tlug: compiling things... was : E-mail

[Dave Gutteridge <dave@example.com>]

Thanks everyone for the tip about using "ps ax|grep inetd". It got me a few
steps further. it's actually something i should have remembered myself,
because i am familiar with it, but that's how it is when you are trying to
learn a bunch of things at once.

Before i move on further with my e-mail problems (i seem to have
succesfully gotten qpopper running, and now i think i have to repair
sendmail... you'll probably hear more from me later after i do a bit of
battle with it...), i have a question about compiling software.

Since getting the Linux box up and running, i've installed a mess of
things... a Jave runtime thing, tcl/tk, IRC programs, ICQ, and recently ssh
and now this qpopper.
What i do when i get these things is put them in a temporary directory
called "Download", then i untar or uncompress them or whatever, and then
run the make and ./configure or whatever install procedures i need with
them. I usually have to be the root in order to get them to do everything
they want to do.
What i'm left with is usually a directory, for instance "qpopper2.53" in my
download. Is it okay to delete this directory? I would have thought so, but
in some cases, like with tcl and tk, some directories were created in my
download directory that are only accessable by the root and won't let me
delete them without super user status. This made me wonder if maybe by
installing them where they were, that the OS thinks that's where i want
them, and therefore configured everything to look there when i want to run
something that requires them. 
So should i be creating a home directory for the software first and then
building them there in that place, or is it okay to build them wherever,
and then delete the original resources that i downloaded from the net? I'm
just wondering what the safest and common protocol among UNIX users is in
this situation.


	________________________________
	
	Dave Gutteridge
	3D Computer Animation Specialist
	e-mail: dave@example.com
	http://www.d-rave.com
	________________________________
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