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2. Retrieving and Unpacking Zebra

The first step is to download the software. If you are using a WWW browser, you can point it at the Zebra distribution archive at < http://www.indexdata.dk/zebra.html>, and follow the link named Download the latest version of the software (xxx), where xxx is the current version of Zebra.

If you use an FTP client, you can use normal, anonymous FTP. Connect to the host ftp.indexdata.dk, log in as ftp, and give your Email-address as the password. Then type cd index/yaz, and use the dir command to locate the current version of Zebra. The file will be named zebra-xxx, where xxx is the current version of the software. Remember to use the bin command before using get to download the software.

Once the distribution archive has been dowloaded, it must be decompressed. To do this, use the command gunzip command (if your system doesn't have the gunzip program, you will need to acquire this separately). Finally, use the command tar xvf <file> to unpack the archive.

If you downloaded the source version of the software (this is the only option today, although we expect to release binary versions for Linux, SunOS, and Digital Unix shortly), you will have to compile Zebra before you can use it.

On many of the major version of the Unix operating system, compiling Zebra is a simple matter of typing make in the top-level distribution directory (this is the directory that was created when you executed tar). Normally, Zebra compiles cleanly at least on Linux, Digital Unix (DEC OSF/1), and IBM AIX. On certain platforms (such as SunOS), you will need to edit the top-level Makefile to set the ELIBS variable to include the Berkeley Socket Libraries. On other Unix platforms, you may need to modify Makefiles or header files, but in general, we have found Zebra to be easily portable across modern Unix-versions. You do need an ANSI-C compliant compiler (you'll see a long list of Syntax-errors during the compile if your default compiler is not ANSI C), but again, this is standard on most modern Unix-systems. If you don't have one, the freely available GNU C compiler is available for many systems.


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