Occasionally, some applications and games (eg. some from the Humble Indie Bundle) have .run installers. Before installing using these, check to see if:

1. it is available from the Software Centre
2. it is available as a .deb file, which will open in the Software Center

You can install .run files from the graphical interface, but using a terminal is more likely to give you useful feedback. To install a .run file you need to:

1. make it executable.
2. execute it

This is because .run files are just executable programs that do some unknown magic to install the program. This is similar to what .exe installers do on Windows and is different to the normal methods (at best, using the Software Centre, at worst using .deb files) in which applications are installed in a standard way and can be easily removed.

Graphical Method

1. Right click on the file in the file manager and click 'Properties'. Click the 'Permissions' tab and tick the box that says 'Allow executing file as program'.
2. Double click the file to execute it.

If this method doesn't work, try using the terminal method.

Terminal Method

Assume the file is called some-app.run and is in the folder /home/user/Downloads. You will need to modify these instructions to fit your situation.

1. Open a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal).

2. enter cd /home/user/Downloads

3. enter chmod +x some-app.run

4. enter ./some-app.run

5. if step 4 fails with a message including 'permission denied', try entering sudo ./some-app.run (you will need to enter your password for this).

Notes

• Sometimes you will come across .bin files. These are similar to .run files from the user's point of view.
• The method to install .run files can be used to execute any file (as long as it has some sort of executable code in it.
• Be careful using sudo and only use it when absolutely required. Translated into English, it means 'Run this command but allow it to do anything it wants to my computer'. This is why you are prompted for your password.

Installing .run files in ubuntu:

• Open a terminal(Applications>>Accessories>>Terminal).

• Navigate to the directory of the .run file.

• If you have your *.run in your desktop then type the following in terminal to get into Desktop and press Enter.

  cd ~/Desktop

• Then type chmod +x filename.run and press Enter.

• Now type ./filename.run and press Enter, and the installer will run.

To run the file, open a terminal and enter:

sudo chmod +x /path/to/file.run
sudo /path/to/file.run

Try:

sudo sh "path to your .run file"

-Worked for installing MyEclipse

open new terminal

sudo -s -H

then browse to the .run file

chmod +x xampp-linux-1.8.2-0-installer.run
./xampp-linux-1.8.2-0-installer.run

In a Linux based OS there are no .exe files, and Linux is fully permission based. Whatever you want to do, you first need to give permission.

You are asking how to install .run file?

By default, files you copy on the system don't get the executable permission because by default in Linux the umask is set to 022.

To make your .run file executable or working:

sudo chmod +x filename.run

Then it will ask for the password.

• sudo is a way to authenticate and run commands as the superuser.
• chmod +x gives executable permission to that file to all type of users.

The NVIDIA "runfile" you get with the CUDA Toolkit is a Makeself shell script that is a self-extracting installer. It is used by making the shell script executable with chmod +x and then running the script like ./cuda_xx_linux.run. As proof, here are the first few lines of the file:

#!/bin/sh
# This script was generated using Makeself 2.1.4

CRCsum="1245122594"
MD5="af9acef1fff4d3c4e02942175ee1f007"
TMPROOT=${TMPDIR:=/tmp}

label="NVIDIA CUDA PACKAGE"
script="./cuda-installer"
scriptargs=""
targetdir="pkg"
filesizes="3029608617"
keep=n