hi, im a newbie to the world of linux and i am just trying to find out how secure my pc is using 'john the ripper'. the thing is i cant figure out how to install it on my suse 9.1 system. the version is 1.6 downloaded from openwall.com/john [soz, it wont let me put in a url] can anyone help??

have you read any of the documents that come with JTR??
you have to learn how to use this tool yourself........it's hard to
explain here!!

yeah i read the installation read me, here is what it says:

Installing John the Ripper
============================

Compiling the Sources
-----------------------

Compile the sources with:

cd src
make

You'll get a list of supported systems. Select one of them, and type:

make SYSTEM

or, if your system is not listed, try:

make generic

If everything goes well, this will create the John binary in run/john.

You can then copy the run directory anywhere you like: these are all the
files that John needs at runtime.

Installing from a Binary Distribution
---------------------------------------

You might need to take run/{john.ini,*.chr,password.lst} from the source
distribution for things to work, unless these files are present already.

Note on Moving Binaries between Systems
-----------------------------------------

On some architectures, a few hardware performance parameters are detected
at compile time -- in particular, this is done for SPARC and generic make
targets. If you then move the binary to a different system, you might not
get the best performance. It is better to re-compile John on each system,
where possible.


when i try to compile it i make sure im in the src directory and then i type 'make' and it says "make: command not found". does this mean i have to install it from a binary distribution? if so how do i do that? i am using a bash shell if that helps you at all and have had linux installed for about a week so thats why i dont know much. i am quite happy to play around with it once i have got it installed, its jus gettin it installed that is the problem.

thanks for the help by the way

suse doesnt come with make?!?! you're probably gonna want that - ive had to compile a lot of stuff from source, and make is the most common tool for this.

i just saw this on the site:
to me that suggests that suse comes with john. try a search for 'john' on your computer.

how do i get 'make' then? i assume that i will need that if i want to be compiling c++ source code. i searched in Yast for 'john' and 'jtr' and it didnt come up. i searched for files with the name 'john' on my laptop and it also didnt come up, i also had a look though /usr/bin (which is what i assume to be a sort of command list) and also it didnt come up there either. any ideas (for 'john' or 'make')???

anything for make on yast?

EDIT: Got your suse cds? is there a development section of packages? this should have all the stuff you need in it.

EDIT2: You wont just need make, youll need gcc and probably some of its addon bits. just do all the default stuff in the development section (if its like red hat was/is)

there is a development section in the packages in Yast but all it has in there is libraries and a degugger and some other stuff, but everything from the development section is installed (including gcc).

theres got to be a way to install make from the suse cds, otherwise suse packages for it would be rife (good luck compiling it from source )