Singular

Hallo,
I'm using Xubuntu 8.10 and I am still a beginner with linux. I'm trying to unpack the singular archives as described on the download-website. So in the first place I typed

robert@challenger2:/usr/local/install$ sudo gzip -dc Singular-3-1-0-ix86-Linux.tar.gz | tar -pxf-

into the terminal, after changing to the directory where the two files are. The result is that "tar" can't be executed cause subdirectories are missing.

So executed only the first commad seperately:

robert@challenger2:/usr/local/install$ sudo gzip -dc Singular-3-1-0-ix86-Linux.tar.gz

It ended up with a huge amount of asci-code running over my screen, it looks a bit like matrix , , and then nothing but the command line. There are no additional files in the install folder after that.

Any ideas why that happens or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for helping me

Hallo Klaus,
try the following:
become root, chdir to to location, where you want to install Sinbgular (like /usr/local or /opt). Then execute

(use the download location of the Singular package instead of /path/to/.)

Please let us know, if the problem persists.

For the second question:


That's exactly, what the "half" command is expected to do: It puts binary stuff to stdcout, the pipe-command generates files from this. Without the pipe, everything is put to the terminal session.

Best regards,
Alexander

By the way, for ubuntu it might be easier to use deb-based packages: http://singular.mathematik.uni-kl.de/UNIX/rpm_manually.html#deb_manual

Regards,
Alexander

Hallo Alexander,

I can finally use Singular now because I installed the Debian packages with the dpkg command, which worked very well.

I Also tried your suggestion:

That also worked, the files were unpacked, but then I couldn't execute the program properly. When I tried to run it from thunar (as root) it was startet up, displaying the start-screen and also "Good Bye", so I couldn't use it. I tried the optional steps, so that typing "Singular" into the shell prompt would execute the programm. Even though there were no error messages after executing the commands, typing "Singular" didn't execute the program.

Anyway, Singular runs on my computer now so I am quite happy, thanks for your help.

Regards,
klaus

Hallo Klaus,
indeed, I forgot to mention that the PATH environment variable should be fixed accordingly. But since the deb package has worked for you (it's the preferred solution anyway), I will not go into detail for fixing the "generic" install.

Best regards,
Alexander