Installing John the Ripper.
First of all, most likely you do not need to install John the Ripper
system-wide. Instead, after you extract the distribution archive and
possibly compile the source code (see below), you may simply enter the
"run" directory and invoke John from there.
System-wide installation is also supported, but it is intended for use
by packagers of John for *BSD "ports", Linux distributions, etc., rather
than by end-users. (If you're in fact preparing a package of John,
please refer to the JOHN_SYSTEMWIDE setting in src/params.h.)
You may have obtained the source code or a "binary" (pre-compiled)
distribution of John the Ripper. On Unix-like systems, it is typical
to get the source code and compile it into "binary" executables right
on the system you intend to run John on. On DOS and Windows, however,
it is typical to get a binary distribution which is ready for use.
The following instructions apply to the source code distribution of
John only. If you have a binary distribution, then there's nothing
for you to compile and you can start using John right away.
Compiling the sources on a Unix-like system.
Enter the directory into which you extracted the source code
distribution of John. Enter the "src" subdirectory and invoke "make"
to obtain a list of operating systems for which specific support
exists:
cd src
make
Note the make target for your system and type:
make clean SYSTEM
where SYSTEM is the appropriate make target. Alternatively, if your
system is not listed, use:
make clean generic
If everything goes well, this will create the executables for John and
its related utilities under "../run/". You can change directory to
there and start John, like this:
cd ../run
./john --test
Alternatively, you may copy the entire "run" directory to anywhere you
like and use John from there.
A note on moving binaries between systems.
With the "generic" make target, certain machine hardware performance
parameters are detected at compile time. Additionally, some OS-specific
make targets tell the C compiler to generate and optimize code for the
machine's specific CPU type (this currently applies to C compilers other
than gcc only). If you then move the binary executable to a different
machine, you might not get the best performance or the program might
not run at all if the CPU lacks features that the C compiler assumed it
would have. Thus, it is recommended to recompile John on each system if
you use one of these make targets.
Since Linux and *BSD distributions' packages of John typically use make
targets other than "generic" and since they typically use gcc, they are
usually not affected by this potential problem.
$Owl: Owl/packages/john/john/doc/INSTALL,v 1.5 2010/05/27 13:37:48 solar Exp $
