Zac, thanks for your guidance. I tried a couple of times to compile & install on Debian Etch. I tried (more or less) following Dan Kegel's 'dapper script', and your PCLinuxOS script, reaching 'Permission denied' using either approach. I also tried following the instructions in the 'readme' file in rc5, and hit the same result. Just after you posted your suggestions, rc5 was released and so I decided to try to follow your advice, but with the rc5 release. Downloaded the rc5.bz2 to a drive with plenty of room, /mnt/hda3, unpacked it into '/wine-1.0.rc5' (I used this as a sub for the 'cur_wine' value in your script). I commented out some of your script, and adapted the second part, starting at the 'cd cur_wine' line, and saved it as 'islandwinebuild'. Here's the output: island@islandinthesun:/mnt/hda3$ sh islandwinebuild.sh islandwinebuild.sh: ./configure: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Permission denied make: *** No rule to make target `depend'. Stop. make: *** No rule to make target `install'. Stop. Done installing, wine is now located in ${INSTALL_PATH}. The permissions on all the directories and files on /mnt/hda3 are rwx,rwx,rwx, fully recursively, though I notice that the non-executable files like text docs are only rw-,rw-,rw-. I used KDE's Konqueror to set these permissions, so perhaps it decides whether some things are executable or not. Eager for a really difficult time, I looked at the readme in rc5! Very easy read, in fact, and makes compiling sound simple. So gave it a try. It advises running ./tools/wineinstall, Here's the output: island@islandinthesun:/mnt/hda3$ cd wine-1.0-rc5 island@islandinthesun:/mnt/hda3/wine-1.0-rc5$ ./tools/wineinstall bash: ./tools/wineinstall: /bin/bash: bad interpreter: Permission denied island@islandinthesun:/mnt/hda3/wine-1.0-rc5$ Having realised that the readme is not at all ferocious, I plucked up the courage to read further. It says: "Run programs as "wine program". For more information and problem resolution, read the rest of this file, the Wine man page, and especially the wealth of information found at http://www.winehq.org." I did read the rest of the file, but it didn't seem to help with the permission denied thing. I wondered if the comment meant that, to avoid 'permission denied' problems, I had to log on as 'wine program' before I could run the ./tools/wineinstall or the ./configure lines etc in your script. At the moment there is only 'root' and 'island' as users on this machine. Nevertheless, I've learnt a lot, and certainly feel confident about having a another go at compiling. Much thanks to you, though, because your script sets out the basic sequence we have to go through, and the readme adds useful details. regards, Island