Details on this package are located in Section 6.18.2, “Contents of Binutils.”
Copyright © 1999-2020 Gerard Beekmans
Copyright © 1999-2020, Gerard Beekmans
All rights reserved.
This book is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Computer instructions may be extracted from the book under the MIT License.
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
My journey to learn and better understand Linux began back in 1998. I had just installed my first Linux distribution and had quickly become intrigued with the whole concept and philosophy behind Linux.
There are always many ways to accomplish a single task. The same can be said about Linux distributions. A great many have existed over the years. Some still exist, some have morphed into something else, yet others have been relegated to our memories. They all do things differently to suit the needs of their target audience. Because so many different ways to accomplish the same end goal exist, I began to realize I no longer had to be limited by any one implementation. Prior to discovering Linux, we simply put up with issues in other Operating Systems as you had no choice. It was what it was, whether you liked it or not. With Linux, the concept of choice began to emerge. If you didn't like something, you were free, even encouraged, to change it.
I tried a number of distributions and could not decide on any one. They were great systems in their own right. It wasn't a matter of right and wrong anymore. It had become a matter of personal taste. With all that choice available, it became apparent that there would not be a single system that would be perfect for me. So I set out to create my own Linux system that would fully conform to my personal preferences.
To truly make it my own system, I resolved to compile everything from source code instead of using pre-compiled binary packages. This “perfect” Linux system would have the strengths of various systems without their perceived weaknesses. At first, the idea was rather daunting. I remained committed to the idea that such a system could be built.
After sorting through issues such as circular dependencies and compile-time errors, I finally built a custom-built Linux system. It was fully operational and perfectly usable like any of the other Linux systems out there at the time. But it was my own creation. It was very satisfying to have put together such a system myself. The only thing better would have been to create each piece of software myself. This was the next best thing.
As I shared my goals and experiences with other members of the Linux community, it became apparent that there was a sustained interest in these ideas. It quickly became plain that such custom-built Linux systems serve not only to meet user specific requirements, but also serve as an ideal learning opportunity for programmers and system administrators to enhance their (existing) Linux skills. Out of this broadened interest, the Linux From Scratch Project was born.
This Linux From Scratch book is the central core around that project. It provides the background and instructions necessary for you to design and build your own system. While this book provides a template that will result in a correctly working system, you are free to alter the instructions to suit yourself, which is, in part, an important part of this project. You remain in control; we just lend a helping hand to get you started on your own journey.
I sincerely hope you will have a great time working on your own Linux From Scratch system and enjoy the numerous benefits of having a system that is truly your own.
--
Gerard Beekmans
gerard AT linuxfromscratch D0T org
There are many reasons why you would want to read this book. One of the questions many people raise is, “why go through all the hassle of manually building a Linux system from scratch when you can just download and install an existing one?”
One important reason for this project's existence is to help you learn how a Linux system works from the inside out. Building an LFS system helps demonstrate what makes Linux tick, and how things work together and depend on each other. One of the best things that this learning experience can provide is the ability to customize a Linux system to suit your own unique needs.
Another key benefit of LFS is that it allows you to have more control over the system without relying on someone else's Linux implementation. With LFS, you are in the driver's seat and dictate every aspect of the system.
LFS allows you to create very compact Linux systems. When installing regular distributions, you are often forced to install a great many programs which are probably never used or understood. These programs waste resources. You may argue that with today's hard drive and CPUs, such resources are no longer a consideration. Sometimes, however, you are still constrained by size considerations if nothing else. Think about bootable CDs, USB sticks, and embedded systems. Those are areas where LFS can be beneficial.
Another advantage of a custom built Linux system is security. By compiling the entire system from source code, you are empowered to audit everything and apply all the security patches desired. It is no longer necessary to wait for somebody else to compile binary packages that fix a security hole. Unless you examine the patch and implement it yourself, you have no guarantee that the new binary package was built correctly and adequately fixes the problem.
The goal of Linux From Scratch is to build a complete and usable foundation-level system. If you do not wish to build your own Linux system from scratch, you may nevertheless benefit from the information in this book.
There are too many other good reasons to build your own LFS system to list them all here. In the end, education is by far the most powerful of reasons. As you continue in your LFS experience, you will discover the power that information and knowledge truly bring.
The primary target architectures of LFS are the AMD/Intel x86 (32-bit) and x86_64 (64-bit) CPUs. On the other hand, the instructions in this book are also known to work, with some modifications, with the Power PC and ARM CPUs. To build a system that utilizes one of these CPUs, the main prerequisite, in addition to those on the next few pages, is an existing Linux system such as an earlier LFS installation, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, SuSE, or other distribution that targets the architecture that you have. Also note that a 32-bit distribution can be installed and used as a host system on a 64-bit AMD/Intel computer.
Some other facts about 64-bit systems need to be added here. When compared to a 32-bit system, the sizes of executable programs are slightly larger and the execution speeds of arbitrary programs are only slightly faster. For example, in a test build of LFS-6.5 on a Core2Duo CPU based system, the following statistics were measured:
Architecture Build Time Build Size
32-bit 198.5 minutes 648 MB
64-bit 190.6 minutes 709 MB
As you can see, the 64-bit build is only 4% faster and is 9% larger than the 32-bit build. The gain from going to a 64-bit system is relatively minimal. Of course, if you have more than 4GB of RAM or want to manipulate data that exceeds 4GB, the advantages of a 64-bit system are substantial.
The above discussion is only appropriate when comparing builds on the same hardware. Modern 64-bit systems are considerably faster than older 64-bit systems and the LFS authors recommend building on a 64-bit system when given a choice.
The default 64-bit build that results from LFS is considered a "pure" 64-bit system. That is, it supports 64-bit executables only. Building a "multi-lib" system requires compiling many applications twice, once for a 32-bit system and once for a 64-bit system. This is not directly supported in LFS because it would interfere with the educational objective of providing the instructions needed for a straightforward base Linux system. You can refer to the Cross Linux From Scratch project for this advanced topic.
The structure of LFS follows Linux standards as closely as possible. The primary standards are:
Linux Standard Base (LSB) Version 5.0 (2015)
The LSB has four separate standards: Core, Desktop, Runtime Languages, and Imaging. In addition to generic requirements there are also architecture specific requirements. There are also two areas for trial use: Gtk3 and Graphics. LFS attempts to conform to the architectures discussed in the previous section.
Many people do not agree with the requirements of the LSB. The main purpose of defining it is to ensure that proprietary software will be able to be installed and run properly on a compliant system. Since LFS is source based, the user has complete control over what packages are desired and many choose not to install some packages that are specified by the LSB.
Creating a complete LFS system capable of passing the LSB certifications tests is possible, but not without many additional packages that are beyond the scope of LFS. These additional packages have installation instructions in BLFS.
LSB Core: |
Bash, Bc, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, File, Findutils, Gawk, Grep, Gzip, M4, Man-DB, Ncurses, Procps, Psmisc, Sed, Shadow, Tar, Util-linux, Zlib |
LSB Desktop: |
None |
LSB Runtime Languages: |
Perl |
LSB Imaging: |
None |
LSB Gtk3 and LSB Graphics (Trial Use): |
None |
LSB Core: |
At, Batch (a part of At), Cpio, Ed, Fcrontab, LSB-Tools, NSPR, NSS, PAM, Pax, Sendmail (or Postfix or Exim), time |
LSB Desktop: |
Alsa, ATK, Cairo, Desktop-file-utils, Freetype, Fontconfig, Gdk-pixbuf, Glib2, GTK+2, Icon-naming-utils, Libjpeg-turbo, Libpng, Libtiff, Libxml2, MesaLib, Pango, Xdg-utils, Xorg |
LSB Runtime Languages: |
Python, Libxml2, Libxslt |
LSB Imaging: |
CUPS, Cups-filters, Ghostscript, SANE |
LSB Gtk3 and LSB Graphics (Trial Use): |
GTK+3 |
As stated earlier, the goal of LFS is to build a complete and usable foundation-level system. This includes all packages needed to replicate itself while providing a relatively minimal base from which to customize a more complete system based on the choices of the user. This does not mean that LFS is the smallest system possible. Several important packages are included that are not strictly required. The lists below document the rationale for each package in the book.
Acl
This package contains utilities to administer Access Control Lists, which are used to define more fine-grained discretionary access rights for files and directories.
Attr
This package contains programs for administering extended attributes on filesystem objects.
Autoconf
This package contains programs for producing shell scripts that can automatically configure source code from a developer's template. It is often needed to rebuild a package after updates to the build procedures.
Automake
This package contains programs for generating Make files from a template. It is often needed to rebuild a package after updates to the build procedures.
Bash
This package satisfies an LSB core requirement to provide a Bourne Shell interface to the system. It was chosen over other shell packages because of its common usage and extensive capabilities beyond basic shell functions.
Bc
This package provides an arbitrary precision numeric processing language. It satisfies a requirement needed when building the Linux kernel.
Binutils
This package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files. The programs in this package are needed to compile most of the packages in an LFS system and beyond.
Bison
This package contains the GNU version of yacc (Yet Another Compiler Compiler) needed to build several other LFS programs.
Bzip2
This package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It is required to decompress many LFS packages.
Check
This package contains a test harness for other programs.
Coreutils
This package contains a number of essential programs for viewing and manipulating files and directories. These programs are needed for command line file management, and are necessary for the installation procedures of every package in LFS.
D-Bus
This package contains programs to implement a message bus system, which a simple way for applications to talk to one another.
DejaGNU
This package contains a framework for testing other programs. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
Diffutils
This package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories. These programs can be used to create patches, and are also used in many packages' build procedures.
E2fsprogs
This package contains the utilities for handling the ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems. These are the most common and thoroughly tested file systems that Linux supports.
Expat
This package contains a relatively small XML parsing library. It is required by the XML::Parser Perl module.
Expect
This package contains a program for carrying out scripted dialogues with other interactive programs. It is commonly used for testing other packages. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
File
This package contains a utility for determining the type of a given file or files. A few packages need it to build.
Findutils
This package contains programs to find files in a file system. It is used in many packages' build scripts.
Flex
This package contains a utility for generating programs that recognize patterns in text. It is the GNU version of the lex (lexical analyzer) program. It is required to build several LFS packages.
Gawk
This package contains programs for manipulating text files. It is the GNU version of awk (Aho-Weinberg-Kernighan). It is used in many other packages' build scripts.
Gcc
This package is the Gnu Compiler Collection. It contains the C and C++ compilers as well as several others not built by LFS.
GDBM
This package contains the GNU Database Manager library. It is used by one other LFS package, Man-DB.
Gettext
This package contains utilities and libraries for internationalization and localization of numerous packages.
Glibc
This package contains the main C library. Linux programs would not run without it.
GMP
This package contains math libraries that provide useful functions for arbitrary precision arithmetic. It is required to build Gcc.
Gperf
This package contains a program that generates a perfect hash function from a key set. It is required for Eudev.
Grep
This package contains programs for searching through files. These programs are used by most packages' build scripts.
Groff
This package contains programs for processing and formatting text. One important function of these programs is to format man pages.
GRUB
This package is the Grand Unified Boot Loader. It is one of several boot loaders available, but is the most flexible.
Gzip
This package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It is needed to decompress many packages in LFS and beyond.
Iana-etc
This package provides data for network services and protocols. It is needed to enable proper networking capabilities.
Inetutils
This package contains programs for basic network administration.
Intltool
This package contains tools for extracting translatable strings from source files.
IProute2
This package contains programs for basic and advanced IPv4 and IPv6 networking. It was chosen over the other common network tools package (net-tools) for its IPv6 capabilities.
Kbd
This package contains key-table files, keyboard utilities for non-US keyboards, and a number of console fonts.
Kmod
This package contains programs needed to administer Linux kernel modules.
Less
This package contains a very nice text file viewer that allows scrolling up or down when viewing a file. It is also used by Man-DB for viewing manpages.
Libcap
This package implements the user-space interfaces to the POSIX 1003.1e capabilities available in Linux kernels.
Libelf
The elfutils project provides libraries and tools for ELF files and DWARF data. Most utilities in this package are available in other packages, but the library is needed to build the Linux kernel using the default (and most efficient) configuration.
Libffi
This package implements a portable, high level programming interface to various calling conventions. Some programs may not know at the time of compilation what arguments are to be passed to a function. For instance, an interpreter may be told at run-time about the number and types of arguments used to call a given function. Libffi can be used in such programs to provide a bridge from the interpreter program to compiled code.
Libpipeline
The Libpipeline package contains a library for manipulating pipelines of subprocesses in a flexible and convenient way. It is required by the Man-DB package.
Libtool
This package contains the GNU generic library support script. It wraps the complexity of using shared libraries in a consistent, portable interface. It is needed by the test suites in other LFS packages.
Linux Kernel
This package is the Operating System. It is the Linux in the GNU/Linux environment.
M4
This package contains a general text macro processor useful as a build tool for other programs.
Make
This package contains a program for directing the building of packages. It is required by almost every package in LFS.
Man-DB
This package contains programs for finding and viewing man pages. It was chosen instead of the man package due to superior internationalization capabilities. It supplies the man program.
Man-pages
This package contains the actual contents of the basic Linux man pages.
Meson
This package provides a software tool for automating the building of software. The main goal for Meson is to minimize the amount of time that software developers need to spend configuring their build system.
MPC
This package contains functions for the arithmetic of complex numbers. It is required by Gcc.
MPFR
This package contains functions for multiple precision arithmetic. It is required by Gcc.
Ninja
This package contains a small build system with a focus on speed. It is designed to have its input files generated by a higher-level build system, and to run builds as fast as possible.
Ncurses
This package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens. It is often used to provide cursor control for a menuing system. It is needed by a number of packages in LFS.
Openssl
This package provides management tools and libraries relating to cryptography. These are useful for providing cryptographic functions to other packages, including the Linux kernel.
Patch
This package contains a program for modifying or creating files by applying a patch file typically created by the diff program. It is needed by the build procedure for several LFS packages.
Perl
This package is an interpreter for the runtime language PERL. It is needed for the installation and test suites of several LFS packages.
Pkg-config
This package provides a program to return meta-data about an installed library or package.
Procps-NG
This package contains programs for monitoring processes. These programs are useful for system administration, and are also used by the LFS Bootscripts.
Psmisc
This package contains programs for displaying information about running processes. These programs are useful for system administration.
Python 3
This package provides an interpreted language that has a design philosophy that emphasizes code readability.
Readline
This package is a set of libraries that offers command-line editing and history capabilities. It is used by Bash.
Sed
This package allows editing of text without opening it in a text editor. It is also needed by most LFS packages' configure scripts.
Shadow
This package contains programs for handling passwords in a secure way.
Systemd
This package provides an init program and several additional boot and system control capabilities as an alternative to Sysvinit. It is used by many commercial distributions.
Tar
This package provides archiving and extraction capabilities of virtually all packages used in LFS.
Tcl
This package contains the Tool Command Language used in many test suites in LFS packages. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
Texinfo
This package contains programs for reading, writing, and converting info pages. It is used in the installation procedures of many LFS packages.
Util-linux
This package contains miscellaneous utility programs. Among them are utilities for handling file systems, consoles, partitions, and messages.
Vim
This package contains an editor. It was chosen because of its compatibility with the classic vi editor and its huge number of powerful capabilities. An editor is a very personal choice for many users and any other editor could be substituted if desired.
XML::Parser
This package is a Perl module that interfaces with Expat.
XZ Utils
This package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It provides the highest compression generally available and is useful for decompressing packages in XZ or LZMA format.
Zlib
This package contains compression and decompression routines used by some programs.
Zstd
This package contains compression and decompression routines used by some programs. It provide high compression ratios and a very wide range of compression / speed trade-offs.
Building an LFS system is not a simple task. It requires a certain level of existing knowledge of Unix system administration in order to resolve problems and correctly execute the commands listed. In particular, as an absolute minimum, you should already have the ability to use the command line (shell) to copy or move files and directories, list directory and file contents, and change the current directory. It is also expected that you have a reasonable knowledge of using and installing Linux software.
Because the LFS book assumes at least this basic level of skill, the various LFS support forums are unlikely to be able to provide you with much assistance in these areas. You will find that your questions regarding such basic knowledge will likely go unanswered or you will simply be referred to the LFS essential pre-reading list.
Before building an LFS system, we recommend reading the following:
Software-Building-HOWTO http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Building-HOWTO.html
This is a comprehensive guide to building and installing “generic” Unix software packages under Linux. Although it was written some time ago, it still provides a good summary of the basic techniques needed to build and install software.
Beginner's Guide to Installing from Source http://moi.vonos.net/linux/beginners-installing-from-source/
This guide provides a good summary of basic skills and techniques needed to build software from source code.
To make things easier to follow, there are a few typographical conventions used throughout this book. This section contains some examples of the typographical format found throughout Linux From Scratch.
./configure --prefix=/usr
This form of text is designed to be typed exactly as seen unless otherwise noted in the surrounding text. It is also used in the explanation sections to identify which of the commands is being referenced.
In some cases, a logical line is extended to two or more physical lines with a backslash at the end of the line.
CC="gcc -B/usr/bin/" ../binutils-2.18/configure \ --prefix=/tools --disable-nls --disable-werror
Note that the backslash must be followed by an immediate return. Other whitespace characters like spaces or tab characters will create incorrect results.
install-info: unknown option '--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir'
This form of text (fixed-width text) shows screen output, usually
as the result of commands issued. This format is also used to
show filenames, such as /etc/ld.so.conf
.
Emphasis
This form of text is used for several purposes in the book. Its main purpose is to emphasize important points or items.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
This format is used for hyperlinks both within the LFS community and to external pages. It includes HOWTOs, download locations, and websites.
cat > $LFS/etc/group << "EOF"
root:x:0:
bin:x:1:
......
EOF
This format is used when creating configuration files. The first
command tells the system to create the file $LFS/etc/group
from whatever is typed on the
following lines until the sequence End Of File (EOF) is
encountered. Therefore, this entire section is generally typed as
seen.
<REPLACED TEXT>
This format is used to encapsulate text that is not to be typed as seen or for copy-and-paste operations.
