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Old 11-16-2004, 10:02 PM   #1
little_penguin
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Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Scotland
Distribution: Suse 10 - Running KDE
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Very Simple Guide to Installing Tarballs


Okay, can anyone give a very very very simple and straightforward guide to installing a program from a source tarball?
I am very very new to this and dont understand anything about linux, from forums Ive read, this seems to cause people so many problems when just staring out.
I think if someone wrote a really simple guide in really plain laguage and posted it somewhere it would really help people out starting out.
As a newbie, I have to say it is very confusing going from the safe world of .exe point and click installs to the crazy world of tarballs, I could see how it could put some people off.
Also, does anyone know if there is a program available to automate the whole process? Sort of like an autoinstaller, this would be great for people coming in from windows.

Okay, Thanks
 
Old 11-16-2004, 10:19 PM   #2
linux_terror
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Registered: Aug 2004
Location: Northbrook, Illinois
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download the tarball
change direcectory to the directory of the tarball and untar it
Code:
cd /path/to/tarballs/directory
to untar a .tar file
Code:
tar xvf filename.tar
to untar and ungzip a tar.gz or .tgz file
Code:
tar zxvf filename.tar.gz
to untar and unbzip a tar.bz2 file
Code:
tar jxvf filename.tar.bz2
the tarball will extract into the current directory, usually making a new direcory with the contents of the tarball in it....cd into the directory the tarball extracted to.
Generally, this is not absolute, but generally from here you will
Code:
./configure
make
make install
If all goes well, the program is compiled and installed.

have fun,
linux_terror

Last edited by linux_terror; 11-16-2004 at 10:22 PM.
 
  


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