Installing Software in GNU/Linux

heavenflying

Introduction
For the benifit of people new to Linux, I have written a generic
explaination of howto install software in Linux. Note that some
software may have specific installation proceedures, this HOWTO is not
a substitute for reading the offical installation documentation


This HOWTO covers the following topics:

• Compiling and Installing software from source
• Installing RPM's using the Redhat Package Manager
• Installing using Debian's apt-get
• Installing mandrake things
• Installing with fedora / yum
• Installing slackware packages
• Installing software using Gentoo EMerge

If you have just installed GNU/Linux and would like to know how to
install software on your new OS, I would recommend you read the
"Compiling and installing software from source" section, as well as the
section specifically for your GNU/Linux Distribution. Do not worry if
you dont understand or remember everything written here straight away,
book mark this page and use it as a reference page later on.



Compiling and Installing software from source
Some software is distributed in "Source form". This means you download
a file containing all the source code for the application you want to
install, unpack it, and compile it on your system. Compiling is the process of turning the source code into an executable binary.
The common myth and newbie assumption is that this is very hard todo,
or it is only for programmers. Wrong. It is a fairly straight forward
process, and you will find that a lot of software you install will need
to be built from source.

Typically applications you must compile from source will come as a ".tar.gz", ".tar.bz2", or ".zip" file.

For organisational purposes, I like to save my source zip file to
/usr/local/src/, but this is totally up to you. For the rest of this
section we will assume you have downloaded your zip file to
/usr/local/src/. If you do not have a /usr/local/src directory, you can
create it with the following "mkdir" (make directory) command:

  Code: mkdir /usr/local/src/ So, we have our source package in /usr/local/src/.

Change to the /usr/local/src/ directory with the "cd" (change directory) command like so:

  Code: cd /usr/local/src/ Use the "ls" (list directory contents) command, to see the file is present:

  Code: ls
We now need to unzip the zipped file, this is done differently depending on the file extension.

for files ending in .tar.gz, use:
  Code: tar -zxvf  (replacing  with the name of the file).

for files ending in .tar.bz2, use:
  Code: bunzip2  for files ending in .zip, use:
  Code: unzip  You
should now have a new directory, containing all of the source files. To
confirm it exists, and to get its name, use the "ls" command again.
  Code: ls we now need to go into the new directory, so use the cd command:
  Code: cd  


This is where things will differ. Some packages will have an INSTALL or
README file which will contain installation instructions. use "ls" to
see if the software has an install or readme file. If it does have one,
you can use the "more" command to read it, like so:
  Code: more INSTALL Generally, the final 3 stages are as follows:
- Configure the installation
- Compile the software
- Install the binaries

The pre-installation configuration is done by executing ./configure:
  Code: ./configure This
will perform some requirements testing on your system, and create a
"Makefile" which will explain to the "make" utility how the software
should be compiled. If you receive any error messages during this
stage, you may wish to search the forums to see if they have been found
and resolved by someone else already, if not, feel free to post a
question on the forums - Please include all of the output including any
error messages, and some details about your system - what distro you
are using, what are you trying to install etc etc


The next stage is to compile the software, this is done using "make". When you run "make" it will read the instructions in the Makefile and build the application binaries.
  Code: make
The final stage is to install
these binaries, ie, copy them to a more perminent location. Typically
only the "root" user can do this, so you will need to swich to the root
user with the "su" command:
  Code: su Once you are root, install the binaries using the "make" command, followed by "install", like so:
  Code: make install That is it!. Check the user documentation of the software you installed for details of how to run the application.

Remember that if you have any problems, please post in the most
relevant section of the forums. - When posting, remember to include as
much info as possible, including all output and error messages.





Installing RPM's using the Redhat Package Manager
Redhat RPM's offer a flexable and easy method to install new software.
Software installed from an RPM package differs from compiling from
source in a few ways, but the most important one of all is the software
is already compiled for you. Essentially all you are doing is
extracting the pre-built binaries and copying them to their
pre-selected destination. RPM's are files that have a ".rpm"
extenstion. The good point about RPM's is installation of new software,
and maintaining the software currently installed is much easier than
doing so for individual packages compiled from source. The downside to
RPM's is that you dont have as much choice about where software is
installed on your system, how it is compiled, and how it is configured.

Using the RPM system is fairly straight forward. To install a package, you can use the following command:
  Code: rpm -i  When using rpm, you must be logged in as the root user. The "-i" flag in the above command means "install".