[OPTIONAL TEXT]
This format is used to encapsulate text that is optional.
passwd(5)
This format is used to refer to a specific manual (man) page. The
number inside parentheses indicates a specific section inside the
manuals. For example, passwd has two man pages. Per
LFS installation instructions, those two man pages will be
located at /usr/share/man/man1/passwd.1
and /usr/share/man/man5/passwd.5
. When the book
uses passwd(5)
it is specifically
referring to /usr/share/man/man5/passwd.5
. man passwd will print the first
man page it finds that matches “passwd”,
which will be /usr/share/man/man1/passwd.1
. For this example,
you will need to run man 5
passwd in order to read the specific page being
referred to. It should be noted that most man pages do not have
duplicate page names in different sections. Therefore,
man <program
name>
is generally sufficient.
This book is divided into the following parts.
Part I explains a few important notes on how to proceed with the LFS installation. This section also provides meta-information about the book.
Part II describes how to prepare for the building process—making a partition, downloading the packages, and compiling temporary tools.
Part III guides the reader through the building of the LFS system—compiling and installing all the packages one by one, setting up the boot scripts, and installing the kernel. The resulting Linux system is the foundation on which other software can be built to expand the system as desired. At the end of this book, there is an easy to use reference listing all of the programs, libraries, and important files that have been installed.
The software used to create an LFS system is constantly being updated and enhanced. Security warnings and bug fixes may become available after the LFS book has been released. To check whether the package versions or instructions in this release of LFS need any modifications to accommodate security vulnerabilities or other bug fixes, please visit http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/errata/systemd/ before proceeding with your build. You should note any changes shown and apply them to the relevant section of the book as you progress with building the LFS system.
The LFS system will be built by using an already installed Linux distribution (such as Debian, OpenMandriva, Fedora, or openSUSE). This existing Linux system (the host) will be used as a starting point to provide necessary programs, including a compiler, linker, and shell, to build the new system. Select the “development” option during the distribution installation to be able to access these tools.
As an alternative to installing a separate distribution onto your machine, you may wish to use a LiveCD from a commercial distribution.
Chapter 2 of this book describes how to create a new Linux native partition and file system. This is the place where the new LFS system will be compiled and installed. Chapter 3 explains which packages and patches need to be downloaded to build an LFS system and how to store them on the new file system. Chapter 4 discusses the setup of an appropriate working environment. Please read Chapter 4 carefully as it explains several important issues you need be aware of before beginning to work your way through Chapter 5 and beyond.
Chapter 5 explains the installation of a number of packages that will form the basic development suite (or toolchain) which is used to build the actual system in Chapter 6. Some of these packages are needed to resolve circular dependencies—for example, to compile a compiler, you need a compiler.
Chapter 5 also shows you how to build a first pass of the toolchain, including Binutils and GCC (first pass basically means these two core packages will be reinstalled). The next step is to build Glibc, the C library. Glibc will be compiled by the toolchain programs built in the first pass. Then, a second pass of the toolchain will be built. This time, the toolchain will be dynamically linked against the newly built Glibc. The remaining Chapter 5 packages are built using this second pass toolchain. When this is done, the LFS installation process will no longer depend on the host distribution, with the exception of the running kernel.
This effort to isolate the new system from the host distribution may seem excessive. A full technical explanation as to why this is done is provided in Section 5.2, “Toolchain Technical Notes”.
In Chapter 6, the full LFS system is built. The chroot (change root) program is used to enter a virtual environment and start a new shell whose root directory will be set to the LFS partition. This is very similar to rebooting and instructing the kernel to mount the LFS partition as the root partition. The system does not actually reboot, but instead uses chroot because creating a bootable system requires additional work which is not necessary just yet. The major advantage is that “chrooting” allows you to continue using the host system while LFS is being built. While waiting for package compilations to complete, you can continue using your computer as normal.
To finish the installation, the basic system configuration is set up in Chapter 7, and the kernel and boot loader are set up in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 contains information on continuing the LFS experience beyond this book. After the steps in this book have been implemented, the computer will be ready to reboot into the new LFS system.
This is the process in a nutshell. Detailed information on each step is discussed in the following chapters and package descriptions. Items that may seem complicated will be clarified, and everything will fall into place as you embark on the LFS adventure.
Below is a list of package updates made since the previous release of the book.
Upgraded to:
Bc 2.5.3
Binutils-2.34
Bison-3.5.2
Check-0.14.0
E2fsprogs-1.45.5
Expat-2.2.9
File-5.38
Findutils-4.7.0
Glibc-2.31
GMP-6.2.0
Grep-3.4
IPRoute2-5.5.0
Libcap-2.31
Libelf-0.178 (from elfutils)
Libffi-3.3
Libpipeline-1.5.2
Linux-5.5.3
Make-4.3
Man-DB-2.9.0
Man-pages-5.05
Meson-0.53.1
Ncurses-6.2
Ninja-1.10.0
Openssl-1.1.1d
Perl-5.30.1
Python-3.8.1
Sed-4.8
Shadow-4.8.1
Systemd-244
Tcl-8.6.10
Texinfo-6.7
Tzdata-2019c
Util-Linux-2.35.1
Vim-8.2.0190
Added:
Zstd-1.4.4
Removed:
This is version 9.1-systemd-rc1 of the Linux From Scratch book, dated February 14th, 2020. If this book is more than six months old, a newer and better version is probably already available. To find out, please check one of the mirrors via http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html.
Below is a list of changes made since the previous release of the book.
Changelog Entries:
2020-02-14
[bdubbs] - LFS-9.1-rc1 released.
[bdubbs] - Update to bison-3.5.2. Fixes #4597.
2020-02-13
2020-01-27
[bdubbs] - Update to vim-8.2.0190. Addresses #4500.
[bdubbs] - Update to binutils-2.34. Fixes #4590.
[bdubbs] - Update to glibc-2.31. Fixes #4589.
[bdubbs] - Update to linux-5.5.1. Fixes #4588.
[bdubbs] - Update to bc-2.5.3. Fixes #4587.
[bdubbs] - Update to iproute2-5.5.0. Fixes #4586.
[bdubbs] - Update to util-linux 2.35.1. Fixes #4560.
2020-01-23
[renodr] - Remove obsolete installation commands from the systemd page. These have been obsolete since 243 and were recently discovered.
2020-01-27
2020-01-19
2020-01-16
[pierre] - Update to libcap-2.31. Fixes #4574.
2020-01-13
[bdubbs] - Ensure zstd libraries are installed in the correct location.
2020-01-12
[bdubbs] - Added zstd-1.4.4.
2020-01-09
[bdubbs] - Update to meson-0.53.0. Fixes #4571.
[bdubbs] - Update to e2fsprogs-1.45.5. Fixes #4570.
[bdubbs] - Update to grep-3.4. Fixes #4568.
[bdubbs] - Update to libpipeline-1.5.2. Fixes #4567.
[bdubbs] - Update to linux-5.4.8. Fixes #4566.
[pierre] - Add /etc/os-release
to the sysV
version, as it is required by some packages in
BLFS.
2020-01-06
[pierre] - Update to libcap-2.30. Fixes #4569.
2020-01-04
[pierre] - Fix various issues in libcap-2.29, and update dependencies.
2020-01-01
[bdubbs] - Update to libcap-2.29. Fixes #4564.
2019-12-22
2019-12-12
2019-12-10
[renodr] - Fix a regression in meson that was causing problems in dependent packages.
2019-12-05
2019-12-01
[bdubbs] - Add upstream fixes patch for bash. Also add a note about possible problems when changing to the lfs user.
[bdubbs] - Update to vim-8.1.2361. Updates #4500.
[bdubbs] - Update to meson-0.52.1. Fixes #4555.
[bdubbs] - Update to elfutils-0.178. Fixes #4553.
[bdubbs] - Update to iproute2-5.4.0. Fixes #4551.
[bdubbs] - Update to libffi-3.3. Fixes #4550.
[bdubbs] - Update to tcl-8.6.10. Fixes #4549.
[bdubbs] - Update to man-pages-5.04. Fixes #4548.
[bdubbs] - Update to perl-5.30.1. Fixes #4547.
[bdubbs] - Update to linux-5.4.1. Fixes #4546.
[bdubbs] - Update to bc-2.3.2. Fixes #4545.
2019-11-08
[renodr] - Update to Linux-5.3.9. Resolves a regression with restarting systems with HD Audio (hda), data corruption on btrfs, and a security vulnerability with systems that use the RTLWIFI driver. Fixes #4544.
2019-11-06
[renodr] - Fix potential infinite loop with meson-0.52 and systemd-243.
2019-11-01
2019-10-17
2019-10-03
[renodr] - Add a consolidated patch to fix several problems with the new version of systemd, including bugs in udev, filesystem mounting (with Samba-4.11), hardware database updates, timesync fixes with adjtime as is set in LFS, and bugs with network management and domain resolution.
2019-09-29
2019-09-27
[renodr] - Update to systemd-243. Fixes #4456.
2019-09-24
[pierre] - Update to linux-5.3.1. Fixes #4528.
2019-09-14
2019-09-02
[dj] - Update to lfs-bootscripts-20190908.
2019-09-02
[bdubbs] - Update to linux-5.2.11. Fixes #4517.
[bdubbs] - Update to man-db-2.8.7. Fixes #4518.
[bdubbs] - Update to meson-0.51.2. Fixes #4519.
[bdubbs] - Update to findutils-4.7.0. Fixes #4520.
[dj] - Update to LFS-Bootscripts-20190902 - correct LSB dependency information in bootscripts and update standards page for new LSB-Tools package.
2019-09-01
[bdubbs] - LFS-9.0 released.
If during the building of the LFS system you encounter any errors, have any questions, or think there is a typo in the book, please start by consulting the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that is located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/.
The linuxfromscratch.org
server
hosts a number of mailing lists used for the development of
the LFS project. These lists include the main development and
support lists, among others. If the FAQ does not solve the
problem you are having, the next step would be to search the
mailing lists at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/search.html.
For information on the different lists, how to subscribe, archive locations, and additional information, visit http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mail.html.
Several members of the LFS community offer assistance on
Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Before using this support, please
make sure that your question is not already answered in the
LFS FAQ or the mailing list archives. You can find the IRC
network at irc.freenode.net
. The
support channel is named #LFS-support.
The LFS project has a number of world-wide mirrors to make accessing the website and downloading the required packages more convenient. Please visit the LFS website at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html for a list of current mirrors.
If an issue or a question is encountered while working through this book, please check the FAQ page at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/#generalfaq. Questions are often already answered there. If your question is not answered on this page, try to find the source of the problem. The following hint will give you some guidance for troubleshooting: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/errors.txt.
If you cannot find your problem listed in the FAQ, search the mailing lists at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/search.html.
We also have a wonderful LFS community that is willing to offer assistance through the mailing lists and IRC (see the Section 1.4, “Resources” section of this book). However, we get several support questions every day and many of them can be easily answered by going to the FAQ and by searching the mailing lists first. So, for us to offer the best assistance possible, you need to do some research on your own first. That allows us to focus on the more unusual support needs. If your searches do not produce a solution, please include all relevant information (mentioned below) in your request for help.
Apart from a brief explanation of the problem being experienced, the essential things to include in any request for help are:
The version of the book being used (in this case 9.1-systemd-rc1)
The host distribution and version being used to create LFS
The output from the Host System Requirements script
The package or section the problem was encountered in
The exact error message or symptom being received
Note whether you have deviated from the book at all
Deviating from this book does not mean that we will not help you. After all, LFS is about personal preference. Being upfront about any changes to the established procedure helps us evaluate and determine possible causes of your problem.
If something goes wrong while running the configure script, review
the config.log
file. This file
may contain errors encountered during configure which were not
printed to the screen. Include the relevant lines if you need to ask
for help.
Both the screen output and the contents of various files are useful in determining the cause of compilation problems. The screen output from the configure script and the make run can be helpful. It is not necessary to include the entire output, but do include enough of the relevant information. Below is an example of the type of information to include from the screen output from make:
gcc -DALIASPATH=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/share/locale:.\"
-DLOCALEDIR=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/share/locale\"
-DLIBDIR=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/lib\"
-DINCLUDEDIR=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/include\" -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.
-g -O2 -c getopt1.c
gcc -g -O2 -static -o make ar.o arscan.o commands.o dir.o
expand.o file.o function.o getopt.o implicit.o job.o main.o
misc.o read.o remake.o rule.o signame.o variable.o vpath.o
default.o remote-stub.o version.o opt1.o
-lutil job.o: In function `load_too_high':
/lfs/tmp/make-3.79.1/job.c:1565: undefined reference
to `getloadavg'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [make] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/lfs/tmp/make-3.79.1'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/lfs/tmp/make-3.79.1'
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2
In this case, many people would just include the bottom section:
make [2]: *** [make] Error 1
This is not enough information to properly diagnose the problem because it only notes that something went wrong, not what went wrong. The entire section, as in the example above, is what should be saved because it includes the command that was executed and the associated error message(s).
An excellent article about asking for help on the Internet is available online at http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. Read and follow the hints in this document to increase the likelihood of getting the help you need.
In this chapter, the host tools needed for building LFS are checked and, if necessary, installed. Then a partition which will host the LFS system is prepared. We will create the partition itself, create a file system on it, and mount it.
Your host system should have the following software with the minimum versions indicated. This should not be an issue for most modern Linux distributions. Also note that many distributions will place software headers into separate packages, often in the form of “<package-name>-devel” or “<package-name>-dev”. Be sure to install those if your distribution provides them.
Earlier versions of the listed software packages may work, but have not been tested.
Bash-3.2 (/bin/sh should be a symbolic or hard link to bash)
Binutils-2.25 (Versions greater than 2.34 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Bison-2.7 (/usr/bin/yacc should be a link to bison or small script that executes bison)
Bzip2-1.0.4
Coreutils-6.9
Diffutils-2.8.1
Findutils-4.2.31
Gawk-4.0.1 (/usr/bin/awk should be a link to gawk)
GCC-6.2 including the C++ compiler, g++ (Versions greater than 9.2.0 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Glibc-2.11 (Versions greater than 2.31 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Grep-2.5.1a
Gzip-1.3.12
Linux Kernel-3.2
The reason for the kernel version requirement is that we specify that version when building glibc in Chapter 6 at the recommendation of the developers. It is also required by udev.
If the host kernel is earlier than 3.2 you will need to replace the kernel with a more up to date version. There are two ways you can go about this. First, see if your Linux vendor provides a 3.2 or later kernel package. If so, you may wish to install it. If your vendor doesn't offer an acceptable kernel package, or you would prefer not to install it, you can compile a kernel yourself. Instructions for compiling the kernel and configuring the boot loader (assuming the host uses GRUB) are located in Chapter 8.
M4-1.4.10
Make-4.0
Patch-2.5.4
Perl-5.8.8
Python-3.4
Sed-4.1.5
Tar-1.22
Texinfo-4.7
Xz-5.0.0
Note that the symlinks mentioned above are required to build an LFS system using the instructions contained within this book. Symlinks that point to other software (such as dash, mawk, etc.) may work, but are not tested or supported by the LFS development team, and may require either deviation from the instructions or additional patches to some packages.
To see whether your host system has all the appropriate versions, and the ability to compile programs, run the following:
cat > version-check.sh << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
# Simple script to list version numbers of critical development tools
export LC_ALL=C
bash --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f2-4
MYSH=$(readlink -f /bin/sh)
echo "/bin/sh -> $MYSH"
echo $MYSH | grep -q bash || echo "ERROR: /bin/sh does not point to bash"
unset MYSH
echo -n "Binutils: "; ld --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f3-
bison --version | head -n1
if [ -h /usr/bin/yacc ]; then
echo "/usr/bin/yacc -> `readlink -f /usr/bin/yacc`";
elif [ -x /usr/bin/yacc ]; then
echo yacc is `/usr/bin/yacc --version | head -n1`
else
echo "yacc not found"
fi
bzip2 --version 2>&1 < /dev/null | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1,6-
echo -n "Coreutils: "; chown --version | head -n1 | cut -d")" -f2
diff --version | head -n1
find --version | head -n1
gawk --version | head -n1
if [ -h /usr/bin/awk ]; then
echo "/usr/bin/awk -> `readlink -f /usr/bin/awk`";
elif [ -x /usr/bin/awk ]; then
echo awk is `/usr/bin/awk --version | head -n1`
else
echo "awk not found"
fi
gcc --version | head -n1
g++ --version | head -n1
ldd --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f2- # glibc version
grep --version | head -n1
gzip --version | head -n1
cat /proc/version
m4 --version | head -n1
make --version | head -n1
patch --version | head -n1
echo Perl `perl -V:version`
python3 --version
sed --version | head -n1
tar --version | head -n1
makeinfo --version | head -n1 # texinfo version
xz --version | head -n1
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c && g++ -o dummy dummy.c
if [ -x dummy ]
then echo "g++ compilation OK";
else echo "g++ compilation failed"; fi
rm -f dummy.c dummy
EOF
bash version-check.sh
LFS is designed to be built in one session. That is, the instructions assume that the system will not be shut down during the process. That does not mean that the system has to be done in one sitting. The issue is that certain procedures have to be re-accomplished after a reboot if resuming LFS at different points.
These chapters are accomplished on the host system. When restarting, be careful of the following:
Procedures done as the root user after Section 2.4 need to have the LFS environment variable set FOR THE ROOT USER.
The /mnt/lfs partition must be mounted.
ALL instructions in Chapter 5 must be done by user lfs. A su - lfs needs to be done before any task in Chapter 5.
The procedures in Section 5.3, “General Compilation Instructions” are critical. If there is any doubt about installing a package, ensure any previously expanded tarballs are removed, re-extract the package files, and complete all instructions in that section.
The /mnt/lfs partition must be mounted.
When entering chroot, the LFS environment variable must be set for root. The LFS variable is not used otherwise.
The virtual file systems must be mounted. This can be done before or after entering chroot by changing to a host virtual terminal and, as root, running the commands in Section 6.2.2, “Mounting and Populating /dev” and Section 6.2.3, “Mounting Virtual Kernel File Systems”.
