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I'm a little new in this area. I have a virtual machine centos5.1 that doesn't come with make or any compiler... basically stripped down. It doesn't come with any install packages like yum, rpm or apt. In order to install 'make', you have to have a valid compiler like gcc. However, in order to compile GCC, you need to have 'make'. How do I go about installing these dev tools?

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voting to move to superuser.com, they deal with install type issues over there. good question, just not for stack overflow. :) – Paul Nathan Nov 13 '09 at 17:09
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Why did you install such a stripped down system? – Daniel Pryden Nov 13 '09 at 17:09
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It's actually a zenoss appliance. – user17924 Nov 13 '09 at 17:14
Now that's a catch-22 if ever I saw one. – Phoshi Nov 13 '09 at 17:14
Be aware that just getting make in there will solve nothing. You also need GCC (among other things) installed for compiling GCC. So you have to start with precompiled binaries. And you cannot do all this and still have the system stripped down. – Fabel Nov 15 '11 at 22:23

migrated from stackoverflow.com Nov 13 '09 at 17:09

3 Answers

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I can't imagine why you wanted a system without any package management, but you can manually copy everything that a package would otherwise put on your system.

This really would be a last resort though, I would seriously consider getting yum on there first.

You can get the rpm package for make by searching on pbone and then run this command to extract the contents

rpm2cpio package.rpm | cpio -dimv

I'm not sure how you would then determine where everything goes though. If it was a .deb, Gdebi will show you the target locations.

UPDATE: OK, if you are starting with a virtual appliance that explains a lot. I would still try and get yum on there first if you can though. Or else just don't start with a virtual appliance :)

Here is a detailed guide to installing yum on a Centos box, for exactly the situation you are in:

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Seems like yum is the 'easiest' way to go, but I don't have rpm. Does it come compiled already? Seems like yum would be best suited if it is compiled in the target machine. – user17924 Nov 13 '09 at 17:30
Ok, I think I'll be at this for hours. I'm just going to setup a new centos and install zenoss afterwards instead of using their virtual appliance. – user17924 Nov 13 '09 at 17:45
Yes I would definitely recommend that. Installing Zenoss doesn't look too bad (in comparison anyway!). There is a guide here: linuxtoolkit.blogspot.com/2009/04/… – Colin Pickard Nov 13 '09 at 17:57
up vote 1 down vote

Cross-compile the toolchain on another system to your target architecture (whatever the VM is emulating) and then copy it over via FTP or SCP.

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so, basically, setup another centos (similar to the appliance) compile it there and copy to the other machine... how about the shared modules, won't I have to mess with that too? – user17924 Nov 13 '09 at 17:21
if its zenoss it must be x86? you're better off just downloading the binaries precompiled, but even better off getting yum. – Colin Pickard Nov 13 '09 at 17:25
I'll have to check on the those precompiled binaries... I'm also checking how to install yum without any package management... – user17924 Nov 13 '09 at 17:31
It doesn't have to be another Centos box. You could cross-compile to x86 from anything that will run gcc. Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu, Slackware. Cygwin even. – Reynolds Nov 13 '09 at 17:32
up vote 0 down vote

I just double checked and CentOS 5.2 already includes make!

I found it also in one of the online mirrors, if it is easier for you:

http://centos.cogentcloud.com/5/os/i386/CentOS/make-3.81-3.el5.i386.rpm

if you installed the 64 bit version:

http://centos.cogentcloud.com/5/os/x86_64/CentOS/make-3.81-3.el5.x86_64.rpm

Try to get yum , its really incredible that make is not on your distrib, have you tried gmake ?

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yum is definitely on CentOS, the asker has a very strange setup – Colin Pickard Nov 13 '09 at 17:18
CentOS comes standard with yum, that's true, but the VM appliance is stripped down to run with the Zenoss network monitoring tool. :) – user17924 Nov 13 '09 at 17:23

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