RPM's

[Marek Pawinski]

>From what i understand you are telling the user to execute
"./configure" and "make" as root which to me is a security risk, i
would rather do it as user and "make install" as root.


On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 18:20:49 -0500, Temlakos <temlakos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-01-08 at 23:47 +0100, Maciej R. wrote:
> > Hello out there,
> >
> > I wanted to download aMule but there are no RPM's for Fedora Core 3
> > (anyway - do you know good P2P tools?). Would the Suse 9.2 or FC2 ones
> > work on my FC3? What are the differences between RPM's for different
> > distros? Wouldn't it be easier to download a kind of EXE file for all
> > distros?
> >
> > --
> > Maciej R. <m.mail at vp.pl>
> >
> 
> I don't pretend to be an expert; I've used Fedora for about a year now,
> and am on the third release. When I wanted to install an application
> that did not yet have an FC3 build, I first tried to work with the FC2
> build. It seg-faulted every time I tried to so much as load it. (It was
> GRAMPS, the genealogy system, which right now doesn't have an FC3
> build.) So I grabbed the tarball and ran the usual scripts (./configure
> && make && make install). And it worked, and continues to work.
> 
> RPM's are fine--*if* they are built for your specific kernel and desktop
> environment or are at least within reasonable tolerances. If they
> aren't, the applications seg-fault away every time you try to load them
> or do anything significant with them. (Typically I get "signal 11,"
> which is a general segmentation fault. That usually occurs when you try
> to divide by zero, or--more likely--try to de-reference a pointer that
> in fact is pointing to nowhere.)
> 
> The RPM repository keepers try their best to offer RPM's that will
> install properly on your particular release. Three of them (Axel, Dag,
> and Dries) are regular contributors to this list (and they might not be
> the only ones). If *they* don't have an RPM in their most-stable repos
> for any given application, then you probably are better off using the
> tarball (typically named application.releasever.tar.gz) and building
> your application directly from the supplied source code. Which is
> something you're not allowed to do in Windows ("WinDoze"), and that's
> another great feature of Linux.
> 
> In short: check to see whether the application you want is available as
> a source-code archive, also known as a "tarball" (for TAR, the
> traditional Unix archive format). Most "tarballs" are not only packaged
> with TAR but are then re-packaged with GZIP--hence the double extension
> ".tar.gz". So if you find one of those, here is what you do:
> 
> 1.      Download this to your home directory or to your desktop--anywhere
> where you can get to it.
> 
> 2.      Start a Terminal window--you'll want to work with the command line.
> 
> 3.      Execute "su", for "Super User." When it asks for your root password,
> give it. You have just become "root" for this session.
> 
> 4.      Execute "tar -zxvf application.releasever.tar.gz" (Here replace
> "application.releasever" with whatever comes before the ".tar.gz" in the
> file's name.)
> 
> 5.      That process will create a new directory having the name of the
> application. Execute "cd application-releasever" or whatever.
> 
> 6.      Execute "./configure". Hopefully this should proceed without error.
> (If you get fatal configuration errors, you can't build this application
> on your system for some reason, and it will *try* to tell you.) Assuming
> the configuration step completes without fatal error:
> 
> 7.      Execute "make". The configuration script has already set things up so
> that "make" will follow some automatic scripts, called "makefiles," that
> direct the compiler and linker as to where to find various source files
> and libraries.
> 
> 8.      Execute "make install". This will copy your finished application
> program into the folder "/usr/local/bin". Thereafter, whenever you type
> the application name, your application will start.
> 
> 9.      Execute "cd /usr/local/bin" and then "ls" to read the name of your
> new application. You will need to type that name in the "Run
> Application" dialog to use the program.
> 
> 10.     Execute "exit" twice. The first time will change you back to
> yourself, and the second will end the Terminal session.
> 
> 11.     After you've used the program for awhile, and you're sure you won't
> need to remove it, you can log in as root long enough to remove the
> directory you created with step 4 above. I'd advise keeping that
> directory in place for one month. If you have to remove a program during
> that time:
> 
>         A.      Start a Terminal window.
>         B.      Execute "su".
>         C.      Change to the directory you created in 4 above.
>         D.      Execute "make uninstall".
>         E.      Execute "make clean".
>         F.      Now you can either try steps 5-10 again, or else scrub your system
> of the tarball and the temporary directory.
> --
> Temlakos <temlakos at gmail.com>
> 
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