INSTALLING SOFTWARES
USING CHECKINSTALL SO THAT IT CAN BE

SAFELY REMOVED FROM YOUR MACHINE

Installing
from a tarball (.tar.gz or .tar.bz2) is not difficult, but at times it’s
difficult to remove the package. It may also overwrite existing files, and add new
ones, without your knowing about it. Checkinstall is a program that supervises
the compiling and installation of tarball software. It can keep backups of your
existing files, and it produces a .tgz/.deb file that can be used to remove and
reinstall the software using standard Slackware/Debian tools. This article has
been tested successfully with checkinstall-1.5.3-i486-2.tgz in Slackware 10.0.

You
can do all the work described in this article from the command line. You can
either boot straight into console mode, or open a terminal window in an X
session. Common terminal emulators are xterm, gnome-terminal (for the gnome
desktop) and konsole (for the KDE desktop).

About tarballs

A
tarball is a file created by the tar archiving utility. It contains one or more
archived files. When tar is run by itself, it produces files with a .tar
extension. When tar is combined with gzip, for data compression, the resulting
file extensions may be .tgz, .tar.gz or .tar.Z.

About
checkinstall

Checkinstall
installs a program which has been compiled in the normal way. (Typically, the
commands are ./configure and make.) Checkinstall takes
over the final stage. It will use the command make install or any other command
supplied as an argument to checkinstall.

Checkinstall
keeps track of all the files created or modified by make install(
or any similar command). It builds a standard binary package and installs it in
your system, giving you the ability to uninstall it with your Slackware/Debian
distribution’s standard package management utilities.

Slackware
specific

Checkinstall
will create a Slackware, RPM or Debian compatible package. This article
describes the use of checkinstall to create Slackware packages only.

Prepare a
Packages directory

Better
create a directory Packages. This is where you will put tarballs, their
extracted files, compiled code, backup of replaced files and installation
scripts.

Installing checkinstall from a tarball
or .tgz package

Dowload checkinstall tarball or .tgz package.

Procedure for a typical installation

1. Work as a normal user throughout the installation.

2. Put the tarball/.tgz package into your working area

3. Extract the files from the tarball/.tgz package.

For
tarball: tar -xvzf checkinstall-1.5.3-i486-2.tar.gz

For
tarball: tar -xvjf checkinstall-1.5.3-i486-2.tar.bz2

For
.tgz package: installpkg checkinstall-1.5.3-i486-2.tgz

If its .tgz, the software is installed just by
running the above command. If its
tarball then tar will create a new directory with the same name as the tarball,
but without the .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 suffix

4. Read the documentation

Yes!
Read the documentation, especially in files with names like README, INSTALL or
COMPILE. There are normally two or three steps to compile a tarball package, and
one to install it.

Extract
files from the tarball as a normal user. (You have already completed this
stage.)

Prepare
the extracted files for your system using ./configure.
(Do this as a normal user.)

#./configure

Compile
from the extracted files using make. (Do this as a normal user too.)

#make

Install
the resulting software as user Root. #make install.

Now
your checkinstall is ready to work.

Let
us install software now.

If the software is .tgz package, then no requirement
of using checkinstall. Just run
the command stated above.

If
its .tarball then follows the steps stated above till the command #make

i.e

–
For tarball: tar -xvzf checkinstall-1.5.3-i486-2.tar.gz

–
For tarball: tar -xvjf checkinstall-1.5.3-i486-2.tar.bz2

Get
inside the – newly created directory with the same name as the tarball, but
without the .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 suffix.

Read
documentation

If
the ./configure stage is necessary, move to the source
directory and run the command ./configure as a normal user.

$ ./configure

…

$

Run
make, as a normal user, from the same directory.

$
make

…

$

–

Errors?

This
is where you are most likely to have a failure. Usually, this means that you do
not have the right software on your system. Make will tell you what is missing.
If particular packages must be installed, install them with slapt, and try
again. If particular files are needed, you must identify which package(s) will
supply them.

Install the software

If
every thing is fine upto here, then run the following command

$checkinstall
make install

Certain
questions will be asked. You can opt for the defaults and move ahead.

Congrats!!! You have successfully installed the software using
Checkinstall.

If
you look inside the current directory, a .tgz package has also been created
after running #checkinstall make install.

Store
this .tgz at some safer place. This is the file which you can use to re-install
this software at later time without using checkinstall, just by running the
command

#installpkg

How to uninstall programs on linux (which you were looking for ;-) )

For
.rpm

–

#rpm
-e

For
.tgz

#removepkg

For tarball installed without using
Checkinstall

Go
inside the directory of the installed source package, and run

#make uninstall

it will uninstall the
program.

–

But
it won’t work everytime. B’coz it depends whether the writer of the program has
encoded the script to remove it or not. In this case you will have to manually
remove the related files from various places. Isn’t tiresome job
???

That’s
why we have used Checkinstall to install the package

Just
run the command (You can remove it from your system anytime using)

#removepkg NameOfThePackage

That’s
it!!! Now no worries of uninstalling the packages

Bond
(bond.iips@gmail.com)