Linux - RPMs and Tarballs - February 2001

If you wanted a free Linux distribution but didn't get one of ours, one BECS member noticed an internet site that is giving away Linux distributions:
www.pogolinux.com/systems/accessories/ linux/linuxcd.html. I have ordered one to check out, but won't receive it for a while.

I have written about getting Linux setup in previous months, but this month let's talk about what you can do if you have your Linux system working. I recently downloaded a game from the Internet that was challenging to install. The game is for children, is called tuxracer and is about a penguin that snowsleds down a mountain. You guide him left and right to keep him on the course and to eat herring on the way. It's available at: www.tuxracer.com

But first, let's discuss downloading and installing software on your Linux system. Usually, when I click on a download link, I get a popup window from Netscape that prompts me to choose a directory and filename. However, some of the time, Netscape starts filling the browser window with the binary computer code. You can actually let this go on and then choose File/Save As to save it to a file and it will save the file correctly, but I prefer to stop the download, right click on the link and select Save Link As. Then I get the popup windows to save and I can browse the site during the download.

If you are concerned about how long the file download will take, you can use a download manager such as caitoo, which is built into KDE. In Netscape, right click on the link, select Copy Link Location, start caitoo, and Edit/Paste the link into caitoo. Then you can download part of the file at one time and the rest later. Another download manager that is available on the Internet is Igloo. A trial version is available at:
ftp://iglooftp.com/pub/linux/ IglooFTP-PRO-1.0.2-1.i386.rpm

Generally windows programs that you download come as self-extracting executables and then you run setup.exe. Linux has some improved ways of managing software. The RedHat Company wrote the redhat package manager, rpm. RPM is used extensively by most Linux distributions. An RPM package contains many files, contains information about the package and tracks dependencies. RPMs are a good way to manage installing and uninstalling of software.

RPM was probably loaded on you Linux system in your default installation. RPM keeps a database of all the packages that you have installed on your system. Some important RPM commands are:
rpm -qa
rpm -qi package
rpm -qpl package-n.n-1.i386.rpm
rpm -e package
rpm -ivh package-n.n-n.i386.rpm

The command:
rpm -qa
will list all packages installed on your system. (There may be hundreds.)

The command:
rpm -qi package
will list information about a package. A file on the Internet with a name like:
package-n.n-1.i386.rpm is usually an rpm package.

The command:
rpm -qpl package.i386.rpm
will list all files that the package will install on your computer. (And tell you where they went after you install.)

An RPM will not install if its dependencies are not installed but will tell you what other package(s) need to be installed first. The command:
rpm -e package
will erase (uninstall) all of the files in a package, unless some of those files are required for other installed packages. (In which case it uninstalls all files except those required by other packages.)

The command:
rpm -ivh package.i386.rpm
installs the package of files. Frequently these files are installed in directories that require root privilege, so usually you must become superuser (su) to install an RPM.

Another way that software is stored on the Internet is in source code tarballs. These must be unarchived and then compiled. A file on the Internet with a name like:
name.n.n-1.tar.gz
may be a source code tarball. Generally there are four steps in extracting and compiling source:

tar -zxvf name.tar.gz
./configure
make
(su) make install

These tarballs, too, usually contain many files and the command:
tar -zxvf name.tar.gz
creates a directory tree, uncompresses and extracts the files. You then cd into the directory and read the README file for further instructions.

The command:
./configure
runs a script that checks your computer for required software and creates software makefiles. Watch as the configure script runs for errors. If it reports errors, it usually means that you need additional software libraries. Read the errors as best as you can, and try to find the missing libraries on the Internet.

The command:
make
will compile all of this source code. This usually takes several minutes, depending on how much RAM you have and how fast your CPU is. If you have a lot of compiling to do, it may be worthwhile to reboot into a command line interface, so that x-windows and your window manager are not using up RAM. Again, look for errors and messages about missing libraries.

The last step:
make install
copies the executable that you created into locations where you can run them. Generally you will have to be superuser for this step.

So are you ready for a challenging download and compile project? Try to download and install tuxracer. Here are some of the links you will need:
www.tuxracer.com/manual.html
download.sourceforge.net/tuxracer/ tuxracer-0.60.3.tar.gz 0.6Kb
download.sourceforge.net/tuxracer/ tuxracer-data-0.60.tar.gz 7.4Mb
www.scriptics.com/download/tcl/ tcl8_3/tcl8.3.2.tar.gz
www.libsdl.org/release/ SDL-1.1.7-1.i386.rpm
www.libsdl.org/release/ SDL-devel-1.1.7-1.i386.rpm
ftp.linuxgames.com/loki/open-source/ smpeg/smpeg-0.4.2-1.i386.rpm
ftp.linuxgames.com/loki/open-source/ smpeg/smpeg-devel-0.4.0-1.i386.rpm
www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/ bin/SDL_mixer-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm
www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/ bin/SDL_mixer-devel-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm