Problem installins apps
 

OK I have downloaded a couple of apps. They have extension xxxx.tar.gz.

I went to the terminal and if I type ./configure --prefix=/usr (as in the case of SuperKaramba), I get the message "no such file or directory (I am by the way in [my_name@localhost my_name]

What am I doing wrong?

Many thanks
JC

Did you unpack and untar the files first? A .tar archive (called a tarball) is a collection of files. Most tarballs, like this one, are compressed to make the filesize smaller. A popular compressionformat is GZip (.gz). Hence the extension .tar.gz.

To use the files you must unzip and untar them. You can do both at once with the following command:

# tar -xvfz archivenamehere.tar.gz (don't write the #)

Probably this creates a new directory 'archivenamehere' which contains your files.

Change to that directory:

# cd archivenamehere

After you've read 'INSTALL', 'README' etc. you can start installing you're program:

# ./configure (use ./configure --help to see the available options for configuring the program)
# make
# make install.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Thanks Maarten, OK it is still not working, I am probably doing something wrong.

First do I use the terminal or the command line (Alt + F2) to run the script? (I like to know the difference between these two if there is one, but maybe later)

When you say "archivenamehere.tar.gz", do I actually type archive + the name of the file (I have tried both BTW).

Thanks
JC

In the case of Superkaramba, don't use a prefix because its a KDE app and it will search for the right prefix on its own.

Lets say you have a package calleed package-1.0.tar.gz. You download it and store it in a directory called download in your /home directory. To install it you would

• Start a console (termainal emulator)
• Change to the directory you downloaded the file e.g.
  $cd downloads
• extract the file e.g.
  $tar -zxvf package-1.0.tar.gz
  a direcory called package-1.0 will be extracted from package-1.0.tar.gz
• change into package-1.0 e.g.
  $cd package-1.0
• do the following
  $./configure
  $make
  $su -c "make install"

Always read the installation instructions because they don't always conform to the standard. for KDE packages don't use a prefix, the configure script searches for the right one, but on mandrake you may have to do "./configure --prefix=`kde-config --prefix`"

Thanks reddazz, that worked!! I don't know but in the first post Maarteen gave me the command "-xvfz" a typo maybe?? Or is this a different one from your one?

Thanks again
JC

Sorry about that. My hangover is bugging me... Indeed a typo. Should be -zxvf.

Great that it worked. Enjoy your program!

Thanks Maarten, don't worry about the typo, happens to me every day!

JC