Like most other operating systems, LFS is usually installed on a dedicated partition. The recommended approach to building an LFS system is to use an available empty partition or, if you have enough unpartitioned space, to create one.
A minimal system requires a partition of around 10 gigabytes (GB). This is enough to store all the source tarballs and compile the packages. However, if the LFS system is intended to be the primary Linux system, additional software will probably be installed which will require additional space. A 30 GB partition is a reasonable size to provide for growth. The LFS system itself will not take up this much room. A large portion of this requirement is to provide sufficient free temporary storage as well as for adding additional capabilities after LFS is complete. Additionally, compiling packages can require a lot of disk space which will be reclaimed after the package is installed.
Because there is not always enough Random Access Memory (RAM)
available for compilation processes, it is a good idea to use a
small disk partition as swap
space. This is used by the kernel to store seldom-used data and
leave more memory available for active processes. The
swap
partition for an LFS
system can be the same as the one used by the host system, in
which case it is not necessary to create another one.
Start a disk partitioning program such as cfdisk or fdisk with a command line
option naming the hard disk on which the new partition will be
created—for example /dev/sda
for the primary disk drive. Create a
Linux native partition and a swap
partition, if needed. Please refer to
cfdisk(8)
or fdisk(8)
if you do not yet know how to use
the programs.
For experienced users, other partitioning schemes are possible. The new LFS system can be on a software RAID array or an LVM logical volume. However, some of these options require an initramfs, which is an advanced topic. These partitioning methodologies are not recommended for first time LFS users.
Remember the designation of the new partition (e.g.,
sda5
). This book will refer to
this as the LFS partition. Also remember the designation of the
swap
partition. These names
will be needed later for the /etc/fstab
file.
Requests for advice on system partitioning are often posted on the LFS mailing lists. This is a highly subjective topic. The default for most distributions is to use the entire drive with the exception of one small swap partition. This is not optimal for LFS for several reasons. It reduces flexibility, makes sharing of data across multiple distributions or LFS builds more difficult, makes backups more time consuming, and can waste disk space through inefficient allocation of file system structures.
A root LFS partition (not to be confused with the
/root
directory) of ten
gigabytes is a good compromise for most systems. It
provides enough space to build LFS and most of BLFS, but is
small enough so that multiple partitions can be easily
created for experimentation.
Most distributions automatically create a swap partition. Generally the recommended size of the swap partition is about twice the amount of physical RAM, however this is rarely needed. If disk space is limited, hold the swap partition to two gigabytes and monitor the amount of disk swapping.
Swapping is never good. Generally you can tell if a system is swapping by just listening to disk activity and observing how the system reacts to commands. The first reaction to swapping should be to check for an unreasonable command such as trying to edit a five gigabyte file. If swapping becomes a normal occurrence, the best solution is to purchase more RAM for your system.
If the boot disk has been partitioned with a GUID Partition Table (GPT), then a small, typically 1 MB, partition must be created if it does not already exist. This partition is not formatted, but must be available for GRUB to use during installation of the boot loader. This partition will normally be labeled 'BIOS Boot' if using fdisk or have a code of EF02 if using gdisk.
The Grub Bios partition must be on the drive that the BIOS uses to boot the system. This is not necessarily the same drive where the LFS root partition is located. Disks on a system may use different partition table types. The requirement for this partition depends only on the partition table type of the boot disk.
There are several other partitions that are not required, but should be considered when designing a disk layout. The following list is not comprehensive, but is meant as a guide.
/boot – Highly recommended. Use this partition to store kernels and other booting information. To minimize potential boot problems with larger disks, make this the first physical partition on your first disk drive. A partition size of 100 megabytes is quite adequate.
/home – Highly recommended. Share your home directory and user customization across multiple distributions or LFS builds. The size is generally fairly large and depends on available disk space.
/usr – A separate /usr partition is generally used if providing a server for a thin client or diskless workstation. It is normally not needed for LFS. A size of five gigabytes will handle most installations.
/opt – This directory is most useful for BLFS where multiple installations of large packages like Gnome or KDE can be installed without embedding the files in the /usr hierarchy. If used, 5 to 10 gigabytes is generally adequate.
/tmp – A separate /tmp directory is rare, but useful if configuring a thin client. This partition, if used, will usually not need to exceed a couple of gigabytes.
/usr/src – This partition is very useful for providing a location to store BLFS source files and share them across LFS builds. It can also be used as a location for building BLFS packages. A reasonably large partition of 30-50 gigabytes allows plenty of room.
Any separate partition that you want automatically mounted
upon boot needs to be specified in the /etc/fstab
. Details about how to specify
partitions will be discussed in Section 8.2,
“Creating the /etc/fstab File”.
Now that a blank partition has been set up, the file system can be created. LFS can use any file system recognized by the Linux kernel, but the most common types are ext3 and ext4. The choice of file system can be complex and depends on the characteristics of the files and the size of the partition. For example:
is suitable for small partitions that are updated infrequently such as /boot.
is an upgrade to ext2 that includes a journal to help recover the partition's status in the case of an unclean shutdown. It is commonly used as a general purpose file system.
is the latest version of the ext file system family of partition types. It provides several new capabilities including nano-second timestamps, creation and use of very large files (16 TB), and speed improvements.
Other file systems, including FAT32, NTFS, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS are useful for specialized purposes. More information about these file systems can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems.
LFS assumes that the root file system (/) is of type ext4. To
create an ext4
file system on
the LFS partition, run the following:
mkfs -v -t ext4 /dev/<xxx>
If you are using an existing swap
partition, there is no need to format
it. If a new swap
partition was
created, it will need to be initialized with this command:
mkswap /dev/<yyy>
Replace <yyy>
with the name of the swap
partition.
Throughout this book, the environment variable LFS
will be used several times. You should
ensure that this variable is always defined throughout the LFS
build process. It should be set to the name of the directory
where you will be building your LFS system - we will use
/mnt/lfs
as an example, but the
directory choice is up to you. If you are building LFS on a
separate partition, this directory will be the mount point for
the partition. Choose a directory location and set the variable
with the following command:
export LFS=/mnt/lfs
Having this variable set is beneficial in that commands such as mkdir -v $LFS/tools can be typed literally. The shell will automatically replace “$LFS” with “/mnt/lfs” (or whatever the variable was set to) when it processes the command line.
Do not forget to check that LFS
is
set whenever you leave and reenter the current working
environment (such as when doing a su to root
or another user). Check that the
LFS
variable is set up properly
with:
echo $LFS
Make sure the output shows the path to your LFS system's
build location, which is /mnt/lfs
if the provided example was
followed. If the output is incorrect, use the command given
earlier on this page to set $LFS
to the correct directory name.
One way to ensure that the LFS
variable is always set is to edit the .bash_profile
file in both your personal
home directory and in /root/.bash_profile
and enter the export
command above. In addition, the shell specified in the
/etc/passwd
file for all users
that need the LFS
variable needs
to be bash to ensure that the /root/.bash_profile
file is incorporated as
a part of the login process.
Another consideration is the method that is used to log into
the host system. If logging in through a graphical display
manager, the user's .bash_profile
is not normally used when a
virtual terminal is started. In this case, add the export
command to the .bashrc
file for
the user and root. In addition, some distributions have
instructions to not run the .bashrc
instructions in a non-interactive
bash invocation. Be sure to add the export command before the
test for non-interactive use.
Now that a file system has been created, the partition needs to
be made accessible. In order to do this, the partition needs to
be mounted at a chosen mount point. For the purposes of this
book, it is assumed that the file system is mounted under the
directory specified by the LFS
environment variable as described in the previous section.
Create the mount point and mount the LFS file system by running:
mkdir -pv $LFS
mount -v -t ext4 /dev/<xxx>
$LFS
Replace <xxx>
with the designation of the LFS partition.
If using multiple partitions for LFS (e.g., one for
/
and another for /usr
), mount them using:
mkdir -pv $LFS mount -v -t ext4 /dev/<xxx>
$LFS mkdir -v $LFS/usr mount -v -t ext4 /dev/<yyy>
$LFS/usr
Replace <xxx>
and <yyy>
with
the appropriate partition names.
Ensure that this new partition is not mounted with permissions
that are too restrictive (such as the nosuid
or nodev
options). Run the mount command without any
parameters to see what options are set for the mounted LFS
partition. If nosuid
and/or
nodev
are set, the partition will
need to be remounted.
The above instructions assume that you will not be restarting your computer throughout the LFS process. If you shut down your system, you will either need to remount the LFS partition each time you restart the build process or modify your host system's /etc/fstab file to automatically remount it upon boot. For example:
/dev/<xxx>
/mnt/lfs ext4 defaults 1 1
If you use additional optional partitions, be sure to add them also.
If you are using a swap
partition, ensure that it is enabled using the swapon command:
/sbin/swapon -v /dev/<zzz>
Replace <zzz>
with the name of the swap
partition.
Now that there is an established place to work, it is time to download the packages.
This chapter includes a list of packages that need to be downloaded in order to build a basic Linux system. The listed version numbers correspond to versions of the software that are known to work, and this book is based on their use. We highly recommend against using newer versions because the build commands for one version may not work with a newer version. The newest package versions may also have problems that require work-arounds. These work-arounds will be developed and stabilized in the development version of the book.
Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download location has changed since this book was published, Google (http://www.google.com/) provides a useful search engine for most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the alternative means of downloading discussed at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/packages.html#packages.
Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stored
somewhere that is conveniently available throughout the entire
build. A working directory is also required to unpack the
sources and build them. $LFS/sources
can be used both as the place to
store the tarballs and patches and as a working directory. By
using this directory, the required elements will be located on
the LFS partition and will be available during all stages of
the building process.
To create this directory, execute the following command, as
user root
, before starting the
download session:
mkdir -v $LFS/sources
Make this directory writable and sticky. “Sticky” means that even if multiple users have write permission on a directory, only the owner of a file can delete the file within a sticky directory. The following command will enable the write and sticky modes:
chmod -v a+wt $LFS/sources
An easy way to download all of the packages and patches is by using wget-list as an input to wget. For example:
wget --input-file=wget-list --continue --directory-prefix=$LFS/sources
Additionally, starting with LFS-7.0, there is a separate file,
md5sums, which can be
used to verify that all the correct packages are available
before proceeding. Place that file in $LFS/sources
and run:
pushd $LFS/sources md5sum -c md5sums popd
Download or otherwise obtain the following packages:
Home page: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/acl
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/acl/acl-2.2.53.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 007aabf1dbb550bcddde52a244cd1070
Home page: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/attr
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/attr/attr-2.4.48.tar.gz
MD5 sum: bc1e5cb5c96d99b24886f1f527d3bb3d
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 50f97f4159805e374639a73e2636f22e
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.16.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 53f38e7591fa57c3d2cee682be668e5b
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-5.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 2b44b47b905be16f45709648f671820b
Home page: https://github.com/gavinhoward/bc
Download: https://github.com/gavinhoward/bc/archive/2.5.3/bc-2.5.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 6582c6fbbae943fbfb8fe14a34feab57
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.34.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 664ec3a2df7805ed3464639aaae332d6
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.5.2.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 49fc2cf23e31e697d5072835e1662a97
Download: https://www.sourceware.org/pub/bzip2/bzip2-1.0.8.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 67e051268d0c475ea773822f7500d0e5
Home page: https://libcheck.github.io/check
Download: https://github.com/libcheck/check/releases/download/0.14.0/check-0.14.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 270e82a445be6026040267a5e11cc94b
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.31.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 0009a224d8e288e8ec406ef0161f9293
Home page: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus
Download: https://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus/dbus-1.12.16.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 2dbeae80dfc9e3632320c6a53d5e8890
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/dejagnu/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/dejagnu/dejagnu-1.6.2.tar.gz
MD5 sum: e1b07516533f351b3aba3423fafeffd6
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.7.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 4824adc0e95dbbf11dfbdfaad6a1e461
Home page: http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/
Download: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs/v1.45.5/e2fsprogs-1.45.5.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 6d35428e4ce960cb7e875afe5849c0f3
Home page: https://sourceware.org/ftp/elfutils/
Download: https://sourceware.org/ftp/elfutils/0.178/elfutils-0.178.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: 5480d0b7174446aba13a6adde107287f
Home page: https://libexpat.github.io/
Download: https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/expat/expat-2.2.9.tar.xz
MD5 sum: d2384fa607223447e713e1b9bd272376
Home page: https://core.tcl.tk/expect/
Download: https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/expect/expect5.45.4.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 00fce8de158422f5ccd2666512329bd2
Home page: https://www.darwinsys.com/file/
Download: ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file/file-5.38.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 3217633ed09c7cd35ed8d04191675574
File (5.38) may no longer be available at the listed location. The site administrators of the master download location occasionally remove older versions when new ones are released. An alternative download location that may have the correct version available can also be found at: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/download.html#ftp.
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.7.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 731356dec4b1109b812fecfddfead6b2
Home page: https://github.com/westes/flex
Download: https://github.com/westes/flex/releases/download/v2.6.4/flex-2.6.4.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 2882e3179748cc9f9c23ec593d6adc8d
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk/gawk-5.0.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: f9db3f6715207c6f13719713abc9c707
Home page: https://gcc.gnu.org/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-9.2.0/gcc-9.2.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 3818ad8600447f05349098232c2ddc78
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdbm/gdbm-1.18.1.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 988dc82182121c7570e0cb8b4fcd5415
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.20.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 9ed9e26ab613b668e0026222a9c23639
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.31.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 78a720f17412f3c3282be5a6f3363ec6
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gmp/gmp-6.2.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: a325e3f09e6d91e62101e59f9bda3ec1
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gperf/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gperf/gperf-3.1.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 9e251c0a618ad0824b51117d5d9db87e
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.4.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 111b117d22d6a7d049d6ae7505e9c4d2
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.22.4.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 08fb04335e2f5e73f23ea4c3adbf0c5f
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
Download: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.04.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 5aaca6713b47ca2456d8324a58755ac7
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.10.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 691b1221694c3394f1c537df4eee39d3
Home page: http://freecode.com/projects/iana-etc
Download: http://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/LFS/iana-etc-2.30.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: 3ba3afb1d1b261383d247f46cb135ee8
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/inetutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/inetutils/inetutils-1.9.4.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 87fef1fa3f603aef11c41dcc097af75e
Home page: https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/intltool
Download: https://launchpad.net/intltool/trunk/0.51.0/+download/intltool-0.51.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 12e517cac2b57a0121cda351570f1e63
Home page: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/net/iproute2/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/net/iproute2/iproute2-5.5.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: ee8e2cdb416d4a8ef39525d39ab7c2d0
Home page: http://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/legion/kbd
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kbd/kbd-2.2.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: d1d7ae0b5fb875dc082731e09cd0c8bc
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/kmod/kmod-26.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 1129c243199bdd7db01b55a61aa19601
Home page: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/
Download: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/less-551.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 4ad4408b06d7a6626a055cb453f36819
Home page: https://sites.google.com/site/fullycapable/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/security/linux-privs/libcap2/libcap-2.31.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 52120c05dc797b01f5a7ae70f4335e96
Home page: https://sourceware.org/libffi/
Download: ftp://sourceware.org/pub/libffi/libffi-3.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 6313289e32f1d38a9df4770b014a2ca7
Home page: http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/libpipeline/libpipeline-1.5.2.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 169de4cc1f6f7f7d430a5bed858b2fd3
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.4.6.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 1bfb9b923f2c1339b4d2ce1807064aa5
Home page: https://www.kernel.org/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/linux-5.5.3.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 3ea50025d8c679a327cf2fc225d81a46
The Linux kernel is updated relatively often, many times due to discoveries of security vulnerabilities. The latest available 5.5.x kernel version should be used, unless the errata page says otherwise.
For users with limited speed or expensive bandwidth who wish to update the Linux kernel, a baseline version of the package and patches can be downloaded separately. This may save some time or cost for a subsequent patch level upgrade within a minor release.
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.18.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 730bb15d96fffe47e148d1e09235af82
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-4.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: fc7a67ea86ace13195b0bce683fd4469
Home page: https://www.nongnu.org/man-db/
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/man-db/man-db-2.9.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 897576a19ecbef376a916485608cd790
Home page: https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/man-pages-5.05.tar.xz
MD5 sum: da25a4f8dfed0a34453c90153b98752d
Home page: https://mesonbuild.com
Download: https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson/releases/download/0.53.1/meson-0.53.1.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 9bf73f7b5a2426a7c8674a809bb8cae2
Home page: http://www.multiprecision.org/
Download: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mpc/mpc-1.1.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 4125404e41e482ec68282a2e687f6c73
Home page: https://www.mpfr.org/
Download: http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-4.0.2/mpfr-4.0.2.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 320fbc4463d4c8cb1e566929d8adc4f8
Home page: https://ninja-build.org/
Download: https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/archive/v1.10.0/ninja-1.10.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: cf1d964113a171da42a8940e7607e71a
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses/ncurses-6.2.tar.gz
MD5 sum: e812da327b1c2214ac1aed440ea3ae8d
Home page: https://www.openssl.org/
Download: https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1d.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 3be209000dbc7e1b95bcdf47980a3baa
Home page: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/patch/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.7.6.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 78ad9937e4caadcba1526ef1853730d5
Home page: https://www.perl.org/
Download: https://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.30.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: f399f3aaee90ddcff5eadd3bccdaacc0
Home page: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config
Download: https://pkg-config.freedesktop.org/releases/pkg-config-0.29.2.tar.gz
MD5 sum: f6e931e319531b736fadc017f470e68a
Home page: https://sourceforge.net/projects/procps-ng
Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/procps-ng/files/Production/procps-ng-3.3.15.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 2b0717a7cb474b3d6dfdeedfbad2eccc
Home page: http://psmisc.sourceforge.net/
Download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/psmisc/files/psmisc/psmisc-23.2.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 0524258861f00be1a02d27d39d8e5e62
Home page: https://www.python.org/
Download: https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.1/Python-3.8.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: b3fb85fd479c0bf950c626ef80cacb57
Download: https://www.python.org/ftp/python/doc/3.8.1/python-3.8.1-docs-html.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: edc8c97f9680373fcc1dd952f0ea7fcc
Home page: https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/readline-8.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 7e6c1f16aee3244a69aba6e438295ca3
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sed/sed-4.8.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 6d906edfdb3202304059233f51f9a71d
Download: https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/releases/download/4.8.1/shadow-4.8.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 4b05eff8a427cf50e615bda324b5bc45
Home page: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/
Download: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/archive/v244/systemd-244.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 413121fe918b252ae62310f6fc7c4b32
Home page: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/
Download: http://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/LFS/systemd-man-pages-244.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 1839ad557eb376d22853cac54d00de77
The Linux From Scratch team generates its own tarball of the man pages using the systemd source. This is done in order to avoid unnecessary dependencies.
