Extracting files with Terminal

I'm trying to get my HP1018 to work with Leopard. Here's the instruction:
http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/INSTALL.osx

I've installed Xcode and C Compiler. I've downloaded fink:there's no binary code for leopard, so I had to download from the source (look for the link on the 5th line of the finkproject website... link available in above link). The source's name is fink-0.27.8, and located on my desktop. So i typed:

sepand-siassis-macbook:desktop sepandee$ tar xzf fink-0.27.8.tar.gz
tar (child): fink-0.27.8.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

So what do I do now?

 

You have got to unzip your .tar.gz using gunzip before you are able to untar it.

However, you can get a OS X binary of Fink Commander here: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8128

 

THat's an old binary, isn't it? The finkproject website already had the newest binary, but said that there's none for leopard. I think the one on macupdate is for 10.1 or something.

Also, it says that I need to expand the tarball using the tar command and that expanding it in any other way can corrupt the file. Isn't the tar command line the same as unziping the file?

 

Pretty much. I've never had a problem installing source code from tarballs that I opened with stuffit.

Once you install it, I'd bet the terminal commands are:
cd to fink code
configure
make
make install

 

but it says specifically not to use stuffit. So how do I install it?

 

OSX's default Archive Utility can unpack those for you.

 

k so now I unpacked the tar file and ran the tar command line. It did what it had to do, but gave me a lot of errors at the end.

So now I think I have to run the command sw/bin/pathsetup.sh
But how do I get to the sw directory? When I open terminal, I'm already at / sepandee$ (my user file), whereas sw is in the root directory. Typing cd .. doesn't get me anywhere.

 

k never mind the previous post.
So I unzipped fink-0.27.8, went to its directory, typed in the ./bootcamp command, it asked me a bunch of questions which i just hit enter (the default values) and at the end it gave me some errors about not being able to install this and that patch. So now i have the /sw folder in my root directory.

Now take a look at http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/INSTALL.osx. What am I supposed to do next? Am I to enter the commands
$ /sw/bin/pathsetup.sh
$ fink scanpackages
$ fink index
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install fink
?? If so, in which directory? i can't find /sw/bin

 

And now ignore the previous post.
SO I got up to the 3rd step, where i have to give the command
$ apt-get install ghostscript
But when I do, i get this:

sepand-siassis-macbook:~ sepandee$ apt-get install ghostscript
E: Could not open lock file /sw/var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/sw/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
sepand-siassis-macbook:~ sepandee$ cd ..
sepand-siassis-macbook:Users sepandee$ cd ..
sepand-siassis-macbook:/ sepandee$ apt-get install ghostscript
E: Could not open lock file /sw/var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/sw/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
sepand-siassis-macbook:/ sepandee$ cd sw/var/lib/dpkg
sepand-siassis-macbook:dpkg sepandee$ cd lock
-bash: cd: lock: Not a directory
sepand-siassis-macbook:dpkg sepandee$ apt-get install ghostscript
E: Could not open lock file /sw/var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/sw/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
sepand-siassis-macbook:dpkg sepandee$

now what?

 

Fink Commander updates itself. So even if you install an old binary, just run update after you install it.

Furthermore, as it seems you have very limited command line experience, I would strongly recommend you use the binary version of Fink commander as that has a GUI front end.

And to fix that error, you need to log in as root or admin. Do so by typing 'su' (without the ' ') and then typing in your password. That, or type

sudo apt-get install ghostscript

 

Winnar!

Sudo allows you to run one thing as the root user, which is what you need to install that.

 

sudo worked actually! But again I ran into problems ....
But after a good 2 hours of trying to learn Terminal, I finally did it! yaaaay. But I'll say the problems I ran into, so that next time I can install 10.6 I know what to do

So first, at the finkproject website it said that Leopard users have to install from source, and unzip from terminal with the tar command line. which I couldn't. So I just extracted the stuff normally.

Then ghostscript: apparently it's not enough to ahve Xcode AND X11SDK.pkg, and then I found out that I had to install X11User.pckg, which I couldn't find. I also figured out that I needed to run
$ fink selfupdate-rsync
Then I went in search for X11User.pkg with no luck. But apparently, i could bypass that by running
$ fink install ghostscript -nox
which didn't need X11 (I hear it's worse than Tiger's).

And the rest, it was easier. I'm still trying to find out what hotplugs are, and what the hell CUPS means.

Oh yeah, and sudo... totally needed that one!

A BIG BIG Thanks to all those who helped.