how do you uninstall software packages with the tar.gz extension?

[sconklin]

I downloaded and installed the qmailrocks.tar.gz software bundle and it's extraction. I now want to uninstall it. I tried the make uninstall command but I get a message in the Terminal that said (make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop.)

How can I remove the software? Can I just delete the directory that it created when I installed it? Can I delete the software that it installed? If I delete the directory or delete the software will this uninstall the software? After I delete the directory and the software, will the software still run on my computer?

[deathadder]

To remove qmailrocks you'll just have to remove the files it installed.

The qmailrocks forum may help here or here.

[gamblor01]

Usually what happens with a tar.gz file is that you are building the program yourself. The file you download contains the source code, and you are building a binary that is specific for your system. In general, the configure script specifies the installation directory (though you can change it by using the --prefix option). Usually there is a default location (for example, /usr/local).

Basically it works like this:

1. You run ./configure. It does some initial checking to see if you have the required libraries and what not necessary to build the software and it does some setup.
2. You run make which actually builds the binary from the source code. The resulting binary is usually placed in a sub-directory such as bin.
3. You run make install which copies the binary (and other necessary files) from your current directory (where the source code and the new binary reside) into the path specified during step 1.


So yes, you should be OK to just delete the directory or binary it created in /usr/local or /usr/local/bin or whatever directory it copied stuff to. There are no other programs that depend on this, right?

The reason that you are getting the message "make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop." is because there is no target inside of the Makefile that says "uninstall". So it doesn't know what to do when you specify that. Makefiles are not the easiest thing in the world to understand but if you open it up and search for install you might be able to get an idea what it does when you run "make install" so you can undo that manually and therefore, uninstall the software.

[sconklin]

To remove qmailrocks you'll just have to remove the files it installed.

The qmailrocks forum may help here or here.

I will try and delete the files and also visit the Links you gave. Thank you.

[sconklin]

Usually what happens with a tar.gz file is that you are building the program yourself. The file you download contains the source code, and you are building a binary that is specific for your system. In general, the configure script specifies the installation directory (though you can change it by using the --prefix option). Usually there is a default location (for example, /usr/local).

Basically it works like this:

1. You run ./configure. It does some initial checking to see if you have the required libraries and what not necessary to build the software and it does some setup.
2. You run make which actually builds the binary from the source code. The resulting binary is usually placed in a sub-directory such as bin.
3. You run make install which copies the binary (and other necessary files) from your current directory (where the source code and the new binary reside) into the path specified during step 1.


So yes, you should be OK to just delete the directory or binary it created in /usr/local or /usr/local/bin or whatever directory it copied stuff to. There are no other programs that depend on this, right?

The reason that you are getting the message "make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop." is because there is no target inside of the Makefile that says "uninstall". So it doesn't know what to do when you specify that. Makefiles are not the easiest thing in the world to understand but if you open it up and search for install you might be able to get an idea what it does when you run "make install" so you can undo that manually and therefore, uninstall the software.

Thank you for your comment.

[sconklin]

Usually what happens with a tar.gz file is that you are building the program yourself. The file you download contains the source code, and you are building a binary that is specific for your system. In general, the configure script specifies the installation directory (though you can change it by using the --prefix option). Usually there is a default location (for example, /usr/local).

Basically it works like this:

1. You run ./configure. It does some initial checking to see if you have the required libraries and what not necessary to build the software and it does some setup.
2. You run make which actually builds the binary from the source code. The resulting binary is usually placed in a sub-directory such as bin.
3. You run make install which copies the binary (and other necessary files) from your current directory (where the source code and the new binary reside) into the path specified during step 1.


So yes, you should be OK to just delete the directory or binary it created in /usr/local or /usr/local/bin or whatever directory it copied stuff to. There are no other programs that depend on this, right?

The reason that you are getting the message "make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop." is because there is no target inside of the Makefile that says "uninstall". So it doesn't know what to do when you specify that. Makefiles are not the easiest thing in the world to understand but if you open it up and search for install you might be able to get an idea what it does when you run "make install" so you can undo that manually and therefore, uninstall the software.

Hi, I tried to delete the directory that the qmailrocks is in and created when I tried to install it. I right clicked on it and I didn't see a delete option so I then tried to move it to the trash and I got a message you cannot move items to trash, do you want to delete them immediately? I clicked yes, but it did not delete the directory. I also restarted the computer and the directory is still there. Do you know how to delete a directory? I also opened the directory and I saw qmail and I tried to drag it to the trash and I received the same message. I clicked yes delete immediately but it is still there.

Thank you for replying, I really appreciate your help.

[gamblor01]

Hi, I tried to delete the directory that the qmailrocks is in and created when I tried to install it. I right clicked on it and I didn't see a delete option so I then tried to move it to the trash and I got a message you cannot move items to trash, do you want to delete them immediately? I clicked yes, but it did not delete the directory. I also restarted the computer and the directory is still there. Do you know how to delete a directory? I also opened the directory and I saw qmail and I tried to drag it to the trash and I received the same message. I clicked yes delete immediately but it is still there.

Thank you for replying, I really appreciate your help.

You probably cannot delete the directory because you don't have permissions to delete the directory. You will need to either switch to the root user (who has permissions to do everything in the system) and delete the directory, or grant permissions to your user. Again, granting these permissions require you to be root.

You can check the permissions of a file by using ls -l. For example (this is from my Mac but your output will be similar):

$ ls -l /etc/hosts
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  236 Sep 23  2007 /etc/hosts

In the above output you can see that this file is owned by the "root" user and belongs to the "wheel" group. The rw stuff on the left implies who has what permissions. Skip the first hyphen there and focus on the remaining 9 spots.

The first 3 are what the file's owner can do (in this case root). rw- implies that the owner can read the file, write the file, but cannot execute the file (otherwise it would be rwx). The next 3 slots indicate what members of the group "wheel" can do. Because the permissions are r-- this implies they can only read the file. The last 3 slots indicate what anyone else on the system can do and similarly, they can only read the file.

You can use ls -ld on a directory to see the same type of information, for example:

$ ls -ld /usr/local/Trolltech/
drwxr-xr-x  4 root  wheel  136 Mar 21 11:11 /usr/local/Trolltech/

Here you can see that root can read, write, and execute. Users of group "wheel" can only read or execute, and all others in the system can only read or execute.

This is probably what is happening with your directory -- the user you are attempting to delete this directory with does not have write permissions on the directory, so the system will not let this user remove the directory. You can verify this information with the ls -ld command like I have shown above.

I would recommend you open a terminal (and CAREFULLY) use the following commands. I will assume for illustration purposes that the directory you wish to delete is called /usr/local/qmailrocks (replace with the name of the directory on your system as appropriate):

$ su -
$ cd /usr/local/qmailrocks

Alternatively, if your user in in the sudoers file (if you're running Ubuntu then it will be by default), you can just use the sudo command to obtain temporary root privileges for the command you give it:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/qmailrocks

The -r option means to remove recursively (i.e. delete all subdirectories and all of their contents) and -f means force, so it will not prompt you and ask if you wish to delete the files or not...it will just delete them without your confirmation.

Be EXTREMELY careful with commands like this. If for example, your finger slipped while you were typing the command and you accidentally typed rm -rf / then it would go to the root directory (called /) and start deleting everything from it -- thus you would wipe out the entire directory structure and would basically need to reinstall Linux in order to recover.

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for you mistyping anything and accidentally destroying for file system.