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.32.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 83e38700a80a26e30b2df054e69956e5
Home page: http://tcl.sourceforge.net/
Download: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl8.6.10-src.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 97c55573f8520bcab74e21bfd8d0aadc
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-6.7.tar.xz
MD5 sum: d4c5d8cc84438c5993ec5163a59522a6
Home page: https://www.iana.org/time-zones
Download: https://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2019c.tar.gz
MD5 sum: f6987e6dfdb2eb83a1b5076a50b80894
Home page: http://freecode.com/projects/util-linux
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/v2.35/util-linux-2.35.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 7f64882f631225f0295ca05080cee1bf
Home page: https://www.vim.org
Download: https://github.com/vim/vim/archive/v8.2.0190/vim-8.2.0190.tar.gz
MD5 sum: f5337b1170df90e644a636539a0313a3
Home page: https://github.com/chorny/XML-Parser
Download: https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/T/TO/TODDR/XML-Parser-2.46.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 80bb18a8e6240fcf7ec2f7b57601c170
Home page: https://tukaani.org/xz
Download: https://tukaani.org/xz/xz-5.2.4.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 003e4d0b1b1899fc6e3000b24feddf7c
Home page: https://www.zlib.net/
Download: https://zlib.net/zlib-1.2.11.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 85adef240c5f370b308da8c938951a68
Home page: https://facebook.github.io/zstd/
Download: https://github.com/facebook/zstd/releases/download/v1.4.4/zstd-1.4.4.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 487f7ee1562dee7c1c8adf85e2a63df9
Total size of these packages: about 407 MB
In addition to the packages, several patches are also required. These patches correct any mistakes in the packages that should be fixed by the maintainer. The patches also make small modifications to make the packages easier to work with. The following patches will be needed to build an LFS system:
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/9.1-rc1/bash-5.0-upstream_fixes-1.patch
MD5 sum: c1545da2ad7d78574b52c465ec077ed9
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/9.1-rc1/bzip2-1.0.8-install_docs-1.patch
MD5 sum: 6a5ac7e89b791aae556de0f745916f7f
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/9.1-rc1/coreutils-8.31-i18n-1.patch
MD5 sum: a9404fb575dfd5514f3c8f4120f9ca7d
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/9.1-rc1/glibc-2.31-fhs-1.patch
MD5 sum: 9a5997c3452909b1769918c759eff8a2
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/9.1-rc1/kbd-2.2.0-backspace-1.patch
MD5 sum: f75cca16a38da6caa7d52151f7136895
Total size of these patches: about 206.4 KB
In addition to the above required patches, there exist a number of optional patches created by the LFS community. These optional patches solve minor problems or enable functionality that is not enabled by default. Feel free to peruse the patches database located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/downloads/ and acquire any additional patches to suit your system needs.
In this chapter, we will perform a few additional tasks to
prepare for building the temporary system. We will create a
directory in $LFS
for the
installation of the temporary tools, add an unprivileged user
to reduce risk, and create an appropriate build environment for
that user. We will also explain the unit of time we use to
measure how long LFS packages take to build, or “SBUs”,
and give some information about package test suites.
All programs compiled in Chapter 5
will be installed under $LFS/tools
to keep them separate from the
programs compiled in Chapter 6.
The programs compiled here are temporary tools and will not be
a part of the final LFS system. By keeping these programs in a
separate directory, they can easily be discarded later after
their use. This also prevents these programs from ending up in
the host production directories (easy to do by accident in
Chapter 5).
Create the required directory by running the following as
root
:
mkdir -v $LFS/tools
The next step is to create a /tools
symlink on the host system. This will
point to the newly-created directory on the LFS partition. Run
this command as root
as well:
ln -sv $LFS/tools /
The above command is correct. The ln command has a few
syntactic variations, so be sure to check info coreutils ln and
ln(1)
before reporting what you
may think is an error.
The created symlink enables the toolchain to be compiled so
that it always refers to /tools
,
meaning that the compiler, assembler, and linker will work both
in Chapter 5 (when we are still using some tools from the
host) and in the next (when we are “chrooted” to the LFS partition).
When logged in as user root
,
making a single mistake can damage or destroy a system.
Therefore, we recommend building the packages in the next
chapter as an unprivileged user. You could use your own user
name, but to make it easier to set up a clean working
environment, create a new user called lfs
as a member of a new group (also named
lfs
) and use this user during
the installation process. As root
, issue the following commands to add
the new user:
groupadd lfs useradd -s /bin/bash -g lfs -m -k /dev/null lfs
The meaning of the command line options:
-s
/bin/bash
This makes bash the default shell
for user lfs
.
-g
lfs
This option adds user lfs
to group lfs
.
-m
This creates a home directory for lfs
.
-k
/dev/null
This parameter prevents possible copying of files from a
skeleton directory (default is /etc/skel
) by changing the input
location to the special null device.
lfs
This is the actual name for the created group and user.
To log in as lfs
(as opposed to
switching to user lfs
when
logged in as root
, which does
not require the lfs
user to
have a password), give lfs
a
password:
passwd lfs
Grant lfs
full access to
$LFS/tools
by making lfs
the directory owner:
chown -v lfs $LFS/tools
If a separate working directory was created as suggested, give
user lfs
ownership of this
directory:
chown -v lfs $LFS/sources
In some host systems, the following command does not complete properly and suspends the login to the lfs user to the background. If the prompt "lfs:~$" does not appear immediately, entering the fg command will fix the issue.
Next, login as user lfs
. This
can be done via a virtual console, through a display manager,
or with the following substitute user command:
su - lfs
The “-
” instructs
su to start a
login shell as opposed to a non-login shell. The difference
between these two types of shells can be found in detail in
bash(1)
and info bash.
Set up a good working environment by creating two new startup
files for the bash shell. While logged in
as user lfs
, issue the
following command to create a new .bash_profile
:
cat > ~/.bash_profile << "EOF"
exec env -i HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM PS1='\u:\w\$ ' /bin/bash
EOF
When logged on as user lfs
, the
initial shell is usually a login shell which reads the
/etc/profile
of the host
(probably containing some settings and environment variables)
and then .bash_profile
. The
exec env
-i.../bin/bash command in the .bash_profile
file replaces the running shell
with a new one with a completely empty environment, except for
the HOME
, TERM
, and PS1
variables. This ensures that no unwanted and potentially
hazardous environment variables from the host system leak into
the build environment. The technique used here achieves the
goal of ensuring a clean environment.
The new instance of the shell is a non-login shell, which does not read
the /etc/profile
or .bash_profile
files, but rather reads the
.bashrc
file instead. Create the
.bashrc
file now:
cat > ~/.bashrc << "EOF"
set +h
umask 022
LFS=/mnt/lfs
LC_ALL=POSIX
LFS_TGT=$(uname -m)-lfs-linux-gnu
PATH=/tools/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
export LFS LC_ALL LFS_TGT PATH
EOF
The set +h
command turns off bash's hash function. Hashing
is ordinarily a useful feature—bash uses a hash table to
remember the full path of executable files to avoid searching
the PATH
time and again to find the
same executable. However, the new tools should be used as soon
as they are installed. By switching off the hash function, the
shell will always search the PATH
when a program is to be run. As such, the shell will find the
newly compiled tools in $LFS/tools
as soon as they are available
without remembering a previous version of the same program in a
different location.
Setting the user file-creation mask (umask) to 022 ensures that
newly created files and directories are only writable by their
owner, but are readable and executable by anyone (assuming
default modes are used by the open(2)
system call, new files will end up
with permission mode 644 and directories with mode 755).
The LFS
variable should be set to
the chosen mount point.
The LC_ALL
variable controls the
localization of certain programs, making their messages follow
the conventions of a specified country. Setting LC_ALL
to “POSIX”
or “C” (the two are equivalent) ensures
that everything will work as expected in the chroot
environment.
The LFS_TGT
variable sets a
non-default, but compatible machine description for use when
building our cross compiler and linker and when cross compiling
our temporary toolchain. More information is contained in
Section 5.2,
“Toolchain Technical Notes”.
By putting /tools/bin
ahead of
the standard PATH
, all the programs
installed in Chapter 5
are picked up by the shell immediately after their
installation. This, combined with turning off hashing, limits
the risk that old programs are used from the host when the same
programs are available in the chapter 5 environment.
Finally, to have the environment fully prepared for building the temporary tools, source the just-created user profile:
source ~/.bash_profile
Many people would like to know beforehand approximately how long it takes to compile and install each package. Because Linux From Scratch can be built on many different systems, it is impossible to provide accurate time estimates. The biggest package (Glibc) will take approximately 20 minutes on the fastest systems, but could take up to three days on slower systems! Instead of providing actual times, the Standard Build Unit (SBU) measure will be used instead.
The SBU measure works as follows. The first package to be compiled from this book is Binutils in Chapter 5. The time it takes to compile this package is what will be referred to as the Standard Build Unit or SBU. All other compile times will be expressed relative to this time.
For example, consider a package whose compilation time is 4.5 SBUs. This means that if a system took 10 minutes to compile and install the first pass of Binutils, it will take approximately 45 minutes to build this example package. Fortunately, most build times are shorter than the one for Binutils.
In general, SBUs are not entirely accurate because they depend on many factors, including the host system's version of GCC. They are provided here to give an estimate of how long it might take to install a package, but the numbers can vary by as much as dozens of minutes in some cases.
For many modern systems with multiple processors (or cores) the compilation time for a package can be reduced by performing a "parallel make" by either setting an environment variable or telling the make program how many processors are available. For instance, a Core2Duo can support two simultaneous processes with:
export MAKEFLAGS='-j 2'
or just building with:
make -j2
When multiple processors are used in this way, the SBU units in the book will vary even more than they normally would. In some cases, the make step will simply fail. Analyzing the output of the build process will also be more difficult because the lines of different processes will be interleaved. If you run into a problem with a build step, revert back to a single processor build to properly analyze the error messages.
Most packages provide a test suite. Running the test suite for a newly built package is a good idea because it can provide a “sanity check” indicating that everything compiled correctly. A test suite that passes its set of checks usually proves that the package is functioning as the developer intended. It does not, however, guarantee that the package is totally bug free.
Some test suites are more important than others. For example, the test suites for the core toolchain packages—GCC, Binutils, and Glibc—are of the utmost importance due to their central role in a properly functioning system. The test suites for GCC and Glibc can take a very long time to complete, especially on slower hardware, but are strongly recommended.
Experience has shown that there is little to be gained from running the test suites in Chapter 5. There can be no escaping the fact that the host system always exerts some influence on the tests in that chapter, often causing inexplicable failures. Because the tools built in Chapter 5 are temporary and eventually discarded, we do not recommend running the test suites in Chapter 5 for the average reader. The instructions for running those test suites are provided for the benefit of testers and developers, but they are strictly optional.
A common issue with running the test suites for Binutils and
GCC is running out of pseudo terminals (PTYs). This can result
in a high number of failing tests. This may happen for several
reasons, but the most likely cause is that the host system does
not have the devpts
file system
set up correctly. This issue is discussed in greater detail at
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html#no-ptys.
Sometimes package test suites will fail, but for reasons which the developers are aware of and have deemed non-critical. Consult the logs located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/build-logs/9.1-rc1/ to verify whether or not these failures are expected. This site is valid for all tests throughout this book.
This chapter shows how to build a minimal Linux system. This system will contain just enough tools to start constructing the final LFS system in Chapter 6 and allow a working environment with more user convenience than a minimum environment would.
There are two steps in building this minimal system. The first step is to build a new and host-independent toolchain (compiler, assembler, linker, libraries, and a few useful utilities). The second step uses this toolchain to build the other essential tools.
The files compiled in this chapter will be installed under the
$LFS/tools
directory to keep them
separate from the files installed in the next chapter and the
host production directories. Since the packages compiled here
are temporary, we do not want them to pollute the soon-to-be
LFS system.
This section explains some of the rationale and technical details behind the overall build method. It is not essential to immediately understand everything in this section. Most of this information will be clearer after performing an actual build. This section can be referred to at any time during the process.
The overall goal of Chapter 5 is to produce a temporary area that contains a known-good set of tools that can be isolated from the host system. By using chroot, the commands in the remaining chapters will be contained within that environment, ensuring a clean, trouble-free build of the target LFS system. The build process has been designed to minimize the risks for new readers and to provide the most educational value at the same time.
Before continuing, be aware of the name of the working
platform, often referred to as the target triplet. A simple
way to determine the name of the target triplet is to run the
config.guess
script that comes with the source for many packages. Unpack
the Binutils sources and run the script: ./config.guess
and note the
output. For example, for a 32-bit Intel processor the output
will be i686-pc-linux-gnu. On a 64-bit
system it will be x86_64-pc-linux-gnu.
Also be aware of the name of the platform's dynamic linker,
often referred to as the dynamic loader (not to be confused
with the standard linker ld that is part of
Binutils). The dynamic linker provided by Glibc finds and
loads the shared libraries needed by a program, prepares the
program to run, and then runs it. The name of the dynamic
linker for a 32-bit Intel machine will be ld-linux.so.2
(ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
for 64-bit systems). A
sure-fire way to determine the name of the dynamic linker is
to inspect a random binary from the host system by running:
readelf -l <name of
binary> | grep interpreter
and noting the
output. The authoritative reference covering all platforms is
in the shlib-versions
file in
the root of the Glibc source tree.
Some key technical points of how the Chapter 5 build method works:
Slightly adjusting the name of the working platform, by
changing the "vendor" field target triplet by way of the
LFS_TGT
variable, ensures that
the first build of Binutils and GCC produces a compatible
cross-linker and cross-compiler. Instead of producing
binaries for another architecture, the cross-linker and
cross-compiler will produce binaries compatible with the
current hardware.
The temporary libraries are cross-compiled. Because a cross-compiler by its nature cannot rely on anything from its host system, this method removes potential contamination of the target system by lessening the chance of headers or libraries from the host being incorporated into the new tools. Cross-compilation also allows for the possibility of building both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries on 64-bit capable hardware.
Careful manipulation of the GCC source tells the compiler which target dynamic linker will be used.
Binutils is installed first because the configure runs of both GCC and Glibc perform various feature tests on the assembler and linker to determine which software features to enable or disable. This is more important than one might first realize. An incorrectly configured GCC or Glibc can result in a subtly broken toolchain, where the impact of such breakage might not show up until near the end of the build of an entire distribution. A test suite failure will usually highlight this error before too much additional work is performed.
Binutils installs its assembler and linker in two locations,
/tools/bin
and /tools/$LFS_TGT/bin
. The tools in one
location are hard linked to the other. An important facet of
the linker is its library search order. Detailed information
can be obtained from ld by passing it the
--verbose
flag. For
example, an ld --verbose | grep
SEARCH
will illustrate the current search paths
and their order. It shows which files are linked by
ld by compiling a
dummy program and passing the --verbose
switch to the linker.
For example, gcc dummy.c
-Wl,--verbose 2>&1 | grep succeeded
will
show all the files successfully opened during the linking.
The next package installed is GCC. An example of what can be seen during its run of configure is:
checking what assembler to use... /tools/i686-lfs-linux-gnu/bin/as
checking what linker to use... /tools/i686-lfs-linux-gnu/bin/ld
This is important for the reasons mentioned above. It also
demonstrates that GCC's configure script does not search the
PATH directories to find which tools to use. However, during
the actual operation of gcc itself, the same search
paths are not necessarily used. To find out which standard
linker gcc will
use, run: gcc
-print-prog-name=ld
.
Detailed information can be obtained from gcc by passing it the
-v
command line option
while compiling a dummy program. For example, gcc -v dummy.c
will show
detailed information about the preprocessor, compilation, and
assembly stages, including gcc's included search paths
and their order.
Next installed are sanitized Linux API headers. These allow the standard C library (Glibc) to interface with features that the Linux kernel will provide.
The next package installed is Glibc. The most important
considerations for building Glibc are the compiler, binary
tools, and kernel headers. The compiler is generally not an
issue since Glibc will always use the compiler relating to the
--host
parameter passed
to its configure script; e.g. in our case, the compiler will be
i686-lfs-linux-gnu-gcc. The
binary tools and kernel headers can be a bit more complicated.
Therefore, take no risks and use the available configure
switches to enforce the correct selections. After the run of
configure, check
the contents of the config.make
file in the glibc-build
directory
for all important details. Note the use of CC="i686-lfs-gnu-gcc"
to control
which binary tools are used and the use of the -nostdinc
and -isystem
flags to control the
compiler's include search path. These items highlight an
important aspect of the Glibc package—it is very
self-sufficient in terms of its build machinery and generally
does not rely on toolchain defaults.
During the second pass of Binutils, we are able to utilize the
--with-lib-path
configure switch to control ld's library search path.
For the second pass of GCC, its sources also need to be
modified to tell GCC to use the new dynamic linker. Failure to
do so will result in the GCC programs themselves having the
name of the dynamic linker from the host system's /lib
directory embedded into them, which
would defeat the goal of getting away from the host. From this
point onwards, the core toolchain is self-contained and
self-hosted. The remainder of the Chapter 5
packages all build against the new Glibc in /tools
.
Upon entering the chroot environment in Chapter 6,
the first major package to be installed is Glibc, due to its
self-sufficient nature mentioned above. Once this Glibc is
installed into /usr
, we will
perform a quick changeover of the toolchain defaults, and then
proceed in building the rest of the target LFS system.
