Installing tar.bz2 help

[J]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 12:59, Edwin McGuire <mcguiresmain at emypeople.com> wrote:
> Trying to install a newer version of VirtualBox that I have on a disk that
> came on (LinuxUser & Developer Magazine). VirtualBox-3.1.4-OSE.tar.bz2
>
> I don't have Web access, only E-mail only .

Not sure what you mean here... do you have internet access at all? you
don't need web access to install things from the repositories, just an
internet connection.

I'm not trying to be flippant, I just want to be clear on your meaning here.

>  my ver. is VirtualBox 3.0.8_OSE r53138

That's an old version.  I'm not sure if the current 9.10 version of
OSE is the same as for 10.04, but the 10.04 version, at least is 3.1.6

> Instructions in magazine say for Debian systems use:
>
> $ sudo apt-get install virtualbox_3.1

The instructions are wrong.

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

will install the OSE version from the repositories.  OR you can try:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

However, you have to enable the non-free repositories, or perhaps add
one from Sun or wherever.  Personally, I download the latest versions
from Sun and use those.

> I open root terminal and this is what I get:
> root at edmcguire-desktop:/home/edmcguire# sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.1
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> E: Couldn't find package virtualbox-3.1
> root at edmcguire-desktop:/home/edmcguire#

that's because the package does not exist.  See comments above.

> I know if I was connected to the WWW I could probably use Synaptic, and
> wouldn't have this problem,but i'm not.

Why?  Does synaptic do something differently than apt-get does (other
than provide a nice front end?)

See above commends and suggestion for installing virtualbox-ose via apt-get