Help with tar.gz files...
 

Hey guys its me the n00b of all n00bs.. dont worry im writing all this info down that you give me... ill learn soon.

i downloaded some themes for kde from kde-look.org, i have some xmms plugins and wine all in tar.gz folders. When i extract them i see all kinds of files but none execute. how do i go about installing these files? please describe in great detail :)


AND........why? do the files that say "xmms-esd-1.2.8-1.i386.rpm" work for my redhat? i have i686 ??

is that why some arent working right? i right click install packages and then type password then nothin pops up or it freezes and i have to reboot.

with tar.gz files do i always need to open terminal and type make or make install or whatever? i am confused about that stuff but i seemed to get it once. so ill keep trying.

Whenever you extract files from a tar archive look for a file called something like "README" or "readme.txt". If there isn't one then look for it at the source of the archive (ftp directory or whatever). Often it's simply a matter of unpacking the archive into the correct location (and that's probably the case with your kde themes) and other times there will be a script called "install" that you run, but there is no golden rule for unpacking tar archives. Sorry, yes there is: look for and read the documentation. I don't mean that to sound flippant, that just is what you should do.

i386, i486, i586 and i686 all refer to different types of intel chips. For most software packages you don't need different versions for the different architectures because they don't explicitly use any of the specialised functions that distinguish the chips. For that reason only one rpm is prepared for all of them. I guess they call it i386 to show upward compatability.

The only exceptions I can think of off-hand are the kernel and the glibc packages, but there are probably others too.

I don't know what the cause of your third problem is, but it sounds like you're using a gui to manage all your packages. Read the manpages for rpm (and tar) and try installing, as root, from the command line. At the very least you should get more informative error messages.

Good luck,

John

lol yeah... i tried to install some rpm's and i got a blank line then the command line again... nothin happened.. but i have a few that freeze my redhat and stay open and dont install.

ill messs with it.. i dont know why it freezes.. bah!! thanks

usually when you install an rpm you use rpm -i file and youll get like this

bash-2.05b$ rpm -i file.rpm

bash-2.05b$

cause it does everything for you

i just find it easier to right click install it. but ill do the text so i can see the error messages from now on.. thanks

when everything goes properly in the terminal, in most cases, you don't see anything. Don't keep retrying it.
rpm -ivh file
is the one you should use if you want a nice progress bar (what kind of progress bar can you expect in a text console?) and verbose messages.

and make sure that the computer is really freezing.. it could just be a rpm that takes a long time. use rpm -ivh and everything should be clearer

lol thanks... dont worry im writing all this down.