Very Simple Guide to Installing Tarballs

little_penguin · 11-16-2004, 10:02 PM

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

linux_terror · 11-16-2004, 10:19 PM

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