>
>
> Hiya,
>
> Im not able to convert anything using alien. When i say alien foo.rpm it
> gives me the foll err :
>
> Examining foo.rpm
> Unpacking foo.rpm
> cannot open package: No such file or directory
> cpio: premature end of archive
> alien: Error unpacking
>
> I tried with netscape, communicator, pine etc etc .....i even tried
> converting them to tgz, but same error.
>
> And when i try to install them using rpm (i know its a bad idea), it gives
> me a bunch of dependency error, and I know well that all the
> dependent packages are installed.
>
> Cheerio,
>
> Sagar.
>
>
Sorry I don't have an answer for you but I have another question :)
My newbie mind doesn't stop wondering about little things...
I'm curious as why you say that installing programs though rpm is a bad
idea. When ever I got to eraser some program I give it one flag and a
program name to rm and it should (in theory) go and rm all those files
scattered about my system. But if I say go and compile a program from the
source I don't know what it put where in my filesystem :)
Is there some way I could track what files went where, when I compile them
instead of using rpm?
I been thinking lately that if I (re)compile most of the programs on this
system that it would run faster, but don't know if it's a sound theory on
my part. Correct me if i'm deluded but all i386.rpm packages are
supose to install on all x86 systems, and therefore compiled on a 386 for
compatiablity? This system runs a K6-300 (i586), so if instead I compiled
those programs, gcc would optimize the program to take advantage of
'feartures' that where not avaible for the older 386 cpu's, and thus the
program would run faster. Is this a sound idea?
But there is a couple questions still holding me back from (re)compiling
every program on this system. First how would one go about so that gcc
would compile and optimize the code for a i586, would it pick up on it
manually though the configure scripts that come with alot of programs or
would I have to write my own configure script to pass flags onto gcc
somehow to tell it to 'tweak' out the binary program?
The second question one would have to ask is where does the program and
all assoicated files goto live when the program is compiled? rpm -ql
program _should ussually_ show all the files that came in that package,
but when something is compiled it is harder to track down each little file
by hand that was shoved who knows where into the file system. Would the
config script that came with each program hold the secert of where the
program(s) that it compile lied? It kinda would have to?
Also how much speed would be expect if the x windows system was recompiled
for the i586?
Thanxz for reading this, it was longer than I expected, but this has been
itching the back of my mind of days.... err that and/or a tick, Mmmmmm
*lime* diease
