User's Guide - Installation on a Linux or Unix system

NetRexx User's Guide, version 2.02 Copyright (c) IBM Corporation, 2001. All rights reserved. © | Draft of 22 May 2001
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## Installation on a Linux or Unix system

The NetRexx binaries are identical for all operating systems; the same NetRexxC.jar runs everywhere, and the same installation process is used as on other systems. Some changes may be needed to text files, however (especially to the shell scripts), and there are alternatives to the ‘standard’ installation process. Here are some tips:

- It is strongly recommended that you use the `unzip` command with the `-a` flag, if available. This will automatically convert text files to Unix text file format, while leaving binaries (such as `.jar`, `.class`, or `.gif` files) unchanged.
- If you cannot use the `unzip -a` command, you may need to take special action to use text files, such as the documentation or shell scripts. In the NetRexx package text files use a two-byte line end sequence (CRLF) whereas some Unix programs (including bash, the shell interpreter) only accept the one-byte (LF) line end sequence. Some Unix file systems convert the files automatically, but if you are getting a No such file or syntax error message from bash you probably need to use the `dos2unix` command, to convert CRLF to LF. For example: `dos2unix NetRexxC.sh`.
- File access control information is not preserved in the package. You may therefore get a a Permission denied message when you try and run the scripts, indicating that the files are not marked as executable. To mark them as executable, use the `chmod` command, for example: `chmod 751 NetRexxC.sh`.
- Instead of moving the files to specific locations, as suggested in the general installation instructions, you can instead link them symbolically. For example, something like:

        ln -s /usr/local/NetRexx/bin/* /usr/local/bin/.

  would link the shell scripts directory into a different `bin` directory.

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