Un installing a package is just as easy:
  Code: rpm -e  The "-e" switch used here means "erase" (un install).
Note that  is different from  used when installing.


For example, if you are installing an application called "mysoftware",
you may use a command like "rpm -i mysoftware-1.0.2-i386.rpm" to
install "mysoftware", when removing we dont follow the filename for
installation, but rather the name of the software itself.

For further uses of RPM, please use "rpm --help" and "man rpm". Also see
this page
, which has some fairly useful information.


If you need to find & download the RPM file for a piece of software, I recommend using

RPM Find
and
RPM Pbone Search

Note that not all applications are available as RPM's, in these cases
you will need to compile the software from source. (see above).



Installing using Debian apt-get
Apt-Get is a wonderful package management system for Debian GNU/Linux.
Apt-Get, like RPM make installing and managing installed software easy,
and once again has the same disadvantages that binaries are pre-built
and cannot really be fine tuned to your system very well. I really like
Apt-Get becuase of its automatic software download and upgrade
mechanisms, and unlike Redhat doesnt keep trying to sell you something,
and doesnt try to limit your use of the system.

The most powerful feature of apt-get surely is that you dont manually
have to find & download the software you want to install, apt-get
will do this for you, and also resolve any software dependencies.
Before you can use apt-get for the first time, you must do a small bit
of configuration.

You need to edit your /etc/apt/sources.list
file, to specify the locations of Debian packages. You will proberly
want your default sources.list file to look something like this:
  Code: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free If you would like to use more upto date software on your machine, you will proberly want your sources file like this:
  Code: deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US sid/non-US contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main The first sources.list file uses the stable
branch of debian packages. Software installed when using the stable
version has undergone more testing, and in theory has less bugs.
However, the software on the stable branch is usually much older versions, so you may be missing out on new features etc. The second example sources.list uses the UnStable
branch. This means you will get newer versions of software, but you may
occaisionally run into bugs which have not yet been fixed. I myself use
and recommend using the unstable branch, the software on the stable branch is 2 or 3 years behind the unstable.

Once you have confirmed your sources.list file, we need to update our
local list of packages that are available for installation. To do this,
use the following command after logging in as the root user:

  Code: apt-get update After updating the list, you can install applications like so:
  Code: apt-get install  To see a list of available programs that you can install, or to find a particular program, we can use apt-cache, like so:
  Code: apt-cache search  Replace  with a application name or word. Eg, to find an irc client to install, you could execute  Code: apt-cache search irc .

To uninstall software is fairly straight forward also.
  Code: apt-get remove  replace  with the name of the program you want to remove.

A word of caution:
If you try to remove a piece of software that other pieces of software
depend on, apt-get will also want to un-install those other pieces of
software as well. Becareful you dont end up uninstalling your entire
system!. apt-get will prompt you before removing any additional
packages so watch carefully!



Installing software on Mandrake with urpm
urpm is a nifty was to install software on any 7.x or greater Mandrake
system. Some of the advantages of Mandrake's urpm utilities are:

    * It automatically solves package dependencies issues by installing or uninstalling dependent packages.

    * It installs packages and dependencies directly from the internet.
    * It allows globbing of package names
    * It will automatically update your system.
* It will install all those "not allowed to distribute" programs that
you really want to have (DVD support, MP3 enoders, etc...)

How do I install urpm?
urpm should be installed by default on any modern Mandrake distobution.
If it's not, you can install it using the Mandrake Control Center (MCC).
urpm Commands
urpmi

The most commonly used command is urpmi. This command allows you to
install packages from your configured sources (see below). urpmi will
try to install all package dependencies. It will also take partitial
names and give you a list of available packages. For exmaple, if you
wanted to install one of the kdemoreartwork styles, but didn't know the
exact name, you simple type

  Code: [root@cayanne ~/]#urpmi kdemoreartwork and
it should return a list of packages not already installed on your
system. This also means it will install the most up to date package for
your system, you don't have to know which version you're looking for.
As an exmaple, you may wish to add DVD Play back support to your
computer. This can be done by installing any video player, such as Xine
or MPlayer, along with the package libdvdcss. Rather then having to
type in urpmi libdvdcss-1.2.1-1.i386.rpm, you can simply type in

  Code: [root@cayanne ~/]#urpmi libdvdcss
urpme
The urpme command deletes, or erases, currently installed packages and all packages depandant on that it.

urpmq
The urpmq command searches for, or queries, for packages that you list.

urpmf
The urpmf command does an advanced search for a filename in all known
packages. For example if we are trying to compile a program and the
configure script is complaining about not finding ncurses.h, we can do
a urpmf ncurses.h to find that it is part of the
libncurses5-develpackage.

