Linux/Unix - working with the shell

Author

working with the shell

sub_netter

2003-03-30, 10:22 am

well, having lots of fun learning my new mandrake 9 system

i'm pretty much a n00bie all over again,,,i've been able to get my head around most of the essential commands so far and am right now trying my hand at compiling,,,have been downloading the *.tar.gz files to my /usr/local/src directory then as root using the:
tar zxvf app.tar.gz command,,,
all goes well but then when i ./configure it never seems to work,,,so this is what dependancie hell means:-( i get lots of errors regarding my path being incorrect,,,now i know what this means in the MS world, but how do i change the path in *nix?,,,also am i doing the compiling in the correct directory?,,,i am always logged in as root when i attempt this,,,any suggections or advice would be appreciated,,,
thanks

Boulware5

2003-03-30, 5:41 pm

Your path in Linux is all the locations that the shell looks in when you type a command. I'll give you an example using my system.

[root@furio root]# echo $PATH
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin

So if any program that I type is in any of those directories, it gets executed. Here is how you add a directory to your path:

$ export PATH=$PATH:/directory/I/Added

This will only stay in affect until you reboot your machine. To make it permanent, add a line like that to your .bashrc file in your home directory.

Then to check it, type echo $PATH and you should see it.

Try to copy and paste here everything you are doing as well as those errors you are getting. It's VERY important to read the README file when you compile programs because that will tell you how to install it. Not every program installs the same way. For example, you may have to add options to ./configure to tell the compiler where stuff is that it needs. README will often address that.

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