I need help installing gparted on Fedora Core 6
 

Ok, so I have been using windows all my life, and never had to do more than double click an .exe so load programs into my system.

I downloaded gparted from sourceforge, just as a test to try and install somethine manually.

I have read the install notes, which are as follows;

I can navigate to the directory alright, and running "./configure" seems too work. Although toward the end of its process, it unearths one error, regarding a perl directory not being present or something like that, it was going through a list of compilers I think, I saw C, C++ and Fortran compilers in text when it was doing its thing after that command.

But when I run "make" or "make install" I get;

This, I'm sure is something very simplistic, if someone could point me to a resource maybe that explains these basic steps, I would appriciate that too.

I am aware that I can add programs from the the applications menu, but I'm just experimenting, and have gotten stuck.

Thanks for reading.

Heres a screenshot of what I see in my gparted directory.

http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/8...shotdd4.th.png

well try to download an rpm package and this way its easy to install the package then manually ..

I'm not an expert at compiling from source, but you're going to have to be a little more specific about this. Since ./configure encountered an error, it did not create the file "make" needs.

You should have a file named something like configure.log which will contain the exact error. Posting that will get you help quickly. At a guess you may need to install some perl library that you are currently lacking.

Two of the most basic things that can go wrong with source builds are:
1. Development libraries not installed.
2. Required dependencies not installed.

1) su to root and enter your root password

$ su
Password:

2) Use yum to install your application.

# yum install gparted

Yum will install the app with any dependencies.

That should work for you. Yum is the primary tool I use to maintain all of my Fedora boxes. I rarely compile any applications anymore.

-Rex

So far, it's 2-2 ... Two people read the OP, two didn't.

rickh

I read the OP. It depends on how you define terms. Generally (in Fedora) installing manually means using yum cli as opposed to a gui. Or installing directly via rpm. Compiling from source is different.

Charl^e

You probably need to install at least two -devel packages. gtkmm24-devel and parted-devel. You may also need to install pyparted (not sure as I already had it installed). All of these are available via yum.

If you run into a package that you cannot seem to find, try: yum provides X. It should provide you with a list of packages that contain what you need.

Good Luck
Lazlow

Hello charl^e, installing applications in other OSs is different not necessary harder. You just have to realize you are using a different OS and things are done differently; from that point on it will be entirely easier to do anything.
If it's learning you are interested in, you may want to read a little bit before you just plunge in. After you read it, you can play with it to help solidify the information you just read.
You seem to have *some* info on what you need to do to install things from source, but either the information wasn't complete, or you didn't finish reading the info. Either way, a compiler is only part of "requirements" to work with source.

Ok, so, with the generics out of the way, here's a bit of specific info, and then I suggest you check out some links in my sig, or check out our LinuxAnswers section for more info.

If running:
./configure
results in ANY errors, the Makefile (usually) will not be created, and so no further action can be done (you cannot run make without a Makefile). You first need to satisfy the error. If it's a perl error, you may not have perl development libraries installed. So, once ./configure actually finishes CORRECTLY and without error, a Makefile will be created, and then you can run:
make
This may or may not fail as well. If it fails, note the error and fix it (google usually helps). After fixing any errors, make will end without errors, and then (and ONLY then) you should run make install (to install the package(s)). In a perfect world, there will be no Makefile to allow you to install incompatible binaries on your system and 'b0rk' it; but in the real world, it's possible some packages are built differently, and you can accidently install binaries built for an entirely different architecture without having a successful ./configure and make.

Jumping forward a bit (or maybe backward?) to package managers. If you are comfortable with those, and can install any package you need, disregard the following.

Package managers are designed to help you get packages onto your system. On binary distros (Debian, Fedora, SuSE, Mandriva...) the package manager will download a binary (not the source) and install it rather quickly. The binary is (usually) built by the distro and ensured to work on your system (pulls in the necessary dependencies, works with your architecture, version dependencies are satisified as well) so only a small piece (the actual results from the make they performed, which is a binary file(s)) of the package is put into the RPM (or .deb) and then placed in the correct location on your system. Even experienced users will typically (on a binary distro) use a package manager to install packages. Rarely (and in very few cases today) do you need to install from source, and even then, you usually can use your package manager to take care of that for you as well (using things like src.rpm packages).

My ultimate point being:
Use the tools your distro comes with to do system tasks. It's designed to work that way for a reason. If you want to break it, GO FOR IT. It's a great learning process, but be prepared to spend some time reading and understanding package management (both source and binary in this case) before you blindly go building packages.

Good luck!

Cool

I'm really lost
 

If all you are trying to do is educate yourself, then you are doing it the right way, What you really need is a pencil to jot down the error messages you get from the "./configure" "make" and "make install" steps, and lots of patience plus a sharp eye for what the errors really say. Remember though configure and make you can do as a regular user but "make install" usually has to be done as root as this is the only step during which you will modify your system.
As far as errors go you need to pay close attention to dependencies, some of the filenames can be real close to what is installed on your system but Unix-like
OS's are very much case sensitive and you can screw yourself really bad with a spelling mistake. also something like a different version number on a program can trip you up if the programmer calls for a particular version number and you have either a newer or an older version number this can cause compiling to fail.
But in the end it is a good feeling when the blasted thing just works.
Joe

./configure

That commands runs the configure script in the directory you are in.

the ./ is there to allow that script to be executed (it just means current directory).

