Simple HowTo

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2007-12-16 at 21:34 -0500, Gene Poole wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> 
> > both apache and tomcat are part of Fedora packaging and they are
> > installed in the places where the packagers intended. If you decide to
> > compile your own packages from source and not use the packages as
> > provided by the distribution, you are taking it entirely into your own
> > hands and thereby rendering the reasoned placement moot.
> >
> > By convention, packages installed from source are placed in /usr/local,
> > probably for very good reasons (i.e. no chance of tainting other
> > necessary packages)
> >
> > Craig
> 
> This sounds like, going forward, I'll have less to say about where I place
> software than with M$!
> 
> Also, if they are going to do that then the documentation needs to tell me
> ahead of time what file systems need how much space since we divide up the
> hard disk before installing software.
> 
> I feel like I'm going backwards - use the provided RPM or else!
----
I suppose that's one way of looking at things.

Another way of looking at things is that they don't exist in a vacuum
and Linux software is like building blocks and thus software that
depends upon apache libraries knows where to find them and they are
matched in version and compatibility.

go ahead and install in /usr/apache and /usr/tomcat if you wish...it's
your box. Install location by years of convention from the roots of UNIX
clearly suggests that software compiled from source is installed
in /usr/local tree. Your comments strike me as someone who is willing to
endure pain in order to eschew convention...run with your instincts.

Another way of looking at things is that the package management of a
Linux distribution (i.e. Fedora or RHEL or Ubuntu or Debian or ???) has
the software packages all ready compiled and standardized as for file
locations, users, links for other libraries (and resolves compatibility
issues) and even does the extremely heavy lifting of installing errata
(bug fixes) and security updates quite simply.

Quite simply the reason to use a distribution like Fedora or Red Hat
Enterprise Linux is that you can simply do something like...

yum install httpd tomcat5

and you get the software and any required packages downloaded,
installed, configuration files into place, and ready to rock and roll.

yum update

would then update all packages on your system for which updates exist

You might be more into a system like slackware or linux from scratch
where you manage everything yourself. But of course, when security
updates come out for apache or tomcat, you would have to then download
and compile again. You take responsibility for your own installs.

Craig