removing source installation

[rudie_rage]

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I have installed php from source instead of from a package. How would I go about removing it completely? Its one thing about a source installation I have never been sure about.

[bigtomrodney]

If you still have the folder that you originally built and installed it from , 'cd' to it and run

make uninstall

[simon]

even if you've trashed the build tree, you can simply make it again (unpack the source as before) and (provided you configure it the same way you did originally) you can rebuild it and then "make uninstall" will remove everything, as bigtomrodney said.

not all packages provide an uninstall script so it's not always that easy. you can work through the install script to figure out where everything is, but ideally, stick to slackware's tgz package format and then you can use installpkg and removepkg as usual. converting something you've built from source into a slackware package is very easy with "checkinstall" (it's in the slackware "extra" directory): once you've configured checkinstall with your preferred package directory and so on, you just build a source package as usual but instead of typing "make install" you type "checkinstall". your package is neatly packed up as a tgz and can be installed/uninstalled as usual. the other advantage of course is that the package can easily be installed on your other systems too.

[rudie_rage]

yeah, I must say php is starting to become less and less appealing to me. I'm no expert, but an overly complicated install process, piles of reported bugs, and now no uninstall scripts?

On the other hand once its set up I love php itself. Just not the installation lol.
and I already KNOW php...

[bigtomrodney]

Slackware itself is very much a manual distro, everything is configured with just basics and additions are made by the user. If you want to get up and running with a PHP seerver you may find it easier to use a package-managed distro such as Fedora, openSUSE or Debian/Ubuntu. In fact I think some of these distros have a metapackage that will automatically install Apache,MySQL and PHP all in one go for you.

[rudie_rage]

Slackware itself is very much a manual distro, everything is configured with just basics and additions are made by the user. If you want to get up and running with a PHP seerver you may find it easier to use a package-managed distro such as Fedora, openSUSE or Debian/Ubuntu. In fact I think some of these distros have a metapackage that will automatically install Apache,MySQL and PHP all in one go for you.

But in a sense thats what I like about slackware. I get to start with a kernel, some basic apps, and a bunch of libraries, and I add the rest on myself. I know exactly whats on my machine and how it's configured.

In one sense its kind of a control thing. I like having a general idea about everything going on at any given point, but at the same time it has practical value when something screws up. You know what you have and what you dont, and you know it cant be one of a million things you didnt even know you had installed causing the problem.

But I see the tradeoff I make. In order for everything to be configured the way you want, you actually have to configure it :P whether you know how or not.

I know I'm already way off topic, so I might as well keep going and ask about a similar distro to slackware that does a very basic install and has a focus on having up to date working packages. (which is something I noticed slackware seems to lack). I've heard good things about zen and arch linux, but dont know if they meet my requirements. Any thoughts?

[bigtomrodney]

Gentoo and the 'metadistro' LFS (Linux From Scratch) both have a strong focus on building from the basics, complete control and of course optimisation.

Of course as you said it's whether you know how to or not so there is a sharp learning curve

[MikeTbob]

Gentoo and the 'metadistro' LFS (Linux From Scratch) both have a strong focus on building from the basics, complete control and of course optimisation.

Of course as you said it's whether you know how to or not so there is a sharp learning curve

Amen to that, It's such a sharp curve that it cuts to the bone!

[simon]

Amen to that, It's such a sharp curve that it cuts to the bone!

heh. lfs is fun to build (for the satisfaction of putting your entire os together piece by piece from the various package sources out there) but i think it would be *extremely* painful to build and maintain your everyday, fully functional desktop that way. you wouldn't necessarily know your system any better, either: it's easy enough to follow the recipe and build the whole thing without really knowing much about what you're doing.

the same goes for gentoo: in fact, my own experience is that slackware teaches you far more about linux than gentoo, despite its reputation for getting you "under the hood" of the os. slackware has a fairly limited range of pre-built packages, and installing something else means finding out what packages it depends on, locating and downloading all of them manually, unpacking them and reading their documentation (or at least ./configure --help | less), configuring them, building and installing them one at a time, and then finally doing the same with the package you're after. to do the same in gentoo is just

emerge foo

which does all of the above for you: you do get to watch it doing it, if you can catch what's going on as it flies up your screen. so gentoo can leave you with a system you've "built yourself" and yet know very little about.

in terms of friendlier slackware-based distros, zenwalk (formerly "minislack") is great (if you like xfce, which i do). i've stuck with slackware because i have it just how i want it now (i first ran version 3.5), but if zenwalk had been around a few years earlier i might have opted for that instead. it feels very much like slackware, but the default install is more in line with desktop and newbie-oriented distros (like ubuntu) in that everything's there and works without all the manual configuring slackware requires. i don't know whether this applies to php, though, as i haven't tried it.

[rudie_rage]

simon:

thanks for the insight. Do you know if you can install zen without xfce? I prefer fluxbox, and with my dual monitor setup and wireless network I basically install a distro just to get it running and then add loads of stuff to it myself, including a shiny new kernel, X, and nvidia drivers I have on a disk kicking around here somewhere.

I mean, the biggest thing that bothers me is when you dont have plenty of install options. I've been using solely linux for over a year now (maybe two?) and even when I first started with ubuntu, that was what really turned me off of the distro. That and the fact that the automatic updates changed the kernel so frequently without giving you the source, and i was sick of it breaking my nvidia drivers.

so really, all I need is a good package management system and an install that gives you the option of checking off every package you want on your system. If I dont want gnome/kde, I dont want it installed to begin with. It drives me crazy :P