When building packages there are several assumptions made within the instructions:
Several of the packages are patched before compilation, but only when the patch is needed to circumvent a problem. A patch is often needed in both this and the next chapter, but sometimes in only one or the other. Therefore, do not be concerned if instructions for a downloaded patch seem to be missing. Warning messages about offset or fuzz may also be encountered when applying a patch. Do not worry about these warnings, as the patch was still successfully applied.
During the compilation of most packages, there will be several warnings that scroll by on the screen. These are normal and can safely be ignored. These warnings are as they appear—warnings about deprecated, but not invalid, use of the C or C++ syntax. C standards change fairly often, and some packages still use the older standard. This is not a problem, but does prompt the warning.
Check one last time that the LFS
environment variable is set up
properly:
echo $LFS
Make sure the output shows the path to the LFS
partition's mount point, which is /mnt/lfs
, using our example.
Finally, two important items must be emphasized:
The build instructions assume that the Host System Requirements, including symbolic links, have been set properly:
bash is the shell in use.
sh is a symbolic link to bash.
/usr/bin/awk is a symbolic link to gawk.
/usr/bin/yacc is a symbolic link to bison or a small script that executes bison.
To re-emphasize the build process:
Place all the sources and patches in a directory
that will be accessible from the chroot
environment such as /mnt/lfs/sources/
. Do
not put
sources in /mnt/lfs/tools/
.
Change to the sources directory.
Using the tar program, extract the package to be built. In Chapter 5, ensure you are the lfs user when extracting the package.
Change to the directory created when the package was extracted.
Follow the book's instructions for building the package.
Change back to the sources directory.
Delete the extracted source directory unless instructed otherwise.
The Binutils package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files.
Go back and re-read the notes in the previous section. Understanding the notes labeled important will save you a lot of problems later.
It is important that Binutils be the first package compiled because both Glibc and GCC perform various tests on the available linker and assembler to determine which of their own features to enable.
The Binutils documentation recommends building Binutils in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v build cd build
In order for the SBU values listed in the rest of the book
to be of any use, measure the time it takes to build this
package from the configuration, up to and including the
first install. To achieve this easily, wrap the commands in
a time
command like this: time {
./configure ... && ... && make install;
}
.
The approximate build SBU values and required disk space in Chapter 5 does not include test suite data.
Now prepare Binutils for compilation:
../configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-sysroot=$LFS \ --with-lib-path=/tools/lib \ --target=$LFS_TGT \ --disable-nls \ --disable-werror
The meaning of the configure options:
--prefix=/tools
This tells the configure script to prepare to install
the Binutils programs in the /tools
directory.
--with-sysroot=$LFS
For cross compilation, this tells the build system to look in $LFS for the target system libraries as needed.
--with-lib-path=/tools/lib
This specifies which library path the linker should be configured to use.
--target=$LFS_TGT
Because the machine description in the LFS_TGT
variable is slightly different
than the value returned by the config.guess script,
this switch will tell the configure script to
adjust Binutil's build system for building a cross
linker.
--disable-nls
This disables internationalization as i18n is not needed for the temporary tools.
--disable-werror
This prevents the build from stopping in the event that there are warnings from the host's compiler.
Continue with compiling the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. Ordinarily we would now run the test suite, but at this early stage the test suite framework (Tcl, Expect, and DejaGNU) is not yet in place. The benefits of running the tests at this point are minimal since the programs from this first pass will soon be replaced by those from the second.
If building on x86_64, create a symlink to ensure the sanity of the toolchain:
case $(uname -m) in x86_64) mkdir -v /tools/lib && ln -sv lib /tools/lib64 ;; esac
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.18.2, “Contents of Binutils.”
The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, which includes the C and C++ compilers.
GCC now requires the GMP, MPFR and MPC packages. As these packages may not be included in your host distribution, they will be built with GCC. Unpack each package into the GCC source directory and rename the resulting directories so the GCC build procedures will automatically use them:
There are frequent misunderstandings about this chapter. The procedures are the same as every other chapter as explained earlier (Package build instructions). First extract the gcc tarball from the sources directory and then change to the directory created. Only then should you proceed with the instructions below.
tar -xf ../mpfr-4.0.2.tar.xz mv -v mpfr-4.0.2 mpfr tar -xf ../gmp-6.2.0.tar.xz mv -v gmp-6.2.0 gmp tar -xf ../mpc-1.1.0.tar.gz mv -v mpc-1.1.0 mpc
The following command will change the location of GCC's
default dynamic linker to use the one installed in
/tools
. It also removes
/usr/include
from GCC's include
search path. Issue:
for file in gcc/config/{linux,i386/linux{,64}}.h do cp -uv $file{,.orig} sed -e 's@/lib\(64\)\?\(32\)\?/ld@/tools&@g' \ -e 's@/usr@/tools@g' $file.orig > $file echo ' #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 "/tools/lib/" #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 ""' >> $file touch $file.orig done
In case the above seems hard to follow, let's break it down a
bit. First we copy the files gcc/config/linux.h
, gcc/config/i386/linux.h
, and gcc/config/i368/linux64.h
to a file of the
same name but with an added suffix of “.orig”. Then the first sed
expression prepends “/tools” to every instance of
“/lib/ld”, “/lib64/ld” or “/lib32/ld”, while the second one
replaces hard-coded instances of “/usr”.
Next, we add our define statements which alter the default
startfile prefix to the end of the file. Note that the
trailing “/” in “/tools/lib/” is required.
Finally, we use touch to update the
timestamp on the copied files. When used in conjunction with
cp -u, this
prevents unexpected changes to the original files in case the
commands are inadvertently run twice.
Finally, on x86_64 hosts, set the default directory name for 64-bit libraries to “lib”:
case $(uname -m) in x86_64) sed -e '/m64=/s/lib64/lib/' \ -i.orig gcc/config/i386/t-linux64 ;; esac
The GCC documentation recommends building GCC in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare GCC for compilation:
../configure \ --target=$LFS_TGT \ --prefix=/tools \ --with-glibc-version=2.11 \ --with-sysroot=$LFS \ --with-newlib \ --without-headers \ --with-local-prefix=/tools \ --with-native-system-header-dir=/tools/include \ --disable-nls \ --disable-shared \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-decimal-float \ --disable-threads \ --disable-libatomic \ --disable-libgomp \ --disable-libquadmath \ --disable-libssp \ --disable-libvtv \ --disable-libstdcxx \ --enable-languages=c,c++
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-newlib
Since a working C library is not yet available, this ensures that the inhibit_libc constant is defined when building libgcc. This prevents the compiling of any code that requires libc support.
--without-headers
When creating a complete cross-compiler, GCC requires standard headers compatible with the target system. For our purposes these headers will not be needed. This switch prevents GCC from looking for them.
--with-local-prefix=/tools
The local prefix is the location in the system that GCC
will search for locally installed include files. The
default is /usr/local
.
Setting this to /tools
helps keep the host location of /usr/local
out of this GCC's search
path.
--with-native-system-header-dir=/tools/include
By default GCC searches /usr/include
for system headers. In
conjunction with the sysroot switch, this would
normally translate to $LFS/usr/include
. However the headers
that will be installed in the next two sections will go
to $LFS/tools/include
.
This switch ensures that gcc will find them correctly.
In the second pass of GCC, this same switch will ensure
that no headers from the host system are found.
--disable-shared
This switch forces GCC to link its internal libraries statically. We do this to avoid possible issues with the host system.
--disable-decimal-float,
--disable-threads, --disable-libatomic,
--disable-libgomp, --disable-libquadmath,
--disable-libssp, --disable-libvtv,
--disable-libstdcxx
These switches disable support for the decimal floating point extension, threading, libatomic, libgomp, libquadmath, libssp, libvtv, and the C++ standard library respectively. These features will fail to compile when building a cross-compiler and are not necessary for the task of cross-compiling the temporary libc.
--disable-multilib
On x86_64, LFS does not yet support a multilib configuration. This switch is harmless for x86.
--enable-languages=c,c++
This option ensures that only the C and C++ compilers are built. These are the only languages needed now.
Compile GCC by running:
make
Compilation is now complete. At this point, the test suite would normally be run, but, as mentioned before, the test suite framework is not in place yet. The benefits of running the tests at this point are minimal since the programs from this first pass will soon be replaced.
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.25.2, “Contents of GCC.”
The Linux API Headers (in linux-5.5.3.tar.xz) expose the kernel's API for use by Glibc.
The Linux kernel needs to expose an Application Programming Interface (API) for the system's C library (Glibc in LFS) to use. This is done by way of sanitizing various C header files that are shipped in the Linux kernel source tarball.
Make sure there are no stale files embedded in the package:
make mrproper
Now extract the user-visible kernel headers from the source.
The recommended make target “headers_install” cannot be used,
because it requires rsync,
which may not be available. The headers are first placed in
./usr
, then copied to the
needed location.
make headers cp -rv usr/include/* /tools/include
Details on this package are located in Section 6.7.2, “Contents of Linux API Headers.”
The Glibc package contains the main C library. This library provides the basic routines for allocating memory, searching directories, opening and closing files, reading and writing files, string handling, pattern matching, arithmetic, and so on.
The Glibc documentation recommends building Glibc in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v build cd build
Next, prepare Glibc for compilation:
../configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --host=$LFS_TGT \ --build=$(../scripts/config.guess) \ --enable-kernel=3.2 \ --with-headers=/tools/include
The meaning of the configure options:
--host=$LFS_TGT,
--build=$(../scripts/config.guess)
The combined effect of these switches is that Glibc's
build system configures itself to cross-compile, using
the cross-linker and cross-compiler in /tools
.
--enable-kernel=3.2
This tells Glibc to compile the library with support for 3.2 and later Linux kernels. Workarounds for older kernels are not enabled.
--with-headers=/tools/include
This tells Glibc to compile itself against the headers recently installed to the tools directory, so that it knows exactly what features the kernel has and can optimize itself accordingly.
During this stage the following warning might appear:
configure: WARNING: *** These auxiliary programs are missing or *** incompatible versions: msgfmt *** some features will be disabled. *** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.
The missing or incompatible msgfmt program is generally harmless. This msgfmt program is part of the Gettext package which the host distribution should provide.
There have been reports that this package may fail when building as a "parallel make". If this occurs, rerun the make command with a "-j1" option.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
At this point, it is imperative to stop and ensure that the basic functions (compiling and linking) of the new toolchain are working as expected. To perform a sanity check, run the following commands:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c $LFS_TGT-gcc dummy.c readelf -l a.out | grep ': /tools'
If everything is working correctly, there should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be of the form:
[Requesting program interpreter: /tools/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2]
Note that for 32-bit machines, the interpreter name will be
/tools/lib/ld-linux.so.2
.
If the output is not shown as above or there was no output at all, then something is wrong. Investigate and retrace the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it. This issue must be resolved before continuing on.
Once all is well, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out
Building Binutils in the section after next will serve as an additional check that the toolchain has been built properly. If Binutils fails to build, it is an indication that something has gone wrong with the previous Binutils, GCC, or Glibc installations.
Details on this package are located in Section 6.9.3, “Contents of Glibc.”
Libstdc++ is the standard C++ library. It is needed to compile C++ code (part of GCC is written in C++), but we had to defer its installation when we built gcc-pass1 because it depends on glibc, which was not yet available in /tools.
Libstdc++ is part of the
GCC sources. You should first unpack the GCC tarball and
change to the gcc-9.2.0
directory.
Create a separate build directory for Libstdc++ and enter it:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare Libstdc++ for compilation:
../libstdc++-v3/configure \ --host=$LFS_TGT \ --prefix=/tools \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-nls \ --disable-libstdcxx-threads \ --disable-libstdcxx-pch \ --with-gxx-include-dir=/tools/$LFS_TGT/include/c++/9.2.0
The meaning of the configure options:
--host=...
Indicates to use the cross compiler we have just built
instead of the one in /usr/bin
.
--disable-libstdcxx-threads
Since we have not yet built the C threads library, the C++ one cannot be built either.
--disable-libstdcxx-pch
This switch prevents the installation of precompiled include files, which are not needed at this stage.
--with-gxx-include-dir=/tools/$LFS_TGT/include/c++/9.2.0
This is the location where the standard include files are searched by the C++ compiler. In a normal build, this information is automatically passed to the Libstdc++ configure options from the top level directory. In our case, this information must be explicitly given.
Compile libstdc++ by running:
make
Install the library:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.25.2, “Contents of GCC.”
The Binutils package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files.
Create a separate build directory again:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare Binutils for compilation:
CC=$LFS_TGT-gcc \ AR=$LFS_TGT-ar \ RANLIB=$LFS_TGT-ranlib \ ../configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --disable-nls \ --disable-werror \ --with-lib-path=/tools/lib \ --with-sysroot
The meaning of the new configure options:
CC=$LFS_TGT-gcc AR=$LFS_TGT-ar
RANLIB=$LFS_TGT-ranlib
Because this is really a native build of Binutils, setting these variables ensures that the build system uses the cross-compiler and associated tools instead of the ones on the host system.
--with-lib-path=/tools/lib
This tells the configure script to specify the library
search path during the compilation of Binutils,
resulting in /tools/lib
being passed to the linker. This prevents the linker
from searching through library directories on the host.
--with-sysroot
The sysroot feature enables the linker to find shared objects which are required by other shared objects explicitly included on the linker's command line. Without this, some packages may not build successfully on some hosts.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
Now prepare the linker for the “Re-adjusting” phase in the next chapter:
make -C ld clean make -C ld LIB_PATH=/usr/lib:/lib cp -v ld/ld-new /tools/bin
The meaning of the make parameters:
-C ld
clean
This tells the make program to remove all compiled
files in the ld
subdirectory.
-C ld
LIB_PATH=/usr/lib:/lib
This option rebuilds everything in the ld
subdirectory. Specifying the
LIB_PATH
Makefile variable
on the command line allows us to override the default
value of the temporary tools and point it to the proper
final path. The value of this variable specifies the
linker's default library search path. This preparation
is used in the next chapter.
Details on this package are located in Section 6.18.2, “Contents of Binutils.”
The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, which includes the C and C++ compilers.
Our first build of GCC has installed a couple of internal
system headers. Normally one of them, limits.h
, will in turn include the
corresponding system limits.h
header, in this case, /tools/include/limits.h
. However, at the
time of the first build of gcc /tools/include/limits.h
did not exist, so
the internal header that GCC installed is a partial,
self-contained file and does not include the extended
features of the system header. This was adequate for building
the temporary libc, but this build of GCC now requires the
full internal header. Create a full version of the internal
header using a command that is identical to what the GCC
build system does in normal circumstances:
cat gcc/limitx.h gcc/glimits.h gcc/limity.h > \ `dirname $($LFS_TGT-gcc -print-libgcc-file-name)`/include-fixed/limits.h
Once again, change the location of GCC's default dynamic
linker to use the one installed in /tools
.
for file in gcc/config/{linux,i386/linux{,64}}.h do cp -uv $file{,.orig} sed -e 's@/lib\(64\)\?\(32\)\?/ld@/tools&@g' \ -e 's@/usr@/tools@g' $file.orig > $file echo ' #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 "/tools/lib/" #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 ""' >> $file touch $file.orig done
If building on x86_64, change the default directory name for 64-bit libraries to “lib”:
case $(uname -m) in x86_64) sed -e '/m64=/s/lib64/lib/' \ -i.orig gcc/config/i386/t-linux64 ;; esac
As in the first build of GCC it requires the GMP, MPFR and MPC packages. Unpack the tarballs and move them into the required directory names:
tar -xf ../mpfr-4.0.2.tar.xz mv -v mpfr-4.0.2 mpfr tar -xf ../gmp-6.2.0.tar.xz mv -v gmp-6.2.0 gmp tar -xf ../mpc-1.1.0.tar.gz mv -v mpc-1.1.0 mpc
Now fix a problem introduced by Glibc-2.31:
sed -e '1161 s|^|//|' \ -i libsanitizer/sanitizer_common/sanitizer_platform_limits_posix.cc
Create a separate build directory again:
mkdir -v build cd build
Before starting to build GCC, remember to unset any environment variables that override the default optimization flags.
Now prepare GCC for compilation:
CC=$LFS_TGT-gcc \ CXX=$LFS_TGT-g++ \ AR=$LFS_TGT-ar \ RANLIB=$LFS_TGT-ranlib \ ../configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --with-local-prefix=/tools \ --with-native-system-header-dir=/tools/include \ --enable-languages=c,c++ \ --disable-libstdcxx-pch \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-bootstrap \ --disable-libgomp
The meaning of the new configure options:
--enable-languages=c,c++
This option ensures that both the C and C++ compilers are built.
--disable-libstdcxx-pch
Do not build the pre-compiled header (PCH) for
libstdc++
. It takes up a
lot of space, and we have no use for it.
--disable-bootstrap
For native builds of GCC, the default is to do a "bootstrap" build. This does not just compile GCC, but compiles it several times. It uses the programs compiled in a first round to compile itself a second time, and then again a third time. The second and third iterations are compared to make sure it can reproduce itself flawlessly. This also implies that it was compiled correctly. However, the LFS build method should provide a solid compiler without the need to bootstrap each time.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
As a finishing touch, create a symlink. Many programs and scripts run cc instead of gcc, which is used to keep programs generic and therefore usable on all kinds of UNIX systems where the GNU C compiler is not always installed. Running cc leaves the system administrator free to decide which C compiler to install:
ln -sv gcc /tools/bin/cc
At this point, it is imperative to stop and ensure that the basic functions (compiling and linking) of the new toolchain are working as expected. To perform a sanity check, run the following commands:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c cc dummy.c readelf -l a.out | grep ': /tools'
If everything is working correctly, there should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be of the form:
[Requesting program interpreter: /tools/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2]
Note that the dynamic linker will be /tools/lib/ld-linux.so.2 for 32-bit machines.
If the output is not shown as above or there was no output
at all, then something is wrong. Investigate and retrace
the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it.
This issue must be resolved before continuing on. First,
perform the sanity check again, using gcc instead of
cc. If this
works, then the /tools/bin/cc
symlink is missing. Install the symlink as per above. Next,
ensure that the PATH
is correct.
This can be checked by running echo $PATH and verifying
that /tools/bin
is at the
head of the list. If the PATH
is
wrong it could mean that you are not logged in as user
lfs
or that something went
wrong back in Section 4.4,
“Setting Up the Environment.”
