asked on

Linux make install - where do things get installed?

I have done and am again doing an update from tar.gz sources on Linux. This is the typical `./config`, `make`, `make install` scenario.

Sometime I need to back these installs out if things go awry. Before doing the `make install`, is there a way to know what will be installed where? Would `make --dry-run install` work or is there a more standard way?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Tintin

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

gheist

--prefix defaults to /usr/local/
Typically you seek options to package into distribution package - spec file for rpmbuild, or run checkinstall for DPKG
That way you can upgrade packages later or get rid of them if needed.
For slow start I'd stick with a bit older packages of LTS/enterprise distributions.

Mark

ASKER

Tintin:

make --dry-run install is the method I use.

That seemed to do the trick. There is no `make uninstall` on this package, so I will have to search through the install output to see what files were changed so I can later restore them if things go badly.

Note that you can generally do ./configure --prefix=/preferred/install/path

Have done that in the past, esp with Apache, but nowadays I really, really try to install to the default locations. Seems like I sometimes end with up adverse interaction from other dependent tools that have expectations of where things should be.

gheist: I'm installing from Slackware and they do have slackpkg, but I've tried using that twice before and it has hosed my system to an unusable state. I spent 2 hours last night restoring system directories. For example, I can do `slackpkg upgrade openssl`, but if it doesn't work correctly I don't see any option to "downgrade". Probably my slackpkg installed packages repository is hosed, but I don't know why, I just installed this system from scratch a few months ago. I did a `slackpkg upgrade-all` after the initial installation, which worked fine, but subsequent usages of slackpkg seem to mess things up badly. I think I'll just stick to my usual `./config ... make install` method. That's really never failed me. Perhaps on the next fresh installation ...

gheist

Why would you downgrade?

Mark

ASKER

gheist"

Why would you downgrade?

In the context of my comment, if an installed "upgrade" didn't work satisfactorily, I'd want to uninstall it and restore the previous version. That's what I meant by "downgrade".

Otherwise, sometimes things just need to be downgraded 'cause the current version has issues, generally, not related to an "upgrade". For example, spamass-milter 0.4.0 did not work well with sendmail 8.14.9 whereas the older version 0.3.1 worked find. Another potential example is a problem I'm having with openssl 1.0.1i and TLS (which you have seen). Some recipients are rejecting TLS messages whereas the accepted them with version 0.9.8r -- maybe "downgrade"? We'll see.

gheist

Installing distribution packages you have assurance that they at least worked for their packager once before you. For own builds you are pretty much on your own.