Find and Install Software Prerequisites for Ubuntu

Sometimes, you get stuck having to manually compile and install software, as no package is available for your Ubuntu distribution or one of the package sources has become broken.  However, you should check the link below and search for the software you're looking for, as there MAY already be a pre-existing package for your version of Ubuntu.  Typically, you download a software package, read the ReadMe, and are left asking, why doesn't this prerequisite package exist for installation?  I've got the names right here!  Unfortunately, each version of Linux can name their packages differently.  As a result, there's a lot of confusion.  However, say the ReadMe prompts you to install nfnetlink development packages.  Great, so you try:

sudo apt-get install nfnetlink-dev

Only… the package doesn't exist.  What do you do now?  Rather than searching the internet, search ubuntu's packages by clicking on the below link:

Search Ubuntu Packages

Once you're on that page, scroll down to the "Search" section.  Type in the name of the package you were given.  In our example, it was nfnetlink and click on "Search".  The first package listed is libnfnetlink-dev.  This is exactly what we were looking for!  So install it doing this:

sudo apt-get install libnfnetlink-dev

Repeat the process to locate the remaining missing packages.

Once all of your prerequisites have been installed, you should be able to successfully compile and install whatever software package you're trying to install.

PeerGuardian Installation Guide Ubuntu / Debian

Installing PeerGuardian:

Open a new terminal and install the prerequisites for PeerGuardian Linux but using the following commands:

sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-dev zlib1g-dev iptables libnetfilter-queue-dev libnfnetlink-dev qt4-bin-dbg qt4-dev-tools qt4-bin-dbg g++ libpolkit-qt-1-1 libpolkit-qt-1-dev

Download the latest source of PeerGuardian Linux from:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/peerguardian/files/PeerGuardian%20Linux/

Open a terminal, change to the peerguardian source directory, and run the configure file to generate the makefile.

./configure --sysconfdir=/etc

If you get an error stating that looks like this:

checking for ZLIB... configure: error: Package requirements (zlib) were not met:

No package 'zlib' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables ZLIB_CFLAGS
and ZLIB_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

You'll need to download and compile the source of zlib from  http://www.zlib.net/

To do this, just change to the directory of the extracted zlib folder, run:

./configure
sudo make
sudo make install

Now, go back to the peerguardian source directory, and re-run ./configure

You will not receive this error anymore.  Why does this happen in the first place?  Installing zlib1g-dev should have been enough to satisfy this requirement, but for some reason it doesn't work sometimes and could be a bug.

Errors Post Installation:

BELOW ISSUE (BOTH Bricking your System and Resolv.conf Issue) APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN FIXED IN MAY of 2013
I'm going to leave this here though in case someone needs it.
 

As of 3/17/13, I've noticed that installing Peerguardian Linux from the latest SourceForge source causes a number of serious problems that could brick your Linux install. You must run the following commands after "make install" is completed to avoid running into problems.

If your gksudo or sudo commands no longer work after installing because of a "Unable to copy the user's .Xauthorization file" error message, your .Xauthority file may no longer exist.  To fix this issue, run the following commands:

gksudo synaptic
sudo chown youruser:youruser ~/.Xauthority
chmod 600 ~/.Xauthority

If the above does not work for you, try this:

cd ~
touch .Xauthority
sudo chown youruser:youruser ~/.Xauthority
chmod 600 ~/.Xauthority 

For some reason, the installer also changes the permissions on the tmp system folder.  To fix this, run the following command:

sudo chmod 1777 /tmp

Peerguardian Linux can also break your DNS settings rendering your internet connection useless.  To fix this issue, run the following commands:

sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

In it, put your router's dns information in. For example:

nameserver 192.168.1.1

Save and close the file.  Everything should be good to go and your system is not hosed from a buggy compilation of Peerguardian Linux