Installers/Unix Executable Files...why won't they open?

[ljtaylor]

Last Saturday I bought a PowerBook G4...being brand new, it runs off OS X 10.3 Panther. I set about installing what software I had that worked on a Mac...Flash MX, Dreamweaver MX, Painter Classic all installed perfectly. Then I tried to install a demo version of LightWave 3D 7.5. Now, this is a version of LightWave that came with a book, Essential LightWave 3D 7.5 by Timothy Albee, and the files for the demo were zipped. I used StuffIt to extract them in Applications, and then I tried to open the installer files for the Mac version. They wouldn't work. The icon for the files was a grey box with a green 'exec' or 'exe' in the top left corner, and when I got the info on the files, they had no extension to their name but were referred to as 'Unix Executable Files'. One of them is a readme type file (just text) and it opens fine, but as for the files needed to launch the setup to install the program; it won't open those. I tried opening them using Unix in the Terminal as well, but that wouldn't work either.

Any suggestions?

 

[janey]

if you were using Stuffit 8 or above, try again using something below 8.
When expanding executables with Stuffit Expander 8, you cant execute them anymore.

 

[ljtaylor]

Thanks, I tried that, but it says I need OS 9 to install it...and Classic won't let me install it either.

 

[janey]

Thanks, I tried that, but it says I need OS 9 to install it...and Classic won't let me install it either.

uh you sure? i got lightwave installed in OS X, and Stuffit Expander 7 is a OS X app...

 

[pashazade]

Last Saturday I bought a PowerBook G4...being brand new, it runs off OS X 10.3 Panther. I set about installing what software I had that worked on a Mac...

Then I tried to install a demo version of LightWave 3D 7.5. Now, this is a version of LightWave that came with a book, Essential LightWave 3D 7.5 by Timothy Albee, and the files for the demo were zipped. I used StuffIt to extract them in Applications, and then I tried to open the installer files for the Mac version. They wouldn't work. The icon for the files was a grey box with a green 'exec' or 'exe' in the top left corner, and when I got the info on the files, they had no extension to their name but were referred to as 'Unix Executable Files'. One of them is a readme type file (just text) and it opens fine, but as for the files needed to launch the setup to install the program; it won't open those. I tried opening them using Unix in the Terminal as well, but that wouldn't work either.

Any suggestions?

Hi, are you sure you have the Mac version, the fact that it was zipped is suspicious, although stuffit supports zips the default archive is normally a .sit file, especially for OS9 software. Also you say it's got a exec/exe icon. It might be a windows executable?

Could you select the icon and do a File-> Get info. This should give you more info about the file and it's full file name.

Regards

 

[abhishekit]

well if u want to install any unix based application..y not install fink..thats the best way i know

cheers

 

[Westside guy]

Okay, I've got a guess and a suggestion. I'm basing this on your description of the end result. Those gray boxes with "exe" in the corner are the way OS X generally labels *nix binary executables, if you're browsing them.

You say they were "zipped". I am guessing you don't mean .zip, you mean .gz - gzipped in other words. This is a common way of distributing *nix applications with all their files and directories. Was the name of the original download "xxxxx".tar.gz perchance? (Replace "xxxxx" with an actual filename)

Stuffit is the wrong way to extract these sorts of files. When you download the file, save it to disk. Then you'll need to drop to the command line and go to that particular directory using the cd command.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your file is called xxxxx.tar.gz

You need to type this: tar -zxvf xxxxx.tar.gz This will extract the package into its component files and directories. So be sure you've got the original .tar.gz file in the location you're going to want everything (certainly you can move them later, but it's easiest this way).

If there's no "tar" in the filename, then it's just a gzipped up file (or, less commonly, set of files). For this situation you can extract using gzip directly: gunzip xxxxx.gz

In either case the executable file should now be somewhere in the current directory (or in one of the newly created subdirectories, in the case of a tar archive).

Addendum 1: BTW if this is a tar archive (xxxxx.tar.gz), you can list its contents without actually extracting them by typing tar -ztf xxxxx.tar.gz

Addendum 2: On the off-chance that this is a bzipped archive (filename will end with "bz" or "bzip"), change every "z" character I've listed in the tar command line to a "j" instead.

 

[ljtaylor]

You say they were "zipped". I am guessing you don't mean .zip, you mean .gz - gzipped in other words.

Nope, I mean .zip. The CD has all the files for both the Mac and the PC version of LightWave DE zipped together, and it's a standard .zip file.

Could you select the icon and do a File-> Get info. This should give you more info about the file and it's full file name.

The files in question also have no extension to them, so I don't know what file type they are.

uh you sure? i got lightwave installed in OS X, and Stuffit Expander 7 is a OS X app...

Downloaded it, got as far as beginning to install it (Classic opened for this) only to have a window inform me that it was an OS 9 application and I couldn't install it in OS X.

I've tried all of your suggestions, so thank you for giving me advice, but none of them work. Apparently OS X 10.3 has a tendency to screw up earlier versions of LightWave, but this is a pain as it worked fine on my old PC...