building RPM from source

[Fred Zinsli]

Hi Everyone

I am rather new to this, so I hope I am not asking something obvious.

I am attempting to build an RPM from source on my FC5 box. The reason is 
that I am wanting to use hotcakes (a wifi administration app) and it 
requires 1.1.4 minimum and the latest stable for FC5 is 1.0.5

What I am actually wanting to achieve is a Freeradius install on my FC5 
box that puts everything where I am expecting to find them on my FC5 box.

I thought building an RPM from source was the idea, but there may be 
others I am unaware of.

My issue is that I am wanting mysql (on separate server) support built 
into freeradius, but I can't find any information on how that is done 
within the spec file.

Note: This install of freeradius is on a standalone machine, it will 
have nothing else but freeradius on it.

Any thoughts or comments on where I can find the information I need 
would be most helpful.

This is how I am trying to do it so far:
$ cd ~  
$ cp -a /usr/src/redhat/ rpmbuild
$ echo '%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/rpmbuild' >> .rpmmacros
$ wget ftp://ftp.freeradius.org/pub/radius/freeradius-1.1.7.tar.gz 
$ cp freeradius-1.1.7.tar.gz ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
$ tar zxf freeradius-1.1.7.tar.gz freeradius-1.1.7/redhat/freeradius.spec
$ cp freeradius-1.1.7/redhat/freeradius.spec ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/
$ cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386
$ rpm -Uvh freeradius-1.1.7-0.i386.rpm

No mods to the spec file (information required).

Regards

Fred