Once all is well, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out
Details on this package are located in Section 6.25.2, “Contents of GCC.”
The Tcl package contains the Tool Command Language.
This package and the next two (Expect and DejaGNU) are installed to support running the test suites for GCC and Binutils and other packages. Installing three packages for testing purposes may seem excessive, but it is very reassuring, if not essential, to know that the most important tools are working properly. Even if the test suites are not run in this chapter (they are not mandatory), these packages are required to run the test suites in Chapter 6.
Note that the Tcl package used here is a minimal version needed to run the LFS tests. For the full package, see the BLFS Tcl procedures.
Prepare Tcl for compilation:
cd unix ./configure --prefix=/tools
Build the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Tcl test suite anyway, issue the following command:
TZ=UTC make test
The Tcl test suite may experience failures under certain host
conditions that are not fully understood. Therefore, test
suite failures here are not surprising, and are not
considered critical. The TZ=UTC
parameter sets the time
zone to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), but only for the
duration of the test suite run. This ensures that the clock
tests are exercised correctly. Details on the TZ
environment variable are provided in
Chapter 7.
Install the package:
make install
Make the installed library writable so debugging symbols can be removed later:
chmod -v u+w /tools/lib/libtcl8.6.so
Install Tcl's headers. The next package, Expect, requires them to build.
make install-private-headers
Now make a necessary symbolic link:
ln -sv tclsh8.6 /tools/bin/tclsh
The Expect package contains a program for carrying out scripted dialogues with other interactive programs.
First, force Expect's configure script to use /bin/stty
instead of a /usr/local/bin/stty
it may find on the host
system. This will ensure that our test suite tools remain
sane for the final builds of our toolchain:
cp -v configure{,.orig} sed 's:/usr/local/bin:/bin:' configure.orig > configure
Now prepare Expect for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-tcl=/tools/lib \ --with-tclinclude=/tools/include
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-tcl=/tools/lib
This ensures that the configure script finds the Tcl installation in the temporary tools location instead of possibly locating an existing one on the host system.
--with-tclinclude=/tools/include
This explicitly tells Expect where to find Tcl's internal headers. Using this option avoids conditions where configure fails because it cannot automatically discover the location of Tcl's headers.
Build the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Expect test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make test
Note that the Expect test suite is known to experience failures under certain host conditions that are not within our control. Therefore, test suite failures here are not surprising and are not considered critical.
Install the package:
make SCRIPTS="" install
The meaning of the make parameter:
SCRIPTS=""
This prevents installation of the supplementary Expect scripts, which are not needed.
The DejaGNU package contains a framework for testing other programs.
Prepare DejaGNU for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Build and install the package:
make install
To test the results, issue:
make check
The M4 package contains a macro processor.
First, make some fixes introduced by glibc-2.28:
sed -i 's/IO_ftrylockfile/IO_EOF_SEEN/' lib/*.c echo "#define _IO_IN_BACKUP 0x100" >> lib/stdio-impl.h
Prepare M4 for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the M4 test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.16.2, “Contents of M4.”
The Ncurses package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens.
First, ensure that gawk is found first during configuration:
sed -i s/mawk// configure
Prepare Ncurses for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-shared \ --without-debug \ --without-ada \ --enable-widec \ --enable-overwrite
The meaning of the configure options:
--without-ada
This ensures that Ncurses does not build support for the Ada compiler which may be present on the host but will not be available once we enter the chroot environment.
--enable-overwrite
This tells Ncurses to install its header files into
/tools/include
, instead
of /tools/include/ncurses
, to ensure
that other packages can find the Ncurses headers
successfully.
--enable-widec
This switch causes wide-character libraries (e.g.,
libncursesw.so.6.2
) to be
built instead of normal ones (e.g., libncurses.so.6.2
). These
wide-character libraries are usable in both multibyte
and traditional 8-bit locales, while normal libraries
work properly only in 8-bit locales. Wide-character and
normal libraries are source-compatible, but not
binary-compatible.
Compile the package:
make
This package has a test suite, but it can only be run after
the package has been installed. The tests reside in the
test/
directory. See the
README
file in that directory
for further details.
Install the package:
make install ln -s libncursesw.so /tools/lib/libncurses.so
Details on this package are located in Section 6.27.2, “Contents of Ncurses.”
The Bash package contains the Bourne-Again SHell.
Prepare Bash for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --without-bash-malloc
The meaning of the configure options:
--without-bash-malloc
This option turns off the use of Bash's memory
allocation (malloc
)
function which is known to cause segmentation faults.
By turning this option off, Bash will use the
malloc
functions from
Glibc which are more stable.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Bash test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make tests
Install the package:
make install
Make a link for the programs that use sh for a shell:
ln -sv bash /tools/bin/sh
Details on this package are located in Section 6.35.2, “Contents of Bash.”
The Bison package contains a parser generator.
Prepare Bison for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.32.2, “Contents of Bison.”
The Bzip2 package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. Compressing text files with bzip2 yields a much better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip.
The Bzip2 package does not contain a configure script. There are
two Makefile
, one for the
shared library, and the other for the static library. Since
we need both, We do the compilation in two stages. First the
shared library:
make -f Makefile-libbz2_so make clean
The meaning of the make parameter:
-f
Makefile-libbz2_so
This will cause Bzip2 to be built using a different
Makefile
file, in this
case the Makefile-libbz2_so
file, which
creates a dynamic libbz2.so
library and links the Bzip2
utilities against it.
Compile and test the package with:
make
Install the package:
make PREFIX=/tools install cp -v bzip2-shared /tools/bin/bzip2 cp -av libbz2.so* /tools/lib ln -sv libbz2.so.1.0 /tools/lib/libbz2.so
Details on this package are located in Section 6.12.2, “Contents of Bzip2.”
The Coreutils package contains utilities for showing and setting the basic system characteristics.
Prepare Coreutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --enable-install-program=hostname
The meaning of the configure options:
--enable-install-program=hostname
This enables the hostname binary to be built and installed – it is disabled by default but is required by the Perl test suite.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Coreutils test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check
The RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes
parameter tells the test suite to run several additional
tests that are considered relatively expensive (in terms of
CPU power and memory usage) on some platforms, but generally
are not a problem on Linux.
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.54.2, “Contents of Coreutils.”
The Diffutils package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories.
Prepare Diffutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Diffutils test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.56.2, “Contents of Diffutils.”
The File package contains a utility for determining the type of a given file or files.
Prepare File for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the File test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.14.2, “Contents of File.”
The Findutils package contains programs to find files. These programs are provided to recursively search through a directory tree and to create, maintain, and search a database (often faster than the recursive find, but unreliable if the database has not been recently updated).
Prepare Findutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Findutils test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.58.2, “Contents of Findutils.”
The Gawk package contains programs for manipulating text files.
Prepare Gawk for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Gawk test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.57.2, “Contents of Gawk.”
The Gettext package contains utilities for internationalization and localization. These allow programs to be compiled with NLS (Native Language Support), enabling them to output messages in the user's native language.
For our temporary set of tools, we only need to install three programs from Gettext.
Prepare Gettext for compilation:
./configure --disable-shared
The meaning of the configure option:
--disable-shared
We do not need to install any of the shared Gettext libraries at this time, therefore there is no need to build them.
Compile the package:
make
Due to the limited environment, running the test suite at this stage is not recommended.
Install the msgfmt, msgmerge and xgettext programs:
cp -v gettext-tools/src/{msgfmt,msgmerge,xgettext} /tools/bin
Details on this package are located in Section 6.47.2, “Contents of Gettext.”
The Grep package contains programs for searching through files.
Prepare Grep for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Grep test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.34.2, “Contents of Grep.”
The Gzip package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files.
Prepare Gzip for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Gzip test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.62.2, “Contents of Gzip.”
The Make package contains a program for compiling packages.
Prepare Make for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --without-guile
The meaning of the configure option:
--without-guile
This ensures that Make-4.3 won't link against Guile libraries, which may be present on the host system, but won't be available within the chroot environment in the next chapter.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Make test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.67.2, “Contents of Make.”
The Patch package contains a program for modifying or creating files by applying a “patch” file typically created by the diff program.
Prepare Patch for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Patch test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.68.2, “Contents of Patch.”
The Perl package contains the Practical Extraction and Report Language.
Prepare Perl for compilation:
sh Configure -des -Dprefix=/tools -Dlibs=-lm -Uloclibpth -Ulocincpth
The meaning of the Configure options:
-des
This is a combination of three options: -d uses defaults for all items; -e ensures completion of all tasks; -s silences non-essential output.
-Uloclibpth
and -Ulocincpth
These entries undefine variables that cause the configuration to search for locally installed components that may exist on the host system.
Build the package:
make
Although Perl comes with a test suite, it would be better to wait until it is installed in the next chapter.
Only a few of the utilities and libraries need to be installed at this time:
cp -v perl cpan/podlators/scripts/pod2man /tools/bin mkdir -pv /tools/lib/perl5/5.30.1 cp -Rv lib/* /tools/lib/perl5/5.30.1
Details on this package are located in Section 6.41.2, “Contents of Perl.”
The Python 3 package contains the Python development environment. It is useful for object-oriented programming, writing scripts, prototyping large programs or developing entire applications.
There are two package files whose name starts with
“python”. The one to extract
from is Python-3.8.1.tar.xz
(notice the uppercase first letter).
This package first builds the Python interpreter, then some
standard Python modules. The main script for building modules
is written in Python, and uses hard-coded paths to the host
/usr/include
and /usr/lib
directories. To prevent them from
being used, issue:
sed -i '/def add_multiarch_paths/a \ return' setup.py
Prepare Python for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --without-ensurepip
The meaning of the configure option:
--without-ensurepip
This switch disables the Python package installer, which is not needed at this stage.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. The test suite requires TK and and X Windows and cannot be run at this time.
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.51.2, “Contents of Python 3.”
The Sed package contains a stream editor.
Prepare Sed for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Sed test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.29.2, “Contents of Sed.”
The Tar package contains an archiving program.
Prepare Tar for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Tar test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.70.2, “Contents of Tar.”
The Texinfo package contains programs for reading, writing, and converting info pages.
Prepare Texinfo for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
As part of the configure process, a test is made that indicates an error for TestXS_la-TestXS.lo. This is not relevant for LFS and should be ignored.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Texinfo test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.71.2, “Contents of Texinfo.”
The Util-linux package contains miscellaneous utility programs.
Prepare Util-linux for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools \ --without-python \ --disable-makeinstall-chown \ --without-systemdsystemunitdir \ --without-ncurses \ PKG_CONFIG=""
The meaning of the configure option:
--without-python
This switch disables using Python if it is installed on the host system. It avoids trying to build unneeded bindings.
--disable-makeinstall-chown
This switch disables using the chown command during installation. This is not needed when installing into the /tools directory and avoids the necessity of installing as root.
--without-ncurses
This switch disables using the ncurses library for the build process. This is not needed when installing into the /tools directory and avoids problems on some host distros.
--without-systemdsystemunitdir
On systems that use systemd, the package tries to install a systemd specific file to a non-existent directory in /tools. This switch disables the unnecessary action.
PKG_CONFIG=""
Setting this environment variable prevents adding unneeded features that may be available on the host. Note that the location shown for setting this environment variable is different from other LFS sections where variables are set preceding the command. This location is shown to demonstrate an alternative way of setting an environment variable when using configure.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.76.3, “Contents of Util-linux.”
The Xz package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It provides capabilities for the lzma and the newer xz compression formats. Compressing text files with xz yields a better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip or bzip2 commands.
Prepare Xz for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Xz test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.13.2, “Contents of Xz.”
The steps in this section are optional, but if the LFS partition is rather small, it is beneficial to learn that unnecessary items can be removed. The executables and libraries built so far contain about 70 MB of unneeded debugging symbols. Remove those symbols with:
strip --strip-debug /tools/lib/* /usr/bin/strip --strip-unneeded /tools/{,s}bin/*
These commands will skip a number of files, reporting that it does not recognize their file format. Most of these are scripts instead of binaries. Also use the system strip command to include the strip binary in /tools.
Take care not to use
--strip-unneeded
on the
libraries. The static ones would be destroyed and the toolchain
packages would need to be built all over again.
To save more, remove the documentation:
rm -rf /tools/{,share}/{info,man,doc}
Remove unneeded files:
find /tools/{lib,libexec} -name \*.la -delete
At this point, you should have at least 3 GB of free space in
$LFS
that can be used to build and
install Glibc and Gcc in the next phase. If you can build and
install Glibc, you can build and install the rest too.
The commands in the remainder of this book must be performed
while logged in as user root
and no longer as user lfs
.
Also, double check that $LFS
is
set in root
's environment.
Currently, the $LFS/tools
directory is owned by the user lfs
, a user that exists only on the host
system. If the $LFS/tools
directory is kept as is, the files are owned by a user ID
without a corresponding account. This is dangerous because a
user account created later could get this same user ID and
would own the $LFS/tools
directory and all the files therein, thus exposing these files
to possible malicious manipulation.
To avoid this issue, you could add the lfs
user to the new LFS system later when
creating the /etc/passwd
file,
taking care to assign it the same user and group IDs as on the
host system. Better yet, change the ownership of the
$LFS/tools
directory to user
root
by running the following
command:
chown -R root:root $LFS/tools
Although the $LFS/tools
directory
can be deleted once the LFS system has been finished, it can be
retained to build additional LFS systems of the same book version. How best
to backup $LFS/tools
is a matter
of personal preference.
If you intend to keep the temporary tools for use in building future LFS systems, now is the time to back them up. Subsequent commands in chapter 6 will alter the tools currently in place, rendering them useless for future builds.
In this chapter, we enter the building site and start constructing the LFS system in earnest. That is, we chroot into the temporary mini Linux system, make a few final preparations, and then begin installing the packages.
The installation of this software is straightforward. Although in many cases the installation instructions could be made shorter and more generic, we have opted to provide the full instructions for every package to minimize the possibilities for mistakes. The key to learning what makes a Linux system work is to know what each package is used for and why you (or the system) may need it.
We do not recommend using optimizations. They can make a
program run slightly faster, but they may also cause
compilation difficulties and problems when running the program.
If a package refuses to compile when using optimization, try to
compile it without optimization and see if that fixes the
problem. Even if the package does compile when using
optimization, there is the risk it may have been compiled
incorrectly because of the complex interactions between the
code and build tools. Also note that the -march
and -mtune
options using values not specified in the book have not been
tested. This may cause problems with the toolchain packages
(Binutils, GCC and Glibc). The small potential gains achieved
in using compiler optimizations are often outweighed by the
risks. First-time builders of LFS are encouraged to build
without custom optimizations. The subsequent system will still
run very fast and be stable at the same time.
The order that packages are installed in this chapter needs to
be strictly followed to ensure that no program accidentally
acquires a path referring to /tools
hard-wired into it. For the same
reason, do not compile separate packages in parallel. Compiling
in parallel may save time (especially on dual-CPU machines),
but it could result in a program containing a hard-wired path
to /tools
, which will cause the
program to stop working when that directory is removed.
Before the installation instructions, each installation page provides information about the package, including a concise description of what it contains, approximately how long it will take to build, and how much disk space is required during this building process. Following the installation instructions, there is a list of programs and libraries (along with brief descriptions of these) that the package installs.
The SBU values and required disk space includes test suite data for all applicable packages in Chapter 6.
In general, the LFS editors discourage building and installing static libraries. The original purpose for most static libraries has been made obsolete in a modern Linux system. In addition linking a static library into a program can be detrimental. If an update to the library is needed to remove a security problem, all programs that use the static library will need to be relinked to the new library. Since the use of static libraries is not always obvious, the relevant programs (and the procedures needed to do the linking) may not even be known.
In the procedures in Chapter 6, we remove or disable
installation of most static libraries. Usually this is done
by passing a --disable-static
option to configure. In other cases,
alternate means are needed. In a few cases, especially glibc
and gcc, the use of static libraries remains essential to the
general package building process.
For a more complete discussion of libraries, see the discussion Libraries: Static or shared? in the BLFS book.
Various file systems exported by the kernel are used to communicate to and from the kernel itself. These file systems are virtual in that no disk space is used for them. The content of the file systems resides in memory.
Begin by creating directories onto which the file systems will be mounted:
mkdir -pv $LFS/{dev,proc,sys,run}
When the kernel boots the system, it requires the presence of
a few device nodes, in particular the console
and null
devices. The device nodes must be
created on the hard disk so that they are available before
udevd has been
started, and additionally when Linux is started with
init=/bin/bash
.
Create the devices by running the following commands:
mknod -m 600 $LFS/dev/console c 5 1 mknod -m 666 $LFS/dev/null c 1 3
The recommended method of populating the /dev
directory with devices is to mount a
virtual filesystem (such as tmpfs
) on the /dev
directory, and allow the devices to be
created dynamically on that virtual filesystem as they are
detected or accessed. Device creation is generally done
during the boot process by Udev. Since this new system does
not yet have Udev and has not yet been booted, it is
necessary to mount and populate /dev
manually. This is accomplished by bind
mounting the host system's /dev
directory. A bind mount is a special type of mount that
allows you to create a mirror of a directory or mount point
to some other location. Use the following command to achieve
this:
mount -v --bind /dev $LFS/dev
Now mount the remaining virtual kernel filesystems:
mount -vt devpts devpts $LFS/dev/pts -o gid=5,mode=620 mount -vt proc proc $LFS/proc mount -vt sysfs sysfs $LFS/sys mount -vt tmpfs tmpfs $LFS/run
The meaning of the mount options for devpts:
gid=5
This ensures that all devpts-created device nodes are
owned by group ID 5. This is the ID we will use later
on for the tty
group.
We use the group ID instead of a name, since the host
system might use a different ID for its tty
group.
mode=0620
This ensures that all devpts-created device nodes have mode 0620 (user readable and writable, group writable). Together with the option above, this ensures that devpts will create device nodes that meet the requirements of grantpt(), meaning the Glibc pt_chown helper binary (which is not installed by default) is not necessary.
In some host systems, /dev/shm
is a symbolic link to /run/shm
.