  Code: [root@cayanne ~/]#urpmf ncurses.h
libncurses5-devel:/usr/include/ncurses.h
libncurses5-devel:/usr/include/ncurses/ncurses.h
php-devel:/usr/src/php-devel/extensions/ncurses/php_ncurses.h
urpmi.addmedia
urpmi.addmedia does exactly that, makes an rpm reposatory available for
urpm to utalize. Typically, you have your installation cd's available
as a default media, these are called main. In addition, you also have
three other media - updates,contrib and PLF. Updates is the updates,
and contrib is user contributed rpm's and PLF is all those not
available for distribution for so-called legel reasons rpm's. The
sysntax for urpmi.addmedia is

urpmi.addmedia [media-name] [ftp-address with] ../base/hdlist.cz
Note that the hdlist.cz is required. For example, to add medium 'contrib', we use the following command

  Code: [root@cayanne ~/]#urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/mandrake/updates/8.2/RPMS with ../base/hdlist.cz
added medium contrib
retrieving description file of "contrib"...
...retrieving done
retrieving source hdlist (or synthesis) of "contrib"...
...retrieving done
examining whole urpmi database
urpmi.removemedia
This command removes specified media. Need I say more?

urpmi.update
The urpmi.update command goes through all of your media sources and updates your installed packages if necessary.

How do I set up urpm?
urpm can be set up using MCC, but I've personally found the instructions at the web-site
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org
to be a little easier. Either way, you can use the site along with MCC
or the console to add media. Simple follow the step-by-step
instructions, and enter the command it prints out in the grey box into
any terminal window, as root of course. You can even copy and paste the
command, there's no need to type it all in.

Now that you're up and running with urpmi, try to install a few packages! Have fun!

Where can I get more info?
Here's couple of places to get more info (these are the places where I got my references):


Mandrake FAQ

Mini How-To


Some site in Texas



Installing with fedora / yum


Installing slackware packages
Slackware packages are usually .tgz files containing pre-built
binaries. To install software in slackware you will need to find and
download the .tgz package manually beforehand. If you are looking for a
slackware package for a piece of software and have not found it yet,
search
Linux Packages
for it.

Ok, once we have our package, lets install it. To install slackware packages, ensure you are the root user using the command:
  Code: su Now run the following command to install the package:
  Code: installpkg  Uninstalling a package is also quite simple:
  Code: removepkg  Also worth noting about slackware packages, is a utility called pkgtool which will allow you to install, remove and list packages on your system. To use pkgtool, run:
  Code: pkgtool and follow onscreen prompts.

Anyone who likes the debian apt-get system but is currently using Slackware may be interested to hear about a utility called slapt-get, the Slackware answer to apt-get. Slapt-get is avaible from
Here
. There is also a nifty Gnome/GTK front end for slapt-get in development, you can preview it at the same url.

Lastly, if you are having trouble locating a slackware package, but
have been able to find a equivilent RPM, you can "convert" that RPM to
a slackware package which you can use with the installpkg and removepkg commands. To convert your RPM to .tgz, use the command:
  Code: rpm2tgz .rpm

Installing software using Gentoo EMerge


Further reading

• 
  Offical Debian Apt-Get HOWTO
  
• 
  Slackware Package guide
  
• 
  Official RPM HOWTO
  
• 
  Maximum RPM (power users guide to RPM)
  
• 
  Guide to Gentoo Emerge
  

Copyright, Re-Printing, and comments
This document is copyright Jason Lambert, 2004.
The mandrake section is contributed by
jeremy1701
and is copyright
jeremy1701
2004.

You may not re-produce or reprint this document in part or in full without my prior written permission..

If you would like to request permission to re-print any part of this document, please send me a private message on the forums.

The mandrake section may not be reprinted without written permission of
jeremy1701

All trademarks remain the property of their owners etc.

If you have a comment about this howto, please
Email Me
.
Please do NOT email me or send me a private message asking for
technical assistance. If you need help please post on the forums!




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