[Watford] Compiling axfr

[Matt Marsh]

Walter,

> I have downloaded the above and want to install on my debian system. I have
> 0 experience with compiling and installing programs and although I have
> tried every option in the install text file that comes with the archive, I
> cannot get it to install.

I haven't come across "axfr" before, and a quick google came up with
lots of DNS related stuff (if that's the same thing?) but I couldn't
actually see a piece of software with that name... could you point us
to where we can get hold of the source that you're talking about?

> The first step is to make sure the extraction goes into the correct folder
> eg: /use/local/bin which it does. Then I checked the access/execute
> permissions and made sure they are 'full rights' with chmod.  But running
> ./config keeps showing missing aclocal, autoheader, autoconfig etc.  I have
> the log file I can attach if someone is able to assist.

When you say that the "first step is to make sure the extraction goes
to the correct folder eg: /usr/local/bin", are you talking about
extraction of source files? or of binaries? Usually the procedure
is to extract the source files into a directory somewhere in your
home directory or /tmp and then once the executables are built they
get put in the final destination eg. /usr/local/bin.

I'm guessing that the source archive you have for this software
follows the fairly typical "configure - make - make install"
procedure of building/installation... if so, then here's what
should basically be going on:

- First unpack the source somewhere convinient, like in your home
   directory (of a regular non-root user). If the archive has been
   created properly it will usually create a directory for itself
   and put all the source files in there.

- Now go into that directory and (with your regular non-root user)
   run ./configure
   That should check your system to make sure that you have all the
   right tools and libraries to build the software and produce some
   configuration information about your machine that the compiler
   etc can make use of.

- Next, again with your regular user you run "make" which should
   build everything.

- Finally, switch to root and in the same directory run
   "make install" which should move all the binaries that have been
   built to their correct locations.

Now, the configure step above requires the use of some tools
that it seems are not currently installed on your system. You
should be able to fetch the tools you need by doing the following
as root: "apt-get install autoconf automake"

Try re-running ./configure after installing those packages and
see if it gets you any further.

Matt

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