok so I'm still partially a linux newbie. Long story short, I'm a university student and the videocard crashed on my windows gaming pc. I have no money to replace it, so I'm now using my backup linux rig as my main rig. Formerly I used the linux rig just for surfing the net and as a folding@home machine.

I have to install a program called Jexam that allows me to do homework assignments online and submit them, etc. So here is what I did. Btw, googling this doesnt result in much since the program is relatively unheard of.

downloaded program
open console
sudo sh (I'm on ubuntu dapper)
cd into directory where I downloaded the file
sh ./install.bin

ok so it launches a GUI installer and it proceeds to install the program to /root/JExam (this is the default location). So now I need to figure out how to run the program. Is there a way to launch the program without being in the directory? I couldnt find one so I did the following

open console
sudo sh (since it's in root I assume I must log in as root)
cd /root/JExam
./JExam

The last command yields "./JExam: Too many levels of symbolic links". I did a little research and if I understand correctly, and I probably don't, that means that there is a problem because the folder name and program name are the same. So my real question is, how can I fix this problem? Would it be better to install it elsewhere or rename some files? Any help would be appreciated! Sorry if the post is a bit long I'm just trying to be specific. Thanks in advance.

Hmmm, sounds like the installer for that program got confused. What if, instead of running the installer as root, you run it as your normal user and try change the installation location to somewhere you have write access - e.g. somewhere under your home folder, and then run it from there?

Thanks for replying. I just installed it as a normal user into my home directory. I can now access the folder normally, but it still results in "too many levels of symbolic links". If I click on the program in the folder it gives me a message 'The Link "JExam" is Broken. Move it to Trash?' I think perhaps there is a problem with the installer.

Sounds like it. Where is the link to JExam pointing to. If you do a

ls -al

on the command line in the folder where the link is, what is the output? This should tell you the full path of the link and might give a clue where it is going wrong. If you go into the JExam folder (or one of it's subfolders maybe) is there an executable file you can run there instead?