Installing Software from a Tarball in Linux

Software installation in Linux is really very easy. Almost all distros come with a package manager like yum for Fedora, apt-get for Ubuntu, Portage for Gentoo etc... It is more easier to use these package managers than to install softwares in Windows. If you know what software you want just tell these package managers and they will find the package, download it, install it and even configure it for you. You don't have to keep on pressing Next button and path to save the file.

However, sometimes many of the software do not fall into the distribution's repos. In this case you have to download such software. These software come as either RPM files or tar balls. Often these software come as a tar ball (.tar, tar.gz, .tar.bz, or .tgz). Wherein you have to compile the source code for your computer and run it, all by yourself. You may find it irritating to do so, but it is easy and quick.

Step 1: Extract the tarball

tar -zxvf mytarball.tar.gz

The options we gave to tar are as follows:

• -z to tell tar to filter this file (archive) through gzip to decompress (use -j for .bzip files)
• -x to extract the files (-c to create an archive)
  
• -v for “verbose”, so we can see a list of the files it's extracting (Optional)
  
• -f to tell tar that we’re working with a file

After this operation you will get a directory with the same name as that of the tarball file. If the tarball filename is mytarball.tat.gz then the directory name will be mytarball. Now go to this directory using the command cd.

Step 2: Configure.

This step checks your system for all dependencies the source code need to make and executable file. So after the first step all you have to do is to issue the following command at the promt:

./configure

If all goes well it’ll go through a check of various parts of your system, then drop you back to the prompt again. If anything fails you may get some dependency errors. Which states that you need to install that software first. check for that software in the repo using the package manager.

Step 3: Make.

Here is the step in which you do the actual compilation of the souce code. If the above step completed without any error a Makefile will be created in the directory and then you can issue the following command:

make

This may take a few minutes depending on size of the software. If everything goes fine you will get the prompt back again with a success message.

Step 4: Install.

In this step the command basically does is to copy the compiled executable file to the required directories so that running this program will be lot easier. This step needs root previlages as it will access those directories which you do not have permission to modify. Hence you need to login as super user by using the command su. It will ask for a root password and once you login successfully you can issue the following command:

make install

At this point of time you are all done to run the installed software.
However many software needs to be compiled in a different way. So it is better recommended that you read both the README file and the INSTALL file.

Install from DVD using YUM installer

YUM is a package installer which uses internet to install packages. So what we do if there is no internet connection? If you do not have internet connection I recommend that you take one and keep yourself updated through YUM.
To install packages through DVD we need to have appropriate Fedora DVD mounted in the system. Once the DVD is mounted you have two options to install the packages from your DVD.

First, using the YUM option called localinstall. Go to the path from your terminal (to know what a terminal is check my other post here) where you have mounted your DVD. This usually should be /media/Fedora 11 i386 DVD. Replace 11 with your version of Fedora. Now go to the directory called Packages.

cd "/media/Fedora 11 i386 DVD/Packages"

Note that you have to use inverted comas. Now from here invoke this command:

yum localinstall RPM_filename.rpm

You can install a particular rpm file if you know or you can just give *.rpm in place of the RPM_filename.
This procedure will try to access the internet for any dependencies. For that the first thing you have to do is to disable the repos. To do this you should know what all repos have been enabled.

yum repolist

This will give you a list of repos with repo id, repo name and status. All you need is the repo id and use this command.

yum --disablerepo=fedora,livna,updates localinstall *.rpm --skip-broken

The --skip-broken option will exclude all packages with depsolving problems. Means those which have dependency problems. This should work with all versions of Fedora. the main drawback of this option is that you should know the particular package name. Or you can use meta-character if you dont know the exact name.

Second, and the most recommended option is by using a repo for DVD. YUM installs packages by checking the repo file. To know what a repo file is you have to check the content of an already existing repo file. Go to the repo directory of YUM.

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

You will get a list of repo files with the extension .repo. Now use your choice of editor to create a repo file for DVD. I recommend using vi editor.

vi dvd.repo

You can give any name for this file which should end with .repo extension. Now type these line (or better copy paste it).

name=DVD for Fedora- $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=file:///media/Fedora%20$releasever%20$basearch%20DVD/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Do not do any other changes. Now save this file and run the YUM command. If you want your YUM not to check files in the internet you can edit all the repo files and disable them by changing the value of enabled to 0. Or it is better recommend that you use --disablerepo option for the YUM command as explained earlier.

The best thing about using this second way is that you can use all the option related to YUM. Example you can use the groupinstall option which you cannot use it with the first way. Again I stress the point that you use an internet connection to keep yourself updated to the latest changes in the world.

In case you have any problems installing the packages through YUM please revert back. I will try my best to solve it.

Happy YUMming!!! :)