The /run tmpfs was mounted above so in this case only a
directory needs to be created.
if [ -h $LFS/dev/shm ]; then mkdir -pv $LFS/$(readlink $LFS/dev/shm) fi
Package Management is an often requested addition to the LFS Book. A Package Manager allows tracking the installation of files making it easy to remove and upgrade packages. As well as the binary and library files, a package manager will handle the installation of configuration files. Before you begin to wonder, NO—this section will not talk about nor recommend any particular package manager. What it provides is a roundup of the more popular techniques and how they work. The perfect package manager for you may be among these techniques or may be a combination of two or more of these techniques. This section briefly mentions issues that may arise when upgrading packages.
Some reasons why no package manager is mentioned in LFS or BLFS include:
Dealing with package management takes the focus away from the goals of these books—teaching how a Linux system is built.
There are multiple solutions for package management, each having its strengths and drawbacks. Including one that satisfies all audiences is difficult.
There are some hints written on the topic of package management. Visit the Hints Project and see if one of them fits your need.
A Package Manager makes it easy to upgrade to newer versions when they are released. Generally the instructions in the LFS and BLFS Book can be used to upgrade to the newer versions. Here are some points that you should be aware of when upgrading packages, especially on a running system.
If Glibc needs to be upgraded to a newer version, (e.g. from glibc-2.19 to glibc-2.20), it is safer to rebuild LFS. Though you may be able to rebuild all the packages in their dependency order, we do not recommend it.
If a package containing a shared library is updated,
and if the name of the library changes, then all the
packages dynamically linked to the library need to be
recompiled to link against the newer library. (Note
that there is no correlation between the package
version and the name of the library.) For example,
consider a package foo-1.2.3 that installs a shared
library with name libfoo.so.1
. Say you upgrade the
package to a newer version foo-1.2.4 that installs a
shared library with name libfoo.so.2
. In this case, all
packages that are dynamically linked to libfoo.so.1
need to be recompiled to
link against libfoo.so.2
.
Note that you should not remove the previous libraries
until the dependent packages are recompiled.
The following are some common package management techniques. Before making a decision on a package manager, do some research on the various techniques, particularly the drawbacks of the particular scheme.
Yes, this is a package management technique. Some folks do not find the need for a package manager because they know the packages intimately and know what files are installed by each package. Some users also do not need any package management because they plan on rebuilding the entire system when a package is changed.
This is a simplistic package management that does not need
any extra package to manage the installations. Each package
is installed in a separate directory. For example, package
foo-1.1 is installed in /usr/pkg/foo-1.1
and a symlink is made
from /usr/pkg/foo
to
/usr/pkg/foo-1.1
. When
installing a new version foo-1.2, it is installed in
/usr/pkg/foo-1.2
and the
previous symlink is replaced by a symlink to the new
version.
Environment variables such as PATH
, LD_LIBRARY_PATH
, MANPATH
, INFOPATH
and CPPFLAGS
need to be expanded
to include /usr/pkg/foo
. For
more than a few packages, this scheme becomes unmanageable.
This is a variation of the previous package management
technique. Each package is installed similar to the
previous scheme. But instead of making the symlink, each
file is symlinked into the /usr
hierarchy. This removes the need to
expand the environment variables. Though the symlinks can
be created by the user to automate the creation, many
package managers have been written using this approach. A
few of the popular ones include Stow, Epkg, Graft, and
Depot.
The installation needs to be faked, so that the package
thinks that it is installed in /usr
though in reality it is installed in
the /usr/pkg
hierarchy.
Installing in this manner is not usually a trivial task.
For example, consider that you are installing a package
libfoo-1.1. The following instructions may not install the
package properly:
./configure --prefix=/usr/pkg/libfoo/1.1 make make install
The installation will work, but the dependent packages may
not link to libfoo as you would expect. If you compile a
package that links against libfoo, you may notice that it
is linked to /usr/pkg/libfoo/1.1/lib/libfoo.so.1
instead of /usr/lib/libfoo.so.1
as you would expect.
The correct approach is to use the DESTDIR
strategy to fake installation of the
package. This approach works as follows:
./configure --prefix=/usr make make DESTDIR=/usr/pkg/libfoo/1.1 install
Most packages support this approach, but there are some
which do not. For the non-compliant packages, you may
either need to manually install the package, or you may
find that it is easier to install some problematic packages
into /opt
.
In this technique, a file is timestamped before the installation of the package. After the installation, a simple use of the find command with the appropriate options can generate a log of all the files installed after the timestamp file was created. A package manager written with this approach is install-log.
Though this scheme has the advantage of being simple, it has two drawbacks. If, during installation, the files are installed with any timestamp other than the current time, those files will not be tracked by the package manager. Also, this scheme can only be used when one package is installed at a time. The logs are not reliable if two packages are being installed on two different consoles.
In this approach, the commands that the installation scripts perform are recorded. There are two techniques that one can use:
The LD_PRELOAD
environment
variable can be set to point to a library to be preloaded
before installation. During installation, this library
tracks the packages that are being installed by attaching
itself to various executables such as cp, install, mv and tracking the
system calls that modify the filesystem. For this approach
to work, all the executables need to be dynamically linked
without the suid or sgid bit. Preloading the library may
cause some unwanted side-effects during installation.
Therefore, it is advised that one performs some tests to
ensure that the package manager does not break anything and
logs all the appropriate files.
The second technique is to use strace, which logs all system calls made during the execution of the installation scripts.
In this scheme, the package installation is faked into a separate tree as described in the Symlink style package management. After the installation, a package archive is created using the installed files. This archive is then used to install the package either on the local machine or can even be used to install the package on other machines.
This approach is used by most of the package managers found in the commercial distributions. Examples of package managers that follow this approach are RPM (which, incidentally, is required by the Linux Standard Base Specification), pkg-utils, Debian's apt, and Gentoo's Portage system. A hint describing how to adopt this style of package management for LFS systems is located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/fakeroot.txt.
Creation of package files that include dependency information is complex and is beyond the scope of LFS.
Slackware uses a tar based system for package archives. This system purposely does not handle package dependencies as more complex package managers do. For details of Slackware package management, see http://www.slackbook.org/html/package-management.html.
This scheme, unique to LFS, was devised by Matthias Benkmann, and is available from the Hints Project. In this scheme, each package is installed as a separate user into the standard locations. Files belonging to a package are easily identified by checking the user ID. The features and shortcomings of this approach are too complex to describe in this section. For the details please see the hint at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/more_control_and_pkg_man.txt.
One of the advantages of an LFS system is that there are no
files that depend on the position of files on a disk system.
Cloning an LFS build to another computer with the same
architecture as the base system is as simple as using
tar on the LFS
partition that contains the root directory (about 250MB
uncompressed for a base LFS build), copying that file via
network transfer or CD-ROM to the new system and expanding
it. From that point, a few configuration files will have to
be changed. Configuration files that may need to be updated
include: /etc/hosts
,
/etc/fstab
, /etc/passwd
, /etc/group
, /etc/shadow
, and
/etc/ld.so.conf
.
A custom kernel may need to be built for the new system depending on differences in system hardware and the original kernel configuration.
There have been some reports of issues when copying between similar but not identical architectures. For instance, the instruction set for an Intel system is not identical with an AMD processor and later versions of some processors may have instructions that are unavailable in earlier versions.
Finally the new system has to be made bootable via Section 8.4, “Using GRUB to Set Up the Boot Process”.
It is time to enter the chroot environment to begin building
and installing the final LFS system. As user root
, run the following command to enter
the realm that is, at the moment, populated with only the
temporary tools:
chroot "$LFS" /tools/bin/env -i \ HOME=/root \ TERM="$TERM" \ PS1='(lfs chroot) \u:\w\$ ' \ PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/tools/bin \ /tools/bin/bash --login +h
The -i
option given to
the env command
will clear all variables of the chroot environment. After that,
only the HOME
, TERM
, PS1
, and
PATH
variables are set again. The
TERM=$TERM
construct
will set the TERM
variable inside
chroot to the same value as outside chroot. This variable is
needed for programs like vim and less to operate properly. If
other variables are needed, such as CFLAGS
or CXXFLAGS
,
this is a good place to set them again.
From this point on, there is no need to use the LFS
variable anymore, because all work will be
restricted to the LFS file system. This is because the Bash
shell is told that $LFS
is now
the root (/
) directory.
Notice that /tools/bin
comes last
in the PATH
. This means that a
temporary tool will no longer be used once its final version is
installed. This occurs when the shell does not “remember” the locations of executed
binaries—for this reason, hashing is switched off by
passing the +h
option
to bash.
Note that the bash prompt will say
I have no name!
This is
normal because the /etc/passwd
file has not been created yet.
It is important that all the commands throughout the remainder of this chapter and the following chapters are run from within the chroot environment. If you leave this environment for any reason (rebooting for example), ensure that the virtual kernel filesystems are mounted as explained in Section 6.2.2, “Mounting and Populating /dev” and Section 6.2.3, “Mounting Virtual Kernel File Systems” and enter chroot again before continuing with the installation.
It is time to create some structure in the LFS file system. Create a standard directory tree by issuing the following commands:
mkdir -pv /{bin,boot,etc/{opt,sysconfig},home,lib/firmware,mnt,opt} mkdir -pv /{media/{floppy,cdrom},sbin,srv,var} install -dv -m 0750 /root install -dv -m 1777 /tmp /var/tmp mkdir -pv /usr/{,local/}{bin,include,lib,sbin,src} mkdir -pv /usr/{,local/}share/{color,dict,doc,info,locale,man} mkdir -v /usr/{,local/}share/{misc,terminfo,zoneinfo} mkdir -v /usr/libexec mkdir -pv /usr/{,local/}share/man/man{1..8} mkdir -v /usr/lib/pkgconfig case $(uname -m) in x86_64) mkdir -v /lib64 ;; esac mkdir -v /var/{log,mail,spool} ln -sv /run /var/run ln -sv /run/lock /var/lock mkdir -pv /var/{opt,cache,lib/{color,misc,locate},local}
Directories are, by default, created with permission mode 755,
but this is not desirable for all directories. In the commands
above, two changes are made—one to the home directory of
user root
, and another to the
directories for temporary files.
The first mode change ensures that not just anybody can enter
the /root
directory—the
same as a normal user would do with his or her home directory.
The second mode change makes sure that any user can write to
the /tmp
and /var/tmp
directories, but cannot remove
another user's files from them. The latter is prohibited by the
so-called “sticky
bit,” the highest bit (1) in the 1777 bit
mask.
The directory tree is based on the Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard (FHS) (available at https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs.shtml).
The FHS also specifies the optional existence of some
directories such as /usr/local/games
and /usr/share/games
. We create only the
directories that are needed. However, feel free to create
these directories.
Some programs use hard-wired paths to programs which do not exist yet. In order to satisfy these programs, create a number of symbolic links which will be replaced by real files throughout the course of this chapter after the software has been installed:
ln -sv /tools/bin/{bash,cat,chmod,dd,echo,ln,mkdir,pwd,rm,stty,touch} /bin ln -sv /tools/bin/{env,install,perl,printf} /usr/bin ln -sv /tools/lib/libgcc_s.so{,.1} /usr/lib ln -sv /tools/lib/libstdc++.{a,so{,.6}} /usr/lib ln -sv bash /bin/sh
The purpose of each link:
/bin/bash
Many bash
scripts specify /bin/bash
.
/bin/cat
This pathname is hard-coded into Glibc's configure script.
/bin/dd
The path to dd
will be
hard-coded into the /usr/bin/libtool
utility.
/bin/echo
This is to satisfy one of the tests in Glibc's test
suite, which expects /bin/echo
.
/usr/bin/env
This pathname is hard-coded into some packages build procedures.
/usr/bin/install
The path to install
will be
hard-coded into the /usr/lib/bash/Makefile.inc
file.
/bin/ln
The path to ln
will be
hard-coded into the /usr/lib/perl5/5.30.1/<target-triplet>/Config_heavy.pl
file.
/bin/pwd
Some configure scripts, particularly Glibc's, have this pathname hard-coded.
/bin/rm
The path to rm
will be
hard-coded into the /usr/lib/perl5/5.30.1/<target-triplet>/Config_heavy.pl
file.
/bin/stty
This pathname is hard-coded into Expect, therefore it is needed for Binutils and GCC test suites to pass.
/usr/bin/perl
Many Perl scripts hard-code this path to the perl program.
/usr/lib/libgcc_s.so{,.1}
Glibc needs this for the pthreads library to work.
/usr/lib/libstdc++{,.6}
This is needed by several tests in Glibc's test suite, as well as for C++ support in GMP.
/bin/sh
Many shell scripts hard-code /bin/sh
.
Historically, Linux maintains a list of the mounted file
systems in the file /etc/mtab
.
Modern kernels maintain this list internally and exposes it to
the user via the /proc
filesystem. To satisfy utilities that expect the presence of
/etc/mtab
, create the following
symbolic link:
ln -sv /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtab
In order for user root
to be
able to login and for the name “root” to
be recognized, there must be relevant entries in the
/etc/passwd
and /etc/group
files.
Create the /etc/passwd
file by
running the following command:
cat > /etc/passwd << "EOF"
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/dev/null:/bin/false
daemon:x:6:6:Daemon User:/dev/null:/bin/false
messagebus:x:18:18:D-Bus Message Daemon User:/var/run/dbus:/bin/false
systemd-bus-proxy:x:72:72:systemd Bus Proxy:/:/bin/false
systemd-journal-gateway:x:73:73:systemd Journal Gateway:/:/bin/false
systemd-journal-remote:x:74:74:systemd Journal Remote:/:/bin/false
systemd-journal-upload:x:75:75:systemd Journal Upload:/:/bin/false
systemd-network:x:76:76:systemd Network Management:/:/bin/false
systemd-resolve:x:77:77:systemd Resolver:/:/bin/false
systemd-timesync:x:78:78:systemd Time Synchronization:/:/bin/false
systemd-coredump:x:79:79:systemd Core Dumper:/:/bin/false
nobody:x:99:99:Unprivileged User:/dev/null:/bin/false
EOF
The actual password for root
(the “x” used here is just a placeholder)
will be set later.
Create the /etc/group
file by
running the following command:
cat > /etc/group << "EOF"
root:x:0:
bin:x:1:daemon
sys:x:2:
kmem:x:3:
tape:x:4:
tty:x:5:
daemon:x:6:
floppy:x:7:
disk:x:8:
lp:x:9:
dialout:x:10:
audio:x:11:
video:x:12:
utmp:x:13:
usb:x:14:
cdrom:x:15:
adm:x:16:
messagebus:x:18:
systemd-journal:x:23:
input:x:24:
mail:x:34:
kvm:x:61:
systemd-bus-proxy:x:72:
systemd-journal-gateway:x:73:
systemd-journal-remote:x:74:
systemd-journal-upload:x:75:
systemd-network:x:76:
systemd-resolve:x:77:
systemd-timesync:x:78:
systemd-coredump:x:79:
wheel:x:97:
nogroup:x:99:
users:x:999:
EOF
The created groups are not part of any standard—they are
groups decided on in part by the requirements of the Udev
configuration in this chapter, and in part by common convention
employed by a number of existing Linux distributions. In
addition, some test suites rely on specific users or groups.
The Linux Standard Base (LSB, available at http://www.linuxbase.org)
recommends only that, besides the group root
with a Group ID (GID) of 0, a group
bin
with a GID of 1 be present.
All other group names and GIDs can be chosen freely by the
system administrator since well-written programs do not depend
on GID numbers, but rather use the group's name.
To remove the “I
have no name!” prompt, start a new shell.
Since a full Glibc was installed in Chapter 5
and the /etc/passwd
and
/etc/group
files have been
created, user name and group name resolution will now work:
exec /tools/bin/bash --login +h
Note the use of the +h
directive. This tells bash not to use its internal
path hashing. Without this directive, bash would remember the paths
to binaries it has executed. To ensure the use of the newly
compiled binaries as soon as they are installed, the +h
directive will be used for the
duration of this chapter.
The login, agetty, and init programs (and others) use a number of log files to record information such as who was logged into the system and when. However, these programs will not write to the log files if they do not already exist. Initialize the log files and give them proper permissions:
touch /var/log/{btmp,lastlog,faillog,wtmp} chgrp -v utmp /var/log/lastlog chmod -v 664 /var/log/lastlog chmod -v 600 /var/log/btmp
The /var/log/wtmp
file records
all logins and logouts. The /var/log/lastlog
file records when each user
last logged in. The /var/log/faillog
file records failed login
attempts. The /var/log/btmp
file
records the bad login attempts.
The /run/utmp
file records the
users that are currently logged in. This file is created
dynamically in the boot scripts.
The Linux API Headers (in linux-5.5.3.tar.xz) expose the kernel's API for use by Glibc.
The Linux kernel needs to expose an Application Programming Interface (API) for the system's C library (Glibc in LFS) to use. This is done by way of sanitizing various C header files that are shipped in the Linux kernel source tarball.
Make sure there are no stale files and dependencies lying around from previous activity:
make mrproper
Now extract the user-visible kernel headers from the source.
The recommended make target “headers_install” cannot be used,
because it requires rsync,
which is not available in /tools
. The headers are first placed in
./usr
, then some files used by
the kernel developers are removed, then the files are copied
to their final location.
make headers find usr/include -name '.*' -delete rm usr/include/Makefile cp -rv usr/include/* /usr/include
The Linux API ASM Headers |
|
The Linux API ASM Generic Headers |
|
The Linux API DRM Headers |
|
The Linux API Linux Headers |
|
The Linux API Miscellaneous Headers |
|
The Linux API MTD Headers |
|
The Linux API RDMA Headers |
|
The Linux API SCSI Headers |
|
The Linux API Sound Headers |
|
The Linux API Video Headers |
|
The Linux API Xen Headers |
The Man-pages package contains over 2,200 man pages.
Install Man-pages by running:
make install
The Glibc package contains the main C library. This library provides the basic routines for allocating memory, searching directories, opening and closing files, reading and writing files, string handling, pattern matching, arithmetic, and so on.
