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Home > Project 08 • IntroductionNarrativeInstructionsFunctionalityExtras

Introduction

Okay, I have spent the past week banging my head against the wall with the GUI parts of our Linux box. Needless to say, the grapes were probably sour. So, this week I turned my attention to an application that I keep hearing good things about, Fink. To my surprise, it happens to be the featured application on Sourceforge this month!

Narrative
I kind of fell into Fink by chance. My group and box mate Joel spent the week trying to get a kernel update to work and asked me to stay off the system while he tried configuring and rebooting. To pass the time, I started reading up on Fink and what all the buzz was about. After reading a couple articles, I decided I wanted to try it out.

Now, Fink's main purpose is to bring "the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X." Sounded cool to me, seeing how I think the Apple OS is the best OS and since I couldn't get on our Linux box at the moment. After doing some reading, I had an idea about Fink and what it could do, and decided that I wanted to install it.

Now, during the course of my readings, I did read some unsettling things about Fink possibly blowing the entire Mac kernel so I decided I didn't want this on my main system (OSX.1.5). To be safe, I decided to try another application I had heard good things about - Carbon Copy Cloner. This software clones your entire system onto another hard drive, but I had never used it.

CCC operates through the GUI so installation and running were very easy. CCC cloned my entire active system in about five minutes onto another partition that had an old system on it. After it finished, I rebooted into the cloned OS and, wow, it was an exact clone! That was pretty cool.

Anyway, I went back to the Fink page and downloaded the tarball. (The first steps of installation were all handled through the GUI). After installing, the directions instructed to go into the terminal (an application similar to the virtual console in Gnome) and typed the following commands to create a new file. I created a script file and typed the following:

pico .cshrc

Then I typed:


source /sw/bin/init.csh

I saved, quit and restarted the terminal and continued with the directions, which led me right into Fink's interface application, 'dselect'. Dselect is a CLI app. that works like a super rpm. It allows a user to pick whatever packages have been ported to Mac Unix (BSD) and shows what dependencies or conflicts exist between the chosen files.

For instance, I chose to install an IRC client called "BitchX" (one of my group mates was talking about how difficult it was to install, and with that name, I couldn't resist). To install that package, dselect showed my that I needed another package. Through a simple '+', '-', system, a user can choose what packages to install and can get dependencies all at once. After dealing with a few rpm's that failed due to new and previously undisclosed dependencies, I think this is very cool and grief-saving stuff.

Before I did this, I had to download an up to date list of available applications. Dselect makes everything very easy once you figure it out, and it has quality directions, which I appreciate. Anyway, after I installed Fink, I played around with it a bit and tried a couple installs. In a period of about a few minutes, I scrolled through the list, chose apps and dependent apps to download, downloaded, configured and installed them on my system.

All in all, I installed openssl, xfree86-base, bitchx, and ntaim, among other dependents needed to support these. included in the extras section are screen shots of the chat clients bitchx and ntaim.

The real difficulty I had was finding the applications once dselect installed them. Since the process is entirely automated, I had no control over configuring or placing the applications. Eventually, I did find the new installs, and from then on it was smooth sailing.

This week I not only got into the Unix in my computer, I also found a cool backup utility and a very powerful tool for installing and running Unix apps on my Mac.

Instructions for use

For use with OSX, simply open a terminal and type dselect to launch Fink's utility. The main menu has 7 options to choose from: Access, Update, Select, Install, Config, Remove, and Quit.

Access handles how to connect to the Internet, and Update will update the local list of available applications.

Select is where the meat of dselect resides. After a brief help screen hit return and you are into the download manager. Items are ordered by categories, and a user can select single or group items to install, uninstall, or reorder in the list. As well, Select shows what the current version of installed software is and what the current version is. On top of all this, there is a partition in the bottom half of the terminal that displays information about the selected application and most provide URL's to developer sites.

To add a file for installation, simply scroll to the appropriate line and hit '+'. To remove it, hit '-'. When a user decides to add an application that either has dependencies or conflicts, dselect pops up a new screen that shows what files are either needed in addition to the original or what files conflict with the original. The '+' and '-' keys can be used to rectify problems here too.

After items have been selected for installation, hit return and you will return to the main menu. The cursor automatically moves down to "Install", where selected packages are downloaded from the Internet automatically and unpacked. I think at this point a user could manually configure and install applications, but I did not try this.

Config will automatically set up the application for the user. After this step, an application is ready to use. Remove will remove installed applications and Quit exists the dselect utility.

Functionality

Fink is designed for Apple OSX. The current version is for 10.1, but future versions are for the current OS, 10.2. After Fink installed, it worked flawlessly, and I was amazed at the speed and ease of use in which I could get and install applications.
Files and Baubles

The script file
Screenshot of Fink after installing it
Screenshot
dselect's main menu
Screenshot of dselect's select menu
Screenshot of BitchX IRC client
Screenshot of NTAIM AOLIM client




   


  If you have any questions or issues, you can contact me at MCarroll at email.unc.edu.