Installing J-Bird on Unix and Linux

J-Bird is meant to be installed privately in someone's home directory rather than publicly for general use. You can install it publicly, but you are responsible for setting up access permissions.

• Install the Java Runtime if you have not done so already.



• Add to your path the bin directory of the the Java Runtime.



• Launch X windows and a terminal (xterm, rxvt, kterm, gterm, etc.) if you have not done so already. Carry out the following using the terminal window.
• To start the installer, change into the directory into which you stored the installer and enter the command
  

  	java -jar JBirdSetup_V0_5_2_Unix.jar
  	

• If you are installing for the first time, you will see during the install an Update screen indicating that no previous version of J-Bird has been found by the installer. Just click "Next" to move on to the install. (If you are upgrading, the screen in question will identify the existing version and ask whether you want to upgrade.)



• Startup shell scripts will be available in the directory in which you install J-Bird. They are Database_builder.sh and J-Bird.sh. If you elect to have shortcuts installed, you may be able to run the database builder and J-Bird from your Gnome or KDE startup menus. (This feature has not been tested because the author is neither a Gnome guy nor a KDE guy [fluxbox rules!].)



• Note that J-Bird launches a web browser to display trip reports. It can find and launch firefox, opera, konqueror, dillo, mozilla or netscape if one of these browsers is on your path. If the PATH environment variable is not available, J-Bird will look for browsers in /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin. To make use of some other browser, set an environment variable named BROWSER that points to the binary of the browser that you use before starting J-Bird. Use the full path of the browser if the browser is not on your path. For example, schmoga users (an imaginary browser) would enter the command "export BROWSER=/usr/bin/schmoga" in a bash shell or "setenv BROWSER /usr/bin/schmoga" in a csh or tcsh shell.

You are now ready to launch J-Bird.