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4. Troubleshooting

If xmkmf and/or make succeeded without errors, you may proceed to the next section. However, in "real life", few things work right the first time. This is when your resourcefulness is put to the test.

4.1 Link Errors

4.2 Other Problems

4.3 Where to go for more help

In my experience, about 25% of applications build "right out of the box". Another 50% or so can be persuaded to build with an effort ranging from trivial to herculean. That still means a significant number of packages will not build no matter what. Even then, the Intel ELF and/or a.out binaries for these might possibly be found at Sunsite, the TSX-11 archive or other places. Perhaps the author of the software can supply the binaries compiled for your particular flavor of machine.

Note that if you obtain precompiled binaries, you will need to check for compatibility with your system:

If all else fails, you may find help in the appropriate newsgroups, such as comp.os.linux.x or comp.os.linux.development. Once in a while, though, you are just plain out of luck, but hey, it was fun trying.


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