Unknown Hero's of Linux
Karl F. Larsen
Today I got a file from Hamish Moffatt, VK3TYD a Ham in
Australia that is a Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) file of the
program sattrack which comes from the author as a tar file. Yesterday
I spent most of the day trying to get this program to compile. The
problem is that the author wrote the program on a Sun Work Station
and then provides a Makefile that is for 20 different computers! It
is very difficult to get this file correct. I almost got it yesterday
but had to quit to do honey-does.
Hamish has compiled the program and he made a Debian file
called filename.deb and it is handled much like the rpm files for Red
Hat. Yesterday Hamish used the Debian application 'Alien' to convert
his sattrack_3.2.6-x11-i386.deb to a sattrack-3.2.6-X11-i386.rpm file
which I ftp'd from his system.
I left the rpm file of sattrack in the directory it was ftp'd
to and with root I typed rpm -i sattrack-3.2.6-x11-i386-rpm and in 15
SECONDS the program was installed on my computer. I typed sattrack
and the program came up with defaults and old data files.
As most Linux users are aware, Red Hat is one of the easiest
Linux to load. The main reason for this is use of rpm. I think that
the Debian people are aware of the advantage and they have produced
the application 'alien' which is equivalent to rpm for Red Hat. And
this will make it a lot easier to load Linux in the near future. I do
not use Debian Linux so will just repeat what has been learned today;
A file made for loading onto a Debian Linux was processed by 'alien'
into a file for Red Hat. I loaded that file onto my computer running
Red Hat version 5.2 with no problems.
The implication is large. All the files available for loading
by Debian can be used by Red Hat as well. I hope 'alien' can convert
rpm to deb files as well. Then Debian users can raid by ftp to
contrib.redhat.com all the nice rpm files there.
RPM has been around a bit longer and I use it. Like all Linux
things RPM was written by many people on the Internet. But the main
person is Edward C. Bailey. He wrote a book about rpm that has the
title "Maximum RPM" and it's avalalble as a book from Walden Books or
as a Post Script file which you can print yourself. It's large with
442 pages.
With this large book a person skilled in the compiling and
setting up of a Unix application from the old .tar files can get the
application working well, and then make a .rpm file. This he makes
available to all Linux users free of charge. This is how all the
applications became rpm files. More are needed.
This is how I got the postgreSQL Data Base on my computer. It
took me 2 days to get it working the first time. This time it was set
up and available after Linux came up the first time with Red Hat! Now
I need to finish setting up sattrack AND postgreSQL. This is NOT
Trivial and I just found out the keps for AO-10 are out of date. A
Ham has good ones available somewhere...
January 24 1999
Best wishes
- Karl F. Larsen, 3310 East Street, Las Cruces,NM (505) 524-3303 -
