On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 01:47:19PM +1100, David wrote: > I have 3 questions which I hope someone can assist me with?: > > 1. How do I install a program from a download or CD?
Ok, the short answer is that it depends what you're installing. Third party software (like staroffice, at least the last time I played with it) tend to have their own installer or rpm files. In the former case you need to run the installer. So, something like: cd /mnt/cdrom ./setup (assuming you're using supermount... which may cause other problems, but let us know if there are issues with mounted disks). doing "cd /mnt/cdrom" and then running ls will show you what programs you can run on the disk. Mandrake will colour the files which are flagged as executables (programs - things you can run) green. The installer (if there is one) will be one of these files. Alternatively if they have an rpm file, then you use the rpm command to install it. Basic process is this: cd /mnt/cdrom rpm -ivh rpmfile.rpm and of course substitute the name of the rpm file. RPM files are also coloured IIRC. Red perhaps. Anyway, they'll have an rpm extension so they're easy enough to find. There is another path, which I always forget about because I never use it. If you use KDE (I don't know about GNOME. It probably does this too. Jeff?), you can click around until you find the rpm on your cd-rom drive (there will be an icon for it on your desktop), then right click on it - one of the options there will let you install the rpm. I kinda didn't believe it when I saw that but I tried it and it does indeed work. It will prompt for the superuser password. Now, the more general question - how do you install stuff. If it's source code you follow the instructions in the tarball. They will probably say to untar the source somewhere and run these commands: ./configure make make install If you want to install something from Mandrake's RPMs, the PLF RPMs, or a number of other places which support "urpmi", you can run "urpmi programname" as root and it will download and install it for you, or you can run mandrake control center, which should be in menus everywhere (or mcc from console - I discovered the other day that you can also use if from a console), go to software management, and there is a thing there for searching stuff it knows how to install and installing it. I can't remember the link for info on cooker (which is experimental mandrake stuff). The default install will set it up so it knows about all of your installation CDs and will prompt for them if it needs them to install something. Also check out http://plf.zarb.org (which I remember only because it has "zarb" as its domain name. I think that's cool) they have 1337 l1nuz w4r3z. And, attend the slug meeting this month where I intend to elucidate upon all of this in about 5 minutes. It will be EXTREME. > > I know this seems soooo simple, but I am very confused atm. For > example: > I am attempting to install SatOffice 5.? from CD. But don't know how to > get it going so it installs. Another example: trying to download a file > and install it? How do I? Have you figured out downloading? See above for installation, post if you want help downloading stuff. > 2. My second question is: I have a USB flash drive. How do I get it to > be > read in Linux? Do I mount it, and how? this seems to have been answered already, but I thought I'd just say that the last time I played with usb storage devices on mandrake I just plugged it in and mounted it and it worked straight off. I couldn't get it to play nice with supermount and mount itself automatically though. > > 3. I installed Linux onto a Toshiba Satellite 1400. It went well (dual > partition and all that stuff) but I cant seem to get the modem to go. > Have tried various laptop-u > linux websites but are very confused. Is there someone that can guide > me > through the process (if there is one? ) that is non Linux speak. All > the > information I got was baffling! hmmm. Depends on the modem. I don't know about toshiba notebooks because I only have a compaq one. Run "lspcidrake" as root and send us the output - we can probably help more then. Alternatively I think mandrake control center has a clicky hardware installing thing. Harddrake or something. It used to ship with a thing called "kudzu" as well which wasn't too bad (in moderation). If it's simple, harddrake will probably know how to do it. HTH, James. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
