Next Previous Contents

2. Installing the Software Dependencies

Update your distribution files with the usual:

apt-get update

and install file, bzip2, lha, unarj, unrar, and zoo in one shot with:

apt-get install file bzip2 lha unarj unrar zoo

Install all the perl modules in one shot with:

apt-get install libio-stringy-perl libunix-syslog-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-base64-perl libmime-perl libconvert-uulib-perl libconvert-tnef-perl libcompress-zlib-perl libarchive-tar-perl libarchive-zip-perl libnet-perl

Installing the " arc" utility is much more of a hassle. Furthermore, it is an unmaintained old MS-DOS port with a non-free license. I will describe what I did to compile it on a Intel platform (suggestions on better ways to do this are appreciated). The next few steps assume that you have the GNU " make" and " gcc" packges installed on your system. If this is not the case then try:

apt-get install make gcc

Let's create a temporary directory somewhere so that we can make a mess in it. Since my login is " jps" , I made a directory named " /home/jps/tmp/" . Copy the arc521.tar.Z file into your new temporary diretory and type:

uncompress arc521.tar.Z; tar xf arc521.tar

or something equivalent to uncompress and untar the archive. This will create a bunch of files. We need to delete some lines from the file named " arcdos.c" . It is probably set to be read-only, so type:

chmod u+w arcdos.c

Open arcdos.c for editing and delete (or comment out) lines 35-38 inclusive. (It is the definition of a structure that begins with " struct timeval" on line 35 and ends with " };" on line 38). We are done with that, so close the file. Now type:

make

This command WILL FAIL with a bunch of warnings and an error message complaining about " tmclock.o" , but it accomplished some necessary things anyway. Now open the file named " Makefile" for editing. Go to the line that says " System = -DBSD=1" . It should be on line 31. Change the line so that it says:

System = -DSYSV=1

Close the Makefile and run make again by typing:

make

That should compile the " arc" utility successfully. You can ignore the warnings about " mktemp" and " mkstemp" . There should now be an executable program with the name of " arc" in your temporary directory. As root, copy this file to " /usr/local/bin" or the usual place where you keep home-cooked binaries. Just make sure that it is in your path. Test this by typing " arc" and see if the arc usage guide scrolls up your terminal. You can delete all the files in your temporary directory now, but leave the directory itself because we will be using it later. Aren't .deb packages so much easier?


Next Previous Contents