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Possible Duplicate:
I've downloaded a .sh file - how do I install this?

I am trying to install the BOINC client/manager which is a .sh file, so I can contribute to the World Community Grid. I installed the version that is in the Software Centre, but it is 2 versions behind, so I was wondering how I can install the current version (which I have downloaded to my computer). Any help would be great.

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  • The current version is only a .sh file? I think that what you downloaded is a compressed file with more than one file (the .sh also included).
    – Lucio
    Aug 22, 2012 at 23:10
  • @Lucio It is simply a .sh file indeed. Running it creates a BOINC directory and gives instructions to run the BOINC manager. However, the project depends at least on wxwidgets and as such can't be directly ran via it's instructions. Perhaps the older BOINC version from Software Centre includes the dependencies though. Someone download the current BOINC client from Softwae Centre, then the .sh file and try it out. Write steps required to fix dependencies if needed. I would if I had time.
    – zxcdw
    Aug 22, 2012 at 23:13
  • I would advise against installing boinc from Berkley, and instead stick to the Software Center version. As of Feb-2013 is is only a single minor version behind (7.0.26 vs 7.0.27), and the SC version has several patches to improve compatibility under Ubuntu. It is also much more convenient, it Just Works (tm). So unless you have any trouble using the SC version, or a strong reason to need Berkley's latest, and you have some terminal skills (not only to tun the installer, but also to setup the Berkley version to auto-start using SysV init.d dir), I would stay with the safest and easiest.
    – MestreLion
    Feb 26, 2013 at 11:19

2 Answers 2

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Run the following command.

sh /path/to/file.sh

If you need administrative privileges to run the command, add sudo.

sudo sh /path/to/file.sh
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To answer the question in the title, any of:

. file.sh

(That's 'dot' 'space' filename)

source file.sh

(which is actually the same as the first one)

sh file.sh

(or bash file.sh)

chmod +x file.sh
./file.sh

I'm assuming that this is actually the installer, so you may need to do sudo -i, to switch to executing everything as root, first or do something like sudo sh file.sh. (Note you can't do sudo . or sudo source)

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  • How does that 'dot' 'space' filename thing work? Never saw it before, but it does work somehow
    – Sergey
    Aug 22, 2012 at 23:32
  • @Sergey It's actually telling bash to read a script file and is the same a source file.sh. It's more normally used within scripts to read in other scripts.
    – StarNamer
    Aug 22, 2012 at 23:55

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