Tarball Help Please

[Hobo]

Since the forums moved it's hard to find a lot of the old info and helpful threads so search isn't helping much. I've always used the CVS method for updating but since CVS is crapping out at the moment I thought I'd try Zaph's newest tarball. Can someone tell me exactly how to use and apply a tarball?

1. What directory do I download the tarball to? My guess is root. is that right?

2. What directory do I extract the tarball to and what is the command? I'm guessing the directory is either the seq directory or the showeq directory, probably the showeq directory. I see it is a .tar.bz2 and if memory serves me right that means I need more than just a regular tarball extraction or something like that...can't quite remember.

3. Once extracted to the porper directory then just compile as we would for a CVS update? I.E. change to the showeq directory and compile?



Thanks in advance!


Hobo

[purple]

I haven't done it so just guess, but probably put the tar file into wherever your source tree normally is. So if you normally have /root/showeq as where you cvs update or make from, then put the tar into /root. To untar the sucker, use tar -xjvf whatever.tar.bz2. Once you've done that, you are at exactly the same place you'd be if you used cvs update. Go into /root/showeq and work line normal with making and installing, etc.

[Zaphod]

Basics of it are, download the tarball, then:

$ tar xjvf ShowEQ-5.0.0.14.tar.bz2
$ cd showeq
$ make -f Makefile.dist
$ ./configure && make
$ su # because I only run as root when I really need to...
# make install


Then run ShowEQ as you normally would. The End... ;)

Enjoy,
Zaphod (dohpaZ)

[Hobo]

Thanks guys. Seems my problem with Linux commands always stems from knowing what extra letters (options?) to use when running a command. For example, how do you know to run tar with -xjvf?



Hobo

[purple]

x = extract (i.e. open up the tar, as opposed to c which is create)
v = verbose (i.e. spit the list of files out as you untar)
j = bunzip (i.e. you are passing tar a compressed tar. If you have a .tar.gz or .tgz, use z)
f = filename (i.e. the next thing after these parameters is a filename to process instead of processing stdin)

You get used to this stuff if you use it a lot *grin*

[Zaphod]

Well, in my case years of experience on UNIX/LInux platform... But generally using the man pages, or the info pages, or worst comes to worst passing --help on the command line gives enough info.

To look at a man page you do:

man <command name>


to look at the info page you do:

info <command name>


so, for tar you just do:

man tar


And it gives the usage and all the command line options with descriptions, along with some common examples.

Using the --help command line option:

tar --help


yields a list of the command line options and a couple examples of using tar.

You call also look at the various FAQ's, HOWTOs, Guides, and other assorted documentation located at the The Linux Documentation Project (http://www.tldp.org/) for guidance.

Hope that explains it for you.

Enjoy,
Zaphod (dohpaZ)