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want to move over to Linux but 2 or 3 apps in the Windows environment are vital... one is autohotkey... want to find whether xnee/cnee is an adequate substitute.
so I went to Synaptic, found xnee in the list... installed this package... looking at the "getting started" section in the manual found here: http://www.sandklef.com/xnee/?q=node/13
but bash tells me "cnee" (command line component of xnee) is "not found"
did whois cnee and locate cnee... no joy
nor is cnee listed in the Synaptic package list...
I'm struggling... help! Does this mean I have to download & install a package "manually" or sthg? BTW I'd personally prefer to download & install things "manually" from "tarballs" or whatever... how d'you do this in Linux? *should* you do it?
Have you tried whereis cnee, which cnee,r ls /usr/bin/cn*, man xnee or even simply cnee?
Quote:
Does this mean I have to download & install a package "manually" or sthg? BTW I'd personally prefer to download & install things "manually" from "tarballs" or whatever... how d'you do this in Linux? *should* you do it?
No, you are using the wrong commands.
Installing from sources can be done in a number of ways. The most generic approach is to visit a site that hosts an application, download the tarball and extract it. Then you should check the extracted folder for a readme/install file containing instructions but most of the time you can simply use these commands:
./configure
make
make install
There is a good chance that ./configure will be aborted. The reason is that the compiler needs one or more libraries that you haven't installed yet. Examine the error message and install the library/libraries before resuming compilation. To get the libraries, you'd have to search the net again and compile the library just like the other package. Libraries may require other packages as well so things could be a bit frustrating. There are two solutions:
- install the library/libraries from synaptic
- install the source deb, which will automatically fetch and install any missing library/libraries. Read the manual at the Debian home page for instructions.
Should you install from source? That depends. If you do not mind the extra work and not receiving automatic (security) updates, there is nothing wrong with installing from source. Both issues are irrelevant if you use the debian way (source deb).
yes, I've tried whereis cnee (answer from bash: "cnee:"), and the ls command you suggested... cnee is not present in /usr/bin
thanks for the info about "the source deb"... I'll have to look into this later... understand the point about loading dependencies. My concern is really to be able to plan for a disaster scenario where I have to reinstall everything I need without having (fast) Net access... hence a desire to have installation packages backed up somewhere to hand
meanwhile, have you an idea what's happening with the absent cnee? Am I right in assuming that this should have been installed by Synaptic when the latter installed xnee? I find this confusing... does this sort of thing happen much?
Check to see if you have the "locate" command available. (You may need to do a sudo updatedb command before locate will work.) If you do (or if you install it), a locate -r bin.*nee$ should find commands for you. (The bin.* part is to limit the search to filename that have "bin" before the "nee" at the end.)
Just to see what happens, I downloaded the xnee package from the GNU ftp site and built it. On my system (Fedora 8), the commands were created in /usr/local/bin.
no luck installing that package... I downloaded a file from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xnee/ called xnee-3.02.tar.gz
I then extracted this... in the xnee directory I find three files, distinfo, Makefile and pkg-descr.
in the xnee directory I went Makefile... "command not found"
I went ./configure... "No such file or directory"
I went ./Makefile... "Permission denied"
I've tried switching over to Linux in the past... these sorts of "learning curve" issues have always stymied my attempts... what am I doing wrong?
That means you need to run it as root. Type su - and then the root password first.
Prepare for confusion if you haven't uninstalled the other xnee yet.
By the way, which distro are you using. I seem to have assumed you were using debian, I don't know where I got that idea. If you have Ubuntu, you can install nautilus-gksu, then you can simply right-click a file and run it as administrator, it will pop up an authorization box. But doing it this way means you won't get to see any details if something goes wrong.
then when I went locate -r bin.*nee$, I got
"/usr/bin/xnee"... so would I be right to say that cnee is just not there?
am going to see if I can do the "manual" installation procedure as outlined by you...
Well, the "manual" installation I did only created an xnee command. From the documentation, I think that cnee and pnee are GNOME menu entries and applets, not commands. Since I use KDE rather than GNOME, I don't know if that's what was installed.
The (general) procedure to make an application from source, assuming that the application creator uses the Linux standards (or, more commonly, a Linux IDE), are:
1) Extract the archive to some directory. (I almost always use ~/home/peter/Downloads/Unpacked/ but any directory to which you have write access will do.) Note that the extraction should create a subdirectory of your extraction directory aith several sub-subdirectories.)
