[lug] Installing Software Packages

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Monday 03 May 2004 03:35 pm, Charlie Rose wrote:
> Gentlefolk ....  Newbie speaking!
>
> Here I am, trying to install StarOffice 6.0 on my Mandrake 9.0 system, and
> I'm totally baffled. I don't know how to install a software package with
> Linux.

I haven't done StarOffice in quite a while, but here goes.

> I went to /mnt/cdrom/linux/office60 (in the GUI), and saw a bunch of files
> which included one named "setup" that was identified as an executable. To
> me, running setup would have installed the package ... only, by clicking or
> double-clicking it, it wouldn't run.

In the file /etc/fstab, which tells the system where to mount everything, look 
at the entry for  /mnt/cdrom.  If it has "noexec" that could be causing 
problems--it would mean that your CDs mount so that you cannot exectue the 
files.  That is the meaning of the next line:

> The documentation said that I should "open the CD-ROM with execute rights".
> Well, /cdrom has rwxrwxrwx privileges automatically, so I don't know what
> the documentation is talking about. Incidentally, /mnt/cdrom/linux has
> r-xr-xr-x, /mnt/cdrom/linux/office60 has r-xr-xr-x, and most all the files
> therein have r--r--r-- privs except for setup which has r-xr-xr-x.
>
> The documentation also says that I can copy the /linux/office60 files to a
> temporary directory on my hard drive, and install from there. From
> /mnt/cdrom/linux/office60, I did a cp * /home/charlie/tmp. Almost all the
> files got copied. I can see those that didn't go in the GUI file list in
> Konqueror, but when I try to copy these files, I'm told they don't exist.
> As a matter of fact, as I navigate around the CD, directories keep
> disappearing on me.

You might try this again.  become root and try 
    cp -a  /mnt/cdrom/linux/office60 /tmp
cp -a means to copy everything, including subdirs, permissions, ownership, 
etc.

See if you can install it from /tmp/office60.

Mandrake does do some funny stuff with /mnt/cdrom that other distributions 
don't do, and this could possibly be causing problems.  It shouldn't, but you 
never know.  Try the above two tricks.  If neither one works, let me know and 
we'll try again.

Michael