I have been installing lots of things from tar.gz files and just getting some much needed practice with that. However, today it occured to me that I have no clue how to correctly uninstall this sorta stuff? I have a SusE 8.2 machine and RedHat 9.0, I was wondering whats the command to do this?

Occasionally, you can make uninstall.

Most of the time it's deleting the directory it installed to, the executable or links to it in /bin /usr/bin or some /<otherpath>/bin and it's config file somewhere in /etc.

It will give you practice in reading the configure and install files in the source code.

Most good .tar.gz programs are installed with, finally, make install. Often you will be able to uninstall with make uninstall but you should also be familiar with make distclean. If you're lucky you will be given some advice in the INSTALL files, but don't hold your breath. If you're feeling adventurous, you could check out the Makefile and see what make xxxx options are available to you. Although you might not understand everything in there, Lord knows I don't, but it should be fairly easy to spot.

Hope this helps.

Ok, let me make sure I know what you guys are talking about here. I can go into the directory where I ran "make install" and run the make uninstall thing and that will delete everything/remove all files on the entire system? I guess I was a little lost by the previous posts, sorry my n00b is showing!

OK, here's what I've found...

If you install something like this:
[b]./configure
make
su -c make install[/b
then you can, as root, often uninstall with make uninstall.

As I said before "if you're lucky"

I have never been lucky.

When you get a handle on Linux, Gentoo has a fine source code package manager similar to BSDs ports system. emerge <name> installs with dependency resolution, emerge unmerge <name> uninstalls (but not it's depencencies just now).

Get at ease with the command line before deciding to switch, however.

For now, I advise you to stick to your distros available packages if you have drive space limitations. If you got the room, why not try everything though?

# Redhat links
RedHat Linux Manuals
Maximum RPM
rpmfind
Easier software management: apt4rpm - Red Carpet
RedHat 8.0 Tips & Tricks

# Redhat 7.3 down configuration commands
setup leads to several configuration tools

# Redhat 7.3 up configuration commands
Configure soundcard:
redhat-config-soundcard
Configure X server:
redhat-config-xfree86
Configure network:
redhat-config-network

i've got a mild trick for that. it's kind of obvious, but you
may not have thought of it.
if you later want to delete the package and the
package has make uninstall in it, but you deleted the
source long ago, download the source, configure,
make, make install make uninstall.
downloading and compiling just to uninstall. i've done it.

Hehe! Haven't we all! Just a note to the unwary reader, however, that if you need to do this (re-download the source files just to uninstall), you will need to get the source files for the version you have installed and not the latest version. Although it might work by doing a make uninstall with the latest version, it is not recommended at all.

(edit: typos)

I use checkinstall to solve this problem.

http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/

When you install a new package you do:
./configure
make
checkinstall

checkinstall will create a rpm for the program that you are installing.

To get rid of an old tar.gz application which was not installed using checkinstall go through the install again except this time use checkinstall. Then install the rpm using --replace. Then uninstall using rpm -e

Pluck! Thanks for the link and all the fish!

Ploink! Now it's mine to show and tell.

i remember downloading that 2 years ago, and i used
it a couple of times, and forgot i had it.

it was either that or something almost the same.