Major problem trying to install 5.0beta3 for linux

[Ben Horner-Johnson]

> From: Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
> Subject: Major problem trying to install 5.0beta3 for linux

>   I gunzipped and untarred the file in one step and watched files being put
> into directories with names of /bin, /dev, /etc, /driver, /fonts, /garde.
> /txt and so on. These all showed up as subdirectories under the /usr3
> partition. Since I want all of GRASS in a directory called
> /usr3/GRASS-5.0beta3, I started rm'ing the files and directories. It was
> after I invoked 'rm -rf /bin' that I discovered that I trashed the /bin
> directory on my main workstation!!
> 
>   This is not a subdirectory under /usr3 located on a nfs-mounted partition,
> but the basic /bin directory on the machine to which I am logged in! The
> only thing I can figure has happened is that a symbolic link has been
> created from the system directories under / so that they appear as
> directories under /usr3.

Ouch!

I know this is a little late, but wouldn't it have been better to do
'rm -rf bin' from /usr3 or 'rm -rf /usr3/bin'.
'rm -rf /bin' to me means "go to the root partition (/) and then remove the bin
directory" - which is what happened.

Alternative: make directory and mv other dirs into it instead of removing.
'cd /usr3; mkdir GRASS-5.0beta3; mv bin dev etc driver fonts garde txt ...
GRASS-5.0beta3'


I also thought there was an install script (grass5install.sh) available in
the same directory as the binary tar.gz file

sh grass5install.sh grass5beta3_linuxbin.tar.gz /usr/local/grass5

Your case would be:

sh grass5install.sh grass5beta3_linuxbin.tar.gz /usr3/GRASS-5.0beta3.

Hope this helps...

Ben Horner-Johnson
ben at earth.nwu.edu