Re: unable to make install GNU m4-1.4

[Bob Proulx]

sharath kurudi wrote:
> when I give the command make install I get the following messages
> /usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file `/usr/local/info/m4.info': 
> Permission denied

You do not have permission to install in /usr/local.  That is an area
which is a secondary system area and has a higher security requirement
than you currently are authorized.

> Could you tell me what should I do?

What the problem is and what you should do are two different things.
Having just noted the problem above I do not know what you should do
about it because I do not know your situation.  Is this your personal
desktop?  Or is this a shared use machine at a univerisity?  Or is
this a server machine?  So many possibilities.

Since you do not know about unix file permissions I will assume that
you are on a shared use machine administered by someone else.  In
which case you should ask your system administrator to help you with
this software installation.

You should always be able to install in your own personal home
directory.

  make prefix=$HOME install

Which will work for m4 but fail on packages which configure in the
paths.  In which case you would need something like this.

  ./configure --prefix=$HOME
  make
  make install

Then to make use of this out of your home directory you would need to
ensure that PATH contains your $HOME/bin and the same for MANPATH
containing $HOME/man and you may need to use 'info --dir $HOME/info'
to read the documentation (or set INFOPATH).

Bob