*cry*

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

On Sat, Mar 18, 2000 at 12:26:33PM -0800, Lighthouse Keeper in the Desert Sun wrote:
> So I made sure to install all the gcc stuff, and the c compiler
> *still* doesn't work.  I still get the error 'cannot create executables.'
> I'm attempting to install ssh-1.2.27 from source.  Could *that* be the
> trouble?  I have openssh rpm's, and rpm'ing them tells me I don't have all
> the required libraries, which include esound, gtk, and something else
> X-ish.  I didn't install any of them for a reason: I'm never running an X
> server on this computer, and I'm sure I don't wnat to.  It's a 486 with 24
> MB ram and about 500 MB of hard disk space.  I also have no mouse for it.
> Anyway.  THis is my predicament.  Any more ideas?

The 'cannot create executables' message is a sign that you don't have some
development libraries installed. In particular, the linker is probably
complaining that it cannot find the file crt1.o anywhere. I guess it's a flaw
in the RPM system, but it lets you install the egcs package without informing
you that you won't be able to compile anything. :-(

To fix this: install the glibc-devel-* package.

You may also find you have random compilation errors after this (missing
libraries or whatnot), and that will also be due to a missing -devel package
or two. I was recently playing with a new RedHat install on a laptop and spent
forever trying to compile a particular package from a source rpm: it would
get through the configure script fine and then quit with an error during the
linking phase (10 minutes later) when a particular development library (like
ncurses or libtermcap) was not present. To my mind, this is a definite hole in
their (RedHat's) system. If you are going to report dependency issues, then
you should report *all* of them (and check for required development packages)
rather than failing at a weird point.

The errors you are getting for the openssh rpm's are unrelated to the problems
you are having trying to compile ssh from source. The former errors are just
due to some arbitrary choices the person who created that package made when
they compiled it (putting all the X-stuff and graphical config programs in).

Hope this helps,
Malcolm Tredinnick