On Wednesday 25 August 2004 20:38, chuck holland wrote:

Could someone give me a detailed instructions on to install Tar.gz files.

Thanks

Not really. TAR is an archiving format--a way to collect multiple files into a single file. Gzip is a compression scheme--a way to remove redundant information for a file in a way that is reversible. A file with the suffixes ".tar.gz" could hold anything. Often it is the source files required to build a piece of software. Typically, that would be built by extracting the content, changing to the top directory into which you extracted the files, running the supplied "configure" script and then running "make", followed possibly by "make install". For this to work you'll need compilers and linkers and an unpredictable set of libraries. However, if you're not at least minimally familiar with building software for Linux systems, this is likely to prove a frustrating exercise. But your ".tar.gz" file could contain a ready-to-run, compiled program (or a program that does not comprise a native binary executable, but rather a program that runs under an interpreter, such as Perl or Python). In that case, often all that's required is extracting the contents of the compressed archive and invoking the supplied program. In many cases, there will be a read-me file (usually called README or ReadMe or something subtle like that). That's always a good place to start for instructions on how to use the contents of the archive. The only thing that's for sure about a ".tar.gz" is that you process it with the "tar" command if you inclue the "z" option (that instructs it to handle the gzip compression). List the contents: % tar ztf something.tar.gz List the contents including file attributes (like "ls -l"): % tar ztvf something.tar.gz Extract the contents of the file: % tar zxf something.tar.gz Have fun! Randall Schulz