Now that configure script will eventually output a Makefile.

So, you can see that happening by using ls -l before and after configure

ls -l && ./configure && ls -l

the &&s mean and, so only if a command executes without returning an error will the next command be executed.

using the above you can determine if ./configure is working or not, and upon success you will see two directory listings, with one following the output of ./configure.

I am going to guess you don't have the automake tools installed, it is a guess because really we need the error from ./configure

but without automake installed you will not get a Makefile.in using configure on most packages.

So, first thing to is to ensure automake is installed (the reason I guess at this is because you mention a perl package and perl is required for automake).

configure's job is to find system information, because all systems tend to differ and most unix systems tend to have dependencies, so these need to be checked for prior to compilation, the Makefile.in is the file from this process, but automake is really responsible for it.

make and the Makefile.in handles the compilation for you. make install tends to install files to a system location.

Really if you build from source you are building as a developer would, now the same is true on a windows system, fire up C++ Builder grab some source code and you are left with the problem of ensuring the libraries are there, C++ Builder is working, and then installing the files to the correct location.

If you are going to do this often then you need to build a toolchain and make sure the toolchain is solid.

For that you are going to need to use yum - apt - sudo apt - pacman whatever flavour of package manager you have and just first ensure automake is installed.

Now all of this assumes autotools are being used and gparted is part of GNU so it is a fair assumption (most developers do use it nowadays, but it is not required).

./configure && make && make install will get you in trouble if the default target of make is not to build the system and make install does something wacky - so that is just a convention not an unbreakable rule.

It is interesting you are going down this path - but it is not for the faint hearted, you do need to realise you are actually doing last stage development work (the reason this is somewhat prevalent is because developers tend to have toolchains setup and a lot use Linux). But, FC is not a normal developer platform so it may not come with automake installed by default.

The other thing to be aware of is ./configure vanilla is not that useful - really you want to see what options configure gives, a lot of programs can have functionality removed if you are not interested in the extra features (gparted needs gtkmm) actually it needs parted as well, and you might want to get that working first then add the GTK gui (which I suspect just calls parted).

So, check for automake using your package manager.

Understand what automake does.

Get parted working then understand how gparted works with parted.

That seems like a good plan of action.

Hi, charl^e and welcome to LQ. I have edited the title of your thread so that it gets more exposure. Please use thread titles that summarise your problem so that others know what its about.

Welcome to a world of freedom, and well done
 

May I take this opportunity to say welcome to a world of freedom in computing, to congratulate you in a wise choice to experiment in Linux and to say "Well done" for making the first step in understanding a new platform.

Right, niceness and encouragement out of the way. :D

The graphical installer for FC6 is yumex so:
# yum install yumex
(the # is the root prompt, don't type it)
then:
# yumex &
(the & background the program so you have the prompt back)

You can browse around and find gparted and clickety-click to install similar to add/remove in that other OS.

If you want to build from source post the configure.log and I could help you solve your problem.
If there are limits on the post size, email to linuxquestions at grahams dot idps dot co dot uk with some reference to this forum and we can go from there.

Graham.

Thank you, everyone, that made thoose great posts. It's really helped me out!

I'm now pretty aufait with source building now! Well.. :study:

I chopped and changed around some Linux distributions recently, trying to get the hang of as many installers as possible, whilst seeing if there was one I "fell in love with". I bought one of thoose Linux Bibles with 16 distributions, haven't looked at them all yet. But the 'Bible' has a wealth of info in there all by itself.

Thanks once again for helping me out, loads of infomation here to get started source building. Really appriciated it. :D

Charlie.

Ooh, Charl^e, don't bother with compiling that stuff on Fedora. One of its great qualities is that users need to compile little if anything at all.

If you launch a terminal and type:
su -
then the root password
you then type this:
yum -y install gparted

And Fedora will fetch the package for you from the internet and install it.

Always, always use this procedure whenever possible. If you start compiling things yourself, you don't know where you're going to end up. You may well render your system unmanageable.

You clearly are very new to this so let me give you a piece of advice: search google for stanton finley's installation notes as well as those by mjmwired. Both have written an easy, step-by-step tutorial that will get even newbies going in no time at all. If you don't bother and mess up, you have only yourself to blame...

jay73, thank you for the reply. Like I said in my OP, I'm not just trying to install a program. I'm very aware of the yum installer, and was just trying something a little more adventurous. Foolish, it may be, and yes I am new to Linux, but seen as a reformat doesn't bother me, I can contently mess around with it.

Thanks for the resources though! My reading pile has become substantial now. :D