I have my pc imaged thru powerquest drive image.

So I boot into Windows and restore my slackware partition in under 5 minutes.

My image/slackware has no checkinstall loaded in it at the time of the install.

I have the default of slack 10.2 w/2.4 kernel and ATI drivers only as my fail safe backup image.

That said I restored from image, loaded in checkinstall and tried ...then dump the drive ...reload a diff version of checkinstall and same...over and over.

None of these checkinstalls work for:
hplip, kmymoney, adobe, netsmp, berkley

Altho this thread was not about checkinstall originally, I am glad it got on to this topic. Ideally, it would be nice to make my own packages and then just install them on other slower pc's that I own.

I see you posted a link to an italian site...to be honest I would have never thought of going to an Italian slackware site for a program that's written in english lol, yeah all of the versions that I tried were off of the main checkinstall website.

--Since this is a security focused thread, and we're talking about installing from sources I'd like your guys thoughts if you don't mind telling me if I'm paranoid about the following or not:

You indicated before that there is a link for md5sum's at linuxpackages. My frustration/paranoia at the moment, for an example is kmymoney. There is a slack package at linuxpackages for that, and yes it has an md5 checksum. But that md5sums at linuxpackages are for the packages themselves. The person who compiled kmymoney used sources that he did NOT have md5sums for. The project is hosted at sourceforge. There are no md5sums for the sources. So if his sources were compromised, in theory so are his packages on linuxpackages. So therefore Kmymoney is a joke. I will not install it. Imagine, putting in your credit card and banking info into that ...omg.

This is inherintly one problem that I have w/linux to be honest. I thought the Linux world is supposed to be more security focused, yet so many sources are md5sum less and it concerns me.

Just take a look at checkinstall's homepage and you see that even their site was hacked a few months ago, and people un-knowingly downloaded checkinstall's that were compromised. What better way to get your trojan spread then by embedding yourself into a package maker that is used on a version of linux that hosts tons of mail servers throughout the world over.

I wish sourceforge, who hosts practically everything for linux via mirrors would start forcing as a minimum md5sums.

For example that HPLIP software that I wan't to put in. There is no md5sum for that. It's hosted all over the place. It runs on a network protocol....hello!!!! is this thing on. How do I know someone didn't add a little something -something to it.

Neither does ndiswrapper for that matter!! Bundled with so many versions of linux: suse, fedora...they're putting no md5sum verified applications on corprate linux! Are they crazy!

I've sent emails off to sourceforge, ndiswrapper, KDE and HP about my concerns. If we're supposed to lead the way in computing, and think we're smarter than Win$ then we need to lead by example. I think I did my part for telling the authors my concerns. But I really think that the community really needs to take up arms and take a stance and tell the sourceforges of the world that they need to get with the times.

I wouldn't be harping on md5sum's if it weren't for the fact that I downloaded so many cd's of trial versions of linux in the past 2 month's trying to find my distro of choice, and have many many cd's filled with bad stuff.

The real sad thing is that my Linux baloon is slowly deflating.

I'm only getting to the point in my linux venture where I am installing additional software on top of slackware. I can only imagine what else is out there. But I am finding more and more that there is really a small amount of software that I can install with a degree of comfort despite the vasts amount of software actually written for Linux due to this md5sum issue. It's truly sad.

To get back to your original question/post, Fogie, what I do is 'configure' and 'make' as user, then su to 'make install'

Example:Notice was always logged in as user, not root, but 'borrowed' root privileges for awhile

P.S. Also, as far as checkinstall goes, there is the one at Slackware.com, and does have md5 with it. Plus, it's an already packaged version (It's the one I use. Look in 10.2/extra)

Darn it! I keep forgetting about the extra cd ! Will try that now.

It's very easy to do. Browse it, lots of neat stuff in there. Also look in /testing too.

But that simply installs directly onto the system. If you don't create a package, it makes it more difficult to remove/upgrade later.

If checkinstall doesn't work, then just use makepkg, e.g:

The Italian site is simply where the official slackware packages are hosted. You are redirected to it from slackware.com. That package is the official slackware one for 10.2. It's in extra. If there's an official package in extra I would use that instead of downloading from source. Especially if the version you've got doesn't work. It's really quite simple. Go to slackware.com, click on packages, go to 10.2/extra/checkinstall, and download it. I also believe the berkley db is already part of slackware so you didn't need to get that either. Adobe acrobat is a little troublesome to get working. What about xpdf.

Old_Fogie, have you used/do you like kmymoney? jGnash is machine independent, no install, just run the jar, "java -jar /jarlocation.jar", seems to work ok

Many thank's for clarifying on slackware Italy as I have seen it linked many times over, from slack site like you said, and many times on the KDE site for additional programs that can be added in. Tho I found some of the pages tough to comprehend becuase of the language barrier. I'm new to slack and really didn't understand the Italy thing Again thanks for clarifying. I wish Pat had a list of "strategic partners" or something like that, he links but claims no endorsements, altho he can't monitor the whole world either so it's also understanbable.

maybe my slack is broken, and this issue with me doing checkinstall is where the 'break' might be "rearing it's ugly head".

simcox1: I tried to see if berkley was in my slack install from the free cd's download via going to package tool...and then remove...and I simply arrowed down the list and didnt see it in there. when I compiled berkley from source, it didnt give any errors, such as "existing found", etc when I did configure. so I don't think it's on here. but I believe it might be in slackware current...tho I'm afraid to do that...I'm just not that good yet.

ioerror: regarding that makepkg instructions there...I'm assuming that's after I run configure..then make as normal user...the su to root and do that? I dont need to install anything for that to work.

Slackware has several versions of berkely db, they are in the l directory, though rather cryptically they are just called db<version>.tgz.

That's right, makepkg is part of Slackware's package tools and is the standard way to create packages, checkinstall itself actually just calls makepkg after installing to a tmp directory.

So you would ./configure && make, then, as root, make DESTDIR=/var/tmp/<pkgname> install (obviously you can install to a different tmp directory if you want, it doesn't matter). Then cd to that dir, and run makepkg. DESTDIR is a feature of make which will install the package in a different directory than what it's configure for, making it easier to create packages.

The script I gave above will do all that, but it doesn't allow any options to configure, so if you need to specify any, you can either modify the script or just run the command(s) manually.

If you run makepkg manually, the recommended options are -l y -c n, the man page will explain these. Also, you'll want to write the package description (install/slack-desc), although it is optional, installpkg won't complain if it doesn't exist.

There's not a word of Italian on there. It's just a site that happens to be in Italy.

hmmm........this doesn't come up in italian for you? http://slackware.it/

well then add it to my list of errors on firefox.

The subsite with the packages on it does not have Italian.

Same with my homepage, if you only use www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org without the /slack, you get the church site....

I know you're better than that , Fogie.

Sometimes I'm really on the ball, and sometimes the ball rollz over me