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Newbie question- Compiling/Installing

As a Mac tech with a great deal of past experience, I have made it my
mission to learn UNIX for the upcoming onslaught of OSX questions I will
have to field. But, I'm learning pretty much from scratch with UNIX; and so
everything that to more experienced users might seem as obvious as breathing
is like a cruel riddle to me. It seems that when I run into a problem, I
can find answers for everything except the thing I need to know about.

I have forced myself to learn to implement OSX server by setting it up for a
client of mine who was willing to let me learn on their time. Up to this
point, I have been able to figure things out for the most part. I have a
G3/266 system running a DNS server (properly configured! yay for me!) and
an Apache server (pre-installed). To this, I need to add a mail server.
From this list, I understand Communigate Pro is excellent, but my client
can't afford the license. Instead, I want to try to use Qpopper and Webmin,
but the installation of these programs involves downloading source code and
compiling it for my system.

Just exactly how do I do that?

There's a wealth of software that is tantalizingly accessible to me, but
most of it requires me to 'make' the program, but when I try to do what it
says in the installation readme, I get a response such as "configure: error:
no acceptable cc found in $PATH". I assume this means I have no compiler on
my system.

Okay, so where do I get a compiler? Why isn't it already installed on my
wonderful $500 Apple server software? How do I compile a compiler without a
compiler? Why is there not a shred of documentation on the web that can
clearly explain this? Am I the very first person to ever not figure this
out for themselves? I've fixed Macs for 10 years, WHY must I feel like I'm
as clueless as the users I support? Is demoralization part of the UNIX
learning process?

Sigh... Someone please have pity and explain this to me.

Andy



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