file installation
 

ive done several searches on how install .tgz file on my n800 and i have not found anything that helps me. could somebody give a link or instructions on how to install .tgz files.
Also, what other types of files are you able to install? and is it the same procedure as installing .tgz files?
Thanks!

Re: file installation
 

I assume you've already tried the much easier method of installing apps from maemo.org/downloads?

Re: file installation
 

yes i have, but but this app is from another source.

Re: file installation
 

Files with a ".tgz" extension are commonly called tarballs. They're the ".zip" files of the Unix world. In other words, they're compressed archives of files, not installable packages.* These compressed archives more often contain source code than compiled applications.

You'll need to launch X Terminal and use "gunzip" and "tar" to extract the contents of your tarball:
Are you sure you have an application for your tablet inside your .tgz file though? You may want to make sure you didn't download the source code to an application by mistake.


* Exception: Slackware Linux uses .tgz files for installable packages. Those packages won't work on your tablet though.

Re: file installation
 

thank for the instructions sjgadsby. i am pretty sure that the file is not the source code. I did try and do the commands in Xterminal but it said that “there is no such such file or directory.” is that because it is a source file or what?
Thanks

Re: file installation
 

Pasting the exact error message really helps.

The short way (1 command) is
The -z flag for tar makes it decompress a gzipped tar first.
(Note that the z flag is a GNU extension.)

Of course, you must be in the same location as the .tgz, or specify the path as well.
It will extract the files in the current directory.

Re: file installation
 

i cant figure out how to specify the files path. how would i go about that?
Thanks

Re: file installation
 

/path/to/file

Re: file installation
 

Possibly
or
depending upon where you saved the file.

Where did you save the file? (Where does the file appear in the File Manager?)

Re: file installation
 

Thanks. I'm still not used to tar having that ability, obviously.

Re: file installation
 

Thanks for the help. Now the problem is that i cannot find the unzipped file. Is there another command?
Thanks

Re: file installation
 

Have you tried "Search" in the "Utilities" section of the Application Menu?

Re: file installation
 

Yes i have tried searching for it but nothing comes up except for the original file. Could it be a problem with the initial file?
Thanks

Re: file installation
 

What happened when you ungziped and untarred the .tgz file? Did you see a list of files that were extracted from the archive, or did you see an error message? If you saw an error message, what was it?

If you didn't get an error message, then you just need to learn some command line skills to look around for your extracted files. Start by opening X Terminal and typing pwd and hitting enter.

pwd is print working directory. It tells you in which directory you currently are. In this case, it should report "/home/user".

Unlike Windows, Linux doesn't use drive letters, so you don't have "C:\Program Files\Winamp\Winamp.exe" and "D:\Pirated MP3s\Divine-The_Name_Game.mp3". Instead, there's a root directory, "/", and all storage (hard drives, flash drives, network drives, etc.) branch out from it like it's the base of a tree.

So, in this case, you're in the directory "user", which is a subdirectory of "home", which is in the root directory, "/". In case you're interested, "home" is the Linux equivalent of the "Documents and Settings" folder in Windows, and "home" contains a directory for each user on the system*, the "home directories" for the users.

Your tablet has one user**, you, and as far as Linux on your tablet is concerned, you're named "user". Yes, it's unimaginative, but it works. Anyway, "/home/user" is your home directory, and it's where X Terminal starts you when you open it.

Now, type ls -l and hit enter. (Note: those are lowercase Ls, not 1s.) This is the command to list the contents of the current directory with an option (the "-l" bit) to make the listing long.

You should see something like:
Directory and file names are at the far right. The alphabet soup at the far left you can mostly ignore, but the first character is "d" for directories and "-" for files***, which is handy to know.

See anything that looks likely to be the stuff you extracted from your .tgz file yet?

To enter another directory, you'll use the change directory command. For instance, if you wanted to enter the MyDocs directory, you'd type cd MyDocs and hit enter. pwd would then report "/home/user/MyDocs". To move up a level, back to "/home/user", type cd .. and hit enter.

Hopefully, this will get you started on using the command line. You can run Google searches on these commands for more information, and ask here if you have trouble.



* Okay, this isn't quite true. There are exceptions. Those exceptions don't concern you right now.

** Again, not quite true, but good enough. Go with it.

*** If you continue on with using the Linux command line, you may eventually see some other letters in this first position. For now, they don't matter.

Re: file installation
 

Wow. Thanks for the info. When i unzipped the file it started to list a bunch of files and then it just stopped; there was not any error message. I did find a file that looks like it would be from the ".tgz" file, but i don't see where i would go from there. Should it come up on a search? (It doesn't)
Thanks

Re: file installation
 

That was a great primer sjgadsby gave you! If you know the name of a file you're looking for, you might find this helpful.

Re: file installation
 

If, after the list of files, X Terminal showed a command prompt ("$") and sat waiting for you to type another command, then all the files were successfully extracted from the archive. It sounds as though that's what happened.

Most Linux command line tools don't put any effort into telling you when they succeed in a task. If they don't tell you something went wrong, then everything went right.

If you provide some information on what this .tgz is supposed to contain and where you got it (a link to a web site would be handy) then someone may be able to help you.

If it's the Search tool in the Utilities menu of your tablet that can't find it, that's probably normal. I've not actually used that tool, but I expect it only looks at the files and directories in "/home/user/MyDocs". The folks who designed the tablets tried to make them user friendly by hiding everything outside "MyDocs".

Re: file installation
 

I finally got the file installed. Thanks to everyone who helped me.