To install afio, follow these steps:

STEP 1. Compile. 
----------------

Unpack the afio sources, go to the top level source directory, compile
the binary by typing:

make


Side note on compiler warnings:
-------------------------------

You may get some compiler warnings -- these do not always indicate a
real problem.  (The GCC maintainers add new types of warning messages
regularly, and afio is usually behind in updating the sources to
eliminate new warnings.)

Known warnings that you will get with some gcc versions:

afio.o(.text+0xef41): In function `syserr':
: warning: `sys_errlist' is deprecated; use `strerror' or `strerror_r' instead
afio.o(.text+0xef30): In function `syserr':
: warning: `sys_nerr' is deprecated; use `strerror' or `strerror_r' instead

These warnings do not indicate a real problem.

See the file PORTING for more information on compiling afio on
non-Linux machines.

STEP 2 (OPTIONAL). Regression tests.
------------------------------------

Optionally, you can run some automatic regression tests to check if
the new afio binary works OK.  If you have an older version of afio
installed, the tests will also check (just to be extra paranoid) if
the archive format used by the old binary is still interoperable with
the new binary.  The formats should be compatible unless there is a
serious bug.

See below for details on running the two automatic regression tests.

STEP 3. Install the binary and manual page.
-------------------------------------------

Do this manually, or type

make install

which installs the afio binary in /usr/local/bin, and the manual page
in /usr/share/man/man1 -- these are the correct locations for most
Linux systems.

** Warning: older versions the afio `make install' (before
   2.4.7.9beta) used /usr/bin as the executable install directory.  If
   /usr/bin is before /usr/local/bin in your PATH, you might have to
   delete or rename any older version of afio in /usr/bin.


Notes on using afio
-------------------

Afio has far too many options to be used directly from the command
line, it is best used as an `archive engine' in a backup script.

See the file SCRIPTS for more information on backup scripts that use
afio.

See the file PORTING for information on compiling afio on non-Linux
machines.


Details on the two automatic regression tests (step 2).
-------------------------------------------------------

Test 1: regtest: file handling and archive portability regression test
----------------------------------------------------------------------

**Note: the test scripts may fail to work on non-GNU platforms that
  have very old versions of tools like awk, find, and diff.  See the
  PORTING file for more information.

If you are going to use afio for system backups, this test is best run
from the root account.  In that case the test will also try whether
afio correctly invokes filesystem operations (like making devices and
changing file ownership settings) that normal user accounts are not
allowed to do.

You can compile and run this test with

make regtest

This test prints a line with 'OK!' at the end it succeeds.

   --> this regression test is known to report small permission
       related problems on several Non-Linux platforms.  These mostly
       have to do (I think) with different approaches the kernels take
       to handling permissions, so these small problems do not
       necessarily indicate that the compiled afio is buggy.


If you are unsure about interpreting the result of a regression test,
please check if any recent information (e.g. in the comments) on the
site http://freshmeat.net/projects/afio/ answers your question.  If
not, or if you think you have found a new bug on your platform,
whether Linux or not, feel free to mail the afio maintainer (see the
README file).


Test 2: regtest2gb: large file handling test
--------------------------------------------

This test tries out the large file handling capabilities of afio, and
is only applicable to systems with large (>2GB) file support.  If you
don't know if your system supports large files, you can find that out
by running the test.

This test requires a) sparse file support in the filesystem (which is
present in most Unixes, including Linux, or b) 2.2 GB free space on
the filesystem.  You can compile and run this test with

make regtest2gb

This test prints a line with 'OK!' at the end it succeeds.

    --> this regression test will of course fail on platforms
        that do not support >2GB files.
        Note that, if the test fails, this is often not due to a bug
        in afio, but more likely to a missing feature or configuration
        problem in the kernel, the filesystem, the compiler, or the
        libraries.
        As of Dec 2003, the test is known to report success on 
	  - Red Hat Linux 7.3
	  - Debian Linux 3.0/testing (not 3.0/stable) on most platforms, 
            including i386
          - At least some versions of Solaris
          - FreeBSD 3.5-STABLE