2) cd to the subdirectory created by the extraction. Usuall that subdirectory has the same name as the packed file. This is, I think, the step you missed.
3) Enter the command ./configure (The "./" part tells the shell to "look in the current active directory.)
4) Enter the command make (Not "makefile" - that's a file used by make.)
5) Enter the command sudo make install to install the compiled application.
Note that, in order to get the configure command to complete without any errors, you'll need to install several development libraries.
thanks for both these suggestions. Neither worked.
re first suggestion
first I uninstalled xnee using Synaptic. I checked for the presence of the file xnee after this: gone.
after this I typed su[Return] I got asked for a password... but the password I have set up (and which I have used to do other superuser commands) gave the response "su: Authentication failure"
I typed "su [my password] ./Makefile" - I got "Unknown id: [my password]"
I typed "su ./Makefile" - I got "Unknown id: ./Makefile"
the distro I am using is Ubuntu 7.10... from somewhere I have the idea that Ubuntu is built on a Debian chassis... true or false?
re second suggestion:
- no, I had indeed navigated to the xnee directory using cd
- as I said earlier, ./configure gives the reponse "./configure: No such file or directory"
Quote:
in order to get the configure command to complete without any errors, you'll need to install several development libraries.
- sorry, could you be a bit more explicit??? How do I do this? Are the symptoms I'm getting consistent with this as a possible resolution?
when I go to xnee\Makefile with Nautilus and right-click, the option "run" is not present in the pop-up menu... in fact I just did ls -al in this directory... none of these 3 files (Makefile, distinfo and pkg-descr) has any "x"... they are not executable
I think that cnee and pnee are GNOME menu entries and applets, not commands. Since I use KDE rather than GNOME, I don't know if that's what was installed.
strange... this all started off with me trying to follow the "getting started with xnee" pages of the manual for xnee... they definitely are using cnee from the word go after installing xnee... using it from the command prompt... so I don't know anything about "Gnome menu entries and applets"... gratifying that you don't have cnee either though ... could someone with Ubuntu 7.10 (or similar) talk me through the steps leading to acquisition of cnee?
just had a look at Makefile using gedit... these seem to be instructions, (tho I don't know what language... is this basically just a shell language?) involving among other things the installation of cnee...
but what do I do with Makefile?
I just went make Makefile...
response: Makefile:35: *** missing separator. Stop.
First, as I said, Makefile is a data file used by the make command, not an executable.
Second, I just logged in to my Kubuntu distribution and started the Adept Manager. When I searched for xnee it found it with no problem, so I installed it. The xnee command was installed in /usr/bin/xnee, and -- again, as I said -- since I'm using KDE, I don't see any menu item for xnee (i.e., cnee) nor any panel applet (i.e., pnee).
So, if you're using Ubuntu, check your repositories -- xnee should have been there.
perhaps we're talking at cross purposes here or perhaps I'm missing sthg: getting xnee installed is no problem at all... but when I want to follow the opening steps of the xnee PDF manual "getting started"... the "cnee" command is missing. There is no cnee command. This is the problem. There is a Makefile file from the "manually installed" tarball ... which seems to bear some relationship to the installation of cnee, judging from the contents.... but I don't know how to use Makefile... what to do with it, how to make it sing and dance and install stuff.
$ ./configure
<Lots of output, and repeat untill you've got all the necessary libraries installed. ...>
$ make
<...>
$ sudo make install
Password:
<...>
$ whereis xnee
xnee: /usr/local/bin/xnee
However, if you want cnee and the gnee GUI instead, you do this (AGAIN, in the same directory ):
Note that the xnee command line tool has been removed. (Weird, eh?)
As far as I can see, the need to run make twice is never mentioned. But gnee is now up and (presumably) working on me Fedora system. (I say "presumably" because the GUI is displayed, but I didn't try it.)
So, about the development libraries: I needed to install the gtk2 development package and the gnoime applet development package, but I descovered the packages I needed when ./configure complained and I searched for packages contining the libraries it said it wanted.
<edit>
Perhaps this "You have to do make twice" thing is why the repositories only have xnee in them instead of gnee and cnee. I only discovered this by accident.
</edit>
Last edited by PTrenholme; 04-12-2008 at 08:15 PM.
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