How Do I Install Programs? 2

[RRoswell]

I'm having a devil of a time with this.

I'd like to find a step-by-step instruction on how to install programs on CentOS.

I don't know how to navigate in the shell. Don't know how to get the shell to the folder with the program.

I think I type "yum install (program)" but I don't know how to get to that point.

Really having a tough time here.

Thanks.

 

[RhythmAce]

On the tool bar click on Applications then Accessories and finally Terminal. Linux referes to the tool bar as the panel. Ifd you right click on Terminal you will see a pop-up menu. One of the options is to add this to the panel. If you select that you won't have to go through the menu system every time you want to use something. Good ones to have there are the terminal, file browser (like Windows Explorer) and tesxt editor.

 

[IPGuru]

if the program you want is in the yum repository it is simple

open a terminal
switch to root
it does not matter which directory you are in
type yum install <program name>
exit out of root

to see if the progam is available try yum list <program name>

 

[RhythmAce]

Sorry RRoswell, I misread a line. I thought you didn't know how to get to the shell. IPGuru is correct, you don't have to be in any particular directory to install packages with yum however, you do need to be logged in as root if you want to do a system wide install. If you install a program as a regular user, only that user will have access to it. Getting around in the shell if very much like DOS. One of the first things you will notice though is that as a regular user, you won't have access to much. Root can go anywhere on the system. If you really need to use the GUI, cahances are you already have a desktop environment installed. Just type startx to load it. This will slow down some servers a bit so that is why they boot into the server (text only) mode. This is also called run level 3. Graphics mode is run level 5.

 

[RRoswell]

Tanks for your help.

I installed CentOS 4.5, and I think it included the Yum service upon installation, but I can't find the repository.

Is it a folder?

What I'd like to do, first off, is install the Flash plugin for Firefox.

 

[RhythmAce]

CentOS has a package installer. If you browser to where you would download the program or plugin, a window should pop up asking if you want to save it or install it. The main thing is when you are dealing with programs that have both Windows and linux versions, that you make sure you get the rpm version. Anything with the .rpm extension can be installed automatically.

 

[geirendre]

You can find this info on the the CentOS wiki:

http://wiki.centos.org/

and

http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement

HTH

 

[RRoswell]

The CentOS forum hasn't been very helpful yet.

I tried to install the Flash player.

It says it's installed, but FireFox won't see any Flash content.

This is going to take a while...

Thanks for all the help.

 

[RhythmAce]

I just istalled it on a backup machine I have. I went to a sight that requires the flash plug-in and clicked on the link to download it. I was taken to the adobe website and had a choice of three flavors, a tarball, rpm or yum. I selected rpm and a window came up asking if I wanted to use the software installer. I selected that and it was installed. I went back to the website I just left and no joy. I shutdown firefox and restarted it. I went to the flash page and it worked like a champ. What version of centos and firefox are you running?

 

[RRoswell]

Thanks Ace,

I'm running CentOS 4.5 and so far the original version of FireFox because I still can't figure out how to install things.

I tried it the way that you described, too. It says it's installed, but it FireFox doesn't see the plugin.

Found some pretty good documentation (finally) and I'm going to dive into that tomorrow.

I appreciate your help.