TISEAN installation

[Nicola_Staffolani]

Dear Ubuntu users,

I am trying to install in /home a program called Tisean; if u have a look at the webpage where they explain how to install it, they tell you you'll "probably" need to just run 3 commands:

> ./configure --prefix=/my_home/Tisean_3.0.1
> make
> make install

However, this is not the case in my case since I keep getting always the same error message when I run the 3rd command (> make install), that is:

make: *** [do_install] Error 1

which is not self-explanatory at all! It must be something that has to do with the --prefix, which - if I got it right - is where the executables are put...

Could somebody help me out?

Thank you in advance,

Nicola

[tgalati4]

sudo make install

You can configure and make (compile) files locally, but to install them to the system requires root or sudo privileges.

[steeldriver]

It should be possible to run 'make install' without sudo provided you have specified the --prefix correctly at the configure stage - what exactly are you substituting for my_home when you run the command? Does the directory Tisean_3.0.1 exist there?

[Nicola_Staffolani]

Dear tgalati4 & steeldriver,

thank you very much both for your help!

I think steeldriver is right, indeed I have just $ sudo make install but I've got the same message, and I agree again with steeldriver that the problem might be the prefix I am specifying... So, my home is simply home I have downloaded the tar.gz there. Afterwards, as explained here, I $ gunzip TISEAN_3.0.1.tar.gz and then $ tar -vxf TISEAN_3.0.1.tar, so that now I have my folder home/Tisean_3.0.1; now I go inside it, i.e. inside the folder home/Tisean_3.0.1 and do the following:

$ ./configure --prefix=/home/Tisean_3.0.1
$ make
$ make install

Can you find anything wrong? Should I remove the name of the Tisean folder from the prefix and just leave the name of my home folder? Thank you in advance!!

Nicola

[Nicola_Staffolani]

PS in the maenwhile that you reply, I have tried with:

$ ./configure --prefix=/home
$ make
$ make install

and the error message I have got is the following:

$ /home/bin does not exist

...

[Nicola_Staffolani]

PPS for the sake of compliteness, what they write in their website, where you can download the software from, is:

By default, the executables go to $HOME/bin, you can change that to mydir by

> ./configure --prefix=mydir

[coldraven]

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_directory#Unix

In Unix, a user will be automatically placed into their home directory upon login. The ~user shorthand variable refers to a user's home directory (allowing the user to navigate to it from anywhere else in the filesystem, or use it in other Unix commands).
The ~ (tilde character) shorthand command refers to that particular user's home directory.

So maybe you should try either ~home or the absolute path /home/nicola/
You would also probably have to create the directory /home/nicola/bin or whatever you choose to call it.

[Nicola_Staffolani]

From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_directory#Unix


So maybe you should try either ~home or the absolute path /home/nicola/
You would also probably have to create the directory /home/nicola/bin or whatever you choose to call it.

Dear coldraven,

thank you for replying!

Regarding creating a new bin directory, I thought I should use one of the following 4 (and not create a new one):

1. /bin
2. /usr/bin
3. /usr/local/bin
4. /home/Tisean_3.0.1/bin

Which one of these 4? I say this because one usually doesnìt create a new bin folder each time he/she installs a program...

Nicola

[steeldriver]

$HOME and /home are not the same thing, you will not be able to write to /home without sudo permissions, whereas you have complete freedom to create whatever files you want in $HOME (which is a variable corresponding to your home directory, like /home/nicola). The tilde character ~ is a synonym for $HOME.

If you want all users of the computer to be able to use the Tisean software, you should probably install it to a location like /usr/local (i.e. use --prefix=/usr/local) - in that case you will need to use 'sudo make install'

If you want to install the software just for you - or you don't have sudo privileges - you should install to $HOME. It looks like the installer doesn't create the bin directory itself, so you will need to do something like

mkdir ~/bin

./configure --prefix=$HOME

make

make install

According to the info you posted, $HOME is the default install location - if that is the case you don't really even need to specify a --prefix value at all, but it will not hurt anything to be explicit. If ~/bin does already exist, mkdir will throw an error - which you can ignore.

Once the ~/bin directory exists, it will be added to your PATH next time you log in, so that any executables placed there will be found by the system.

[Nicola_Staffolani]

Hi steeldriver,

thank you very muc hfor your clear explanation! Unfortunately I have tried first to install the software for all users (used --prefix=/usr/local & then 'sudo make install') but I've got the error message 'make: *** [do_install] Error 1'; afterwards I have tried to install the software for myself and I have therefore followed your instructions (mkdir ~/bin; ./configure --prefix=$HOME; make; make install), but I've got again the same error message... Don't know what else to do...

Nicola