The Glibc build system is self-contained and will install
perfectly, even though the compiler specs file and linker
are still pointing to /tools
.
The specs and linker cannot be adjusted before the Glibc
install because the Glibc autoconf tests would give false
results and defeat the goal of achieving a clean build.
Some of the Glibc programs use the non-FHS compliant
/var/db
directory to store
their runtime data. Apply the following patch to make such
programs store their runtime data in the FHS-compliant
locations:
patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.31-fhs-1.patch
Fix a problem introduced with the linux-5.2 kernel:
sed -i '/asm.socket.h/a# include <linux/sockios.h>' \ sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/bits/socket.h
Create a symlink for LSB compliance. Additionally, for x86_64, create a compatibility symlink required for the dynamic loader to function correctly:
case $(uname -m) in i?86) ln -sfv ld-linux.so.2 /lib/ld-lsb.so.3 ;; x86_64) ln -sfv ../lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /lib64 ln -sfv ../lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /lib64/ld-lsb-x86-64.so.3 ;; esac
The Glibc documentation recommends building Glibc in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare Glibc for compilation:
CC="gcc -ffile-prefix-map=/tools=/usr" \ ../configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-werror \ --enable-kernel=3.2 \ --enable-stack-protector=strong \ --with-headers=/usr/include \ libc_cv_slibdir=/lib
The meaning of the options and new configure parameters:
CC="gcc
-ffile-prefix-map=/tools=/usr"
Make GCC record any references to files in /tools in result of the compilation as if the files resided in /usr. This avoids introduction of invalid paths in debugging symbols.
--disable-werror
This option disables the -Werror option passed to GCC. This is necessary for running the test suite.
--enable-stack-protector=strong
This option increases system security by adding extra code to check for buffer overflows, such as stack smashing attacks.
--with-headers=/usr/include
This option tells the build system where to find the
kernel API headers. By default, those headers are
sought in /tools/include
.
libc_cv_slibdir=/lib
This variable sets the correct library for all systems. We do not want lib64 to be used.
Compile the package:
make
In this section, the test suite for Glibc is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstance.
Generally a few tests do not pass. The test failures listed below are usually safe to ignore.
case $(uname -m) in i?86) ln -sfnv $PWD/elf/ld-linux.so.2 /lib ;; x86_64) ln -sfnv $PWD/elf/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /lib ;; esac
The symbolic link above is needed to run the tests at this stage of building in the chroot environment. It will be overwritten in the install phase below.
make check
You may see some test failures. The Glibc test suite is somewhat dependent on the host system. This is a list of the most common issues seen for some versions of LFS:
misc/tst-ttyname is known to fail in the LFS chroot environment.
inet/tst-idna_name_classify is known to fail in the LFS chroot environment.
posix/tst-getaddrinfo4 and posix/tst-getaddrinfo5 may fail on some architectures.
The nss/tst-nss-files-hosts-multi test may fail for reasons that have not been determined.
The rt/tst-cputimer{1,2,3} tests depend on the host system kernel. Kernels 4.14.91–4.14.96, 4.19.13–4.19.18, and 4.20.0–4.20.5 are known to cause these tests to fail.
The math tests sometimes fail when running on systems where the CPU is not a relatively new Intel or AMD processor.
Though it is a harmless message, the install stage of Glibc
will complain about the absence of /etc/ld.so.conf
. Prevent this warning with:
touch /etc/ld.so.conf
Fix the generated Makefile to skip an unneeded sanity check that fails in the LFS partial environment:
sed '/test-installation/s@$(PERL)@echo not running@' -i ../Makefile
Install the package:
make install
Install the configuration file and runtime directory for nscd:
cp -v ../nscd/nscd.conf /etc/nscd.conf mkdir -pv /var/cache/nscd
Install the systemd support files for nscd:
install -v -Dm644 ../nscd/nscd.tmpfiles /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/nscd.conf install -v -Dm644 ../nscd/nscd.service /lib/systemd/system/nscd.service
Next, install the locales that can make the system respond in a different language. None of the locales are required, but if some of them are missing, the test suites of future packages would skip important testcases.
Individual locales can be installed using the localedef program. E.g.,
the first localedef command below
combines the /usr/share/i18n/locales/cs_CZ
charset-independent locale definition with the /usr/share/i18n/charmaps/UTF-8.gz
charmap
definition and appends the result to the /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
file. The
following instructions will install the minimum set of
locales necessary for the optimal coverage of tests:
mkdir -pv /usr/lib/locale localedef -i POSIX -f UTF-8 C.UTF-8 2> /dev/null || true localedef -i cs_CZ -f UTF-8 cs_CZ.UTF-8 localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro localedef -i de_DE -f UTF-8 de_DE.UTF-8 localedef -i el_GR -f ISO-8859-7 el_GR localedef -i en_GB -f UTF-8 en_GB.UTF-8 localedef -i en_HK -f ISO-8859-1 en_HK localedef -i en_PH -f ISO-8859-1 en_PH localedef -i en_US -f ISO-8859-1 en_US localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8 localedef -i es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX localedef -i fa_IR -f UTF-8 fa_IR localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro localedef -i fr_FR -f UTF-8 fr_FR.UTF-8 localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT localedef -i it_IT -f UTF-8 it_IT.UTF-8 localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP localedef -i ja_JP -f SHIFT_JIS ja_JP.SIJS 2> /dev/null || true localedef -i ja_JP -f UTF-8 ja_JP.UTF-8 localedef -i ru_RU -f KOI8-R ru_RU.KOI8-R localedef -i ru_RU -f UTF-8 ru_RU.UTF-8 localedef -i tr_TR -f UTF-8 tr_TR.UTF-8 localedef -i zh_CN -f GB18030 zh_CN.GB18030 localedef -i zh_HK -f BIG5-HKSCS zh_HK.BIG5-HKSCS
In addition, install the locale for your own country, language and character set.
Alternatively, install all locales listed in the glibc-2.31/localedata/SUPPORTED
file (it
includes every locale listed above and many more) at once
with the following time-consuming command:
make localedata/install-locales
Then use the localedef command to create
and install locales not listed in the glibc-2.31/localedata/SUPPORTED
file in the
unlikely case you need them.
Glibc now uses libidn2 when resolving internationalized domain names. This is a run time dependency. If this capability is needed, the instructions for installing libidn2 are in the BLFS libidn2 page.
The /etc/nsswitch.conf
file
needs to be created because the Glibc defaults do not work
well in a networked environment.
Create a new file /etc/nsswitch.conf
by running the
following:
cat > /etc/nsswitch.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf
passwd: files
group: files
shadow: files
hosts: files dns
networks: files
protocols: files
services: files
ethers: files
rpc: files
# End /etc/nsswitch.conf
EOF
Install and set up the time zone data with the following:
tar -xf ../../tzdata2019c.tar.gz ZONEINFO=/usr/share/zoneinfo mkdir -pv $ZONEINFO/{posix,right} for tz in etcetera southamerica northamerica europe africa antarctica \ asia australasia backward pacificnew systemv; do zic -L /dev/null -d $ZONEINFO ${tz} zic -L /dev/null -d $ZONEINFO/posix ${tz} zic -L leapseconds -d $ZONEINFO/right ${tz} done cp -v zone.tab zone1970.tab iso3166.tab $ZONEINFO zic -d $ZONEINFO -p America/New_York unset ZONEINFO
The meaning of the zic commands:
zic -L
/dev/null ...
This creates posix time zones, without any leap
seconds. It is conventional to put these in both
zoneinfo
and
zoneinfo/posix
. It is
necessary to put the POSIX time zones in zoneinfo
, otherwise various
test-suites will report errors. On an embedded
system, where space is tight and you do not intend to
ever update the time zones, you could save 1.9MB by
not using the posix
directory, but some applications or test-suites might
produce some failures.
zic -L
leapseconds ...
This creates right time zones, including leap
seconds. On an embedded system, where space is tight
and you do not intend to ever update the time zones,
or care about the correct time, you could save 1.9MB
by omitting the right
directory.
zic ...
-p ...
This creates the posixrules
file. We use New York
because POSIX requires the daylight savings time
rules to be in accordance with US rules.
One way to determine the local time zone is to run the following script:
tzselect
After answering a few questions about the location, the
script will output the name of the time zone (e.g.,
America/Edmonton).
There are also some other possible time zones listed in
/usr/share/zoneinfo
such as
Canada/Eastern or
EST5EDT that are not
identified by the script but can be used.
Then create the /etc/localtime
file by running:
ln -sfv /usr/share/zoneinfo/<xxx>
/etc/localtime
Replace <xxx>
with the name
of the time zone selected (e.g., Canada/Eastern).
By default, the dynamic loader (/lib/ld-linux.so.2
) searches through
/lib
and /usr/lib
for dynamic libraries that are
needed by programs as they are run. However, if there are
libraries in directories other than /lib
and /usr/lib
, these need to be added to the
/etc/ld.so.conf
file in order
for the dynamic loader to find them. Two directories that
are commonly known to contain additional libraries are
/usr/local/lib
and
/opt/lib
, so add those
directories to the dynamic loader's search path.
Create a new file /etc/ld.so.conf
by running the following:
cat > /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/ld.so.conf
/usr/local/lib
/opt/lib
EOF
If desired, the dynamic loader can also search a directory and include the contents of files found there. Generally the files in this include directory are one line specifying the desired library path. To add this capability run the following commands:
cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"
# Add an include directory
include /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf
EOF
mkdir -pv /etc/ld.so.conf.d
Can be used to create a stack trace when a program terminates with a segmentation fault |
|
Generates message catalogues |
|
Displays the system configuration values for file system specific variables |
|
Gets entries from an administrative database |
|
Performs character set conversion |
|
Creates fastloading iconv module configuration files |
|
Configures the dynamic linker runtime bindings |
|
Reports which shared libraries are required by each given program or shared library |
|
Assists ldd with object files |
|
Prints various information about the current locale |
|
Compiles locale specifications |
|
Creates a simple database from textual input |
|
Reads and interprets a memory trace file and displays a summary in human-readable format |
|
A daemon that provides a cache for the most common name service requests |
|
Dump information generated by PC profiling |
|
Lists dynamic shared objects used by running processes |
|
A statically linked ln program |
|
Traces shared library procedure calls of a specified command |
|
Reads and displays shared object profiling data |
|
Asks the user about the location of the system and reports the corresponding time zone description |
|
Traces the execution of a program by printing the currently executed function |
|
The time zone dumper |
|
The time zone compiler |
|
The helper program for shared library executables |
|
Used internally by Glibc as a gross hack to get
broken programs (e.g., some Motif applications)
running. See comments in |
|
The segmentation fault signal handler, used by catchsegv |
|
An asynchronous name lookup library |
|
The main C library |
|
The cryptography library |
|
The dynamic linking interface library |
|
Dummy library containing no functions. Previously was a runtime library for g++ |
|
The mathematical library |
|
Turns on memory allocation checking when linked to |
|
Used by memusage to help collect information about the memory usage of a program |
|
The network services library |
|
The Name Service Switch libraries, containing functions for resolving host names, user names, group names, aliases, services, protocols, etc. |
|
Can be preloaded to PC profile an executable |
|
The POSIX threads library |
|
Contains functions for creating, sending, and interpreting packets to the Internet domain name servers |
|
Contains functions providing most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension |
|
Contains functions useful for building debuggers for multi-threaded programs |
|
Contains code for “standard” functions used in many different Unix utilities |
Now that the final C libraries have been installed, it is time to adjust the toolchain so that it will link any newly compiled program against these new libraries.
First, backup the /tools
linker,
and replace it with the adjusted linker we made in chapter 5.
We'll also create a link to its counterpart in /tools/$(uname -m)-pc-linux-gnu/bin
:
mv -v /tools/bin/{ld,ld-old} mv -v /tools/$(uname -m)-pc-linux-gnu/bin/{ld,ld-old} mv -v /tools/bin/{ld-new,ld} ln -sv /tools/bin/ld /tools/$(uname -m)-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld
Next, amend the GCC specs file so that it points to the new dynamic linker. Simply deleting all instances of “/tools” should leave us with the correct path to the dynamic linker. Also adjust the specs file so that GCC knows where to find the correct headers and Glibc start files. A sed command accomplishes this:
gcc -dumpspecs | sed -e 's@/tools@@g' \ -e '/\*startfile_prefix_spec:/{n;s@.*@/usr/lib/ @}' \ -e '/\*cpp:/{n;s@$@ -isystem /usr/include@}' > \ `dirname $(gcc --print-libgcc-file-name)`/specs
It is a good idea to visually inspect the specs file to verify the intended change was actually made.
It is imperative at this point to ensure that the basic functions (compiling and linking) of the adjusted toolchain are working as expected. To do this, perform the following sanity checks:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c cc dummy.c -v -Wl,--verbose &> dummy.log readelf -l a.out | grep ': /lib'
There should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name):
[Requesting program interpreter: /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2]
Note that on 64-bit systems /lib
is the location of our dynamic linker, but is accessed via a
symbolic link in /lib64.
On 32-bit systems the interpreter should be /lib/ld-linux.so.2.
Now make sure that we're setup to use the correct start files:
grep -o '/usr/lib.*/crt[1in].*succeeded' dummy.log
The output of the last command should be:
/usr/lib/../lib/crt1.o succeeded
/usr/lib/../lib/crti.o succeeded
/usr/lib/../lib/crtn.o succeeded
Verify that the compiler is searching for the correct header files:
grep -B1 '^ /usr/include' dummy.log
This command should return the following output:
#include <...> search starts here:
/usr/include
Next, verify that the new linker is being used with the correct search paths:
grep 'SEARCH.*/usr/lib' dummy.log |sed 's|; |\n|g'
References to paths that have components with '-linux-gnu' should be ignored, but otherwise the output of the last command should be:
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib")
Next make sure that we're using the correct libc:
grep "/lib.*/libc.so.6 " dummy.log
The output of the last command should be:
attempt to open /lib/libc.so.6 succeeded
Lastly, make sure GCC is using the correct dynamic linker:
grep found dummy.log
The output of the last command should be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name):
found ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 at /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
If the output does not appear as shown above or is not received at all, then something is seriously wrong. Investigate and retrace the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it. The most likely reason is that something went wrong with the specs file adjustment. Any issues will need to be resolved before continuing with the process.
Once everything is working correctly, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out dummy.log
The Zlib package contains compression and decompression routines used by some programs.
Prepare Zlib for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libz.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libz.so) /usr/lib/libz.so
The Bzip2 package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. Compressing text files with bzip2 yields a much better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip.
Apply a patch that will install the documentation for this package:
patch -Np1 -i ../bzip2-1.0.8-install_docs-1.patch
The following command ensures installation of symbolic links are relative:
sed -i 's@\(ln -s -f \)$(PREFIX)/bin/@\1@' Makefile
Ensure the man pages are installed into the correct location:
sed -i "s@(PREFIX)/man@(PREFIX)/share/man@g" Makefile
Prepare Bzip2 for compilation with:
make -f Makefile-libbz2_so make clean
The meaning of the make parameter:
-f
Makefile-libbz2_so
This will cause Bzip2 to be built using a different
Makefile
file, in this
case the Makefile-libbz2_so
file, which
creates a dynamic libbz2.so
library and links the Bzip2
utilities against it.
Compile and test the package:
make
Install the programs:
make PREFIX=/usr install
Install the shared bzip2 binary into the
/bin
directory, make some
necessary symbolic links, and clean up:
cp -v bzip2-shared /bin/bzip2 cp -av libbz2.so* /lib ln -sv ../../lib/libbz2.so.1.0 /usr/lib/libbz2.so rm -v /usr/bin/{bunzip2,bzcat,bzip2} ln -sv bzip2 /bin/bunzip2 ln -sv bzip2 /bin/bzcat
Decompresses bzipped files |
|
Decompresses to standard output |
|
Runs cmp on bzipped files |
|
Runs diff on bzipped files |
|
Runs egrep on bzipped files |
|
Runs fgrep on bzipped files |
|
Runs grep on bzipped files |
|
Compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm with Huffman coding; the compression rate is better than that achieved by more conventional compressors using “Lempel-Ziv” algorithms, like gzip |
|
Tries to recover data from damaged bzipped files |
|
Runs less on bzipped files |
|
Runs more on bzipped files |
|
The library implementing lossless, block-sorting data compression, using the Burrows-Wheeler algorithm |
The Xz package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It provides capabilities for the lzma and the newer xz compression formats. Compressing text files with xz yields a better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip or bzip2 commands.
Prepare Xz for compilation with:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/xz-5.2.4
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package and make sure that all essential files are in the correct directory:
make install mv -v /usr/bin/{lzma,unlzma,lzcat,xz,unxz,xzcat} /bin mv -v /usr/lib/liblzma.so.* /lib ln -svf ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/liblzma.so) /usr/lib/liblzma.so
Decompresses to standard output |
|
Runs cmp on LZMA compressed files |
|
Runs diff on LZMA compressed files |
|
Runs egrep on LZMA compressed files |
|
Runs fgrep on LZMA compressed files |
|
Runs grep on LZMA compressed files |
|
Runs less on LZMA compressed files |
|
Compresses or decompresses files using the LZMA format |
|
A small and fast decoder for LZMA compressed files |
|
Shows information stored in the LZMA compressed file header |
|
Runs more on LZMA compressed files |
|
Decompresses files using the LZMA format |
|
Decompresses files using the XZ format |
|
Compresses or decompresses files using the XZ format |
|
Decompresses to standard output |
|
Runs cmp on XZ compressed files |
|
A small and fast decoder for XZ compressed files |
|
Runs diff on XZ compressed files |
|
Runs egrep on XZ compressed files |
|
Runs fgrep on XZ compressed files |
|
Runs grep on XZ compressed files |
|
Runs less on XZ compressed files |
|
Runs more on XZ compressed files |
|
The library implementing lossless, block-sorting data compression, using the Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm |
The File package contains a utility for determining the type of a given file or files.
Prepare File for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Readline package is a set of libraries that offers command-line editing and history capabilities.
Reinstalling Readline will cause the old libraries to be moved to <libraryname>.old. While this is normally not a problem, in some cases it can trigger a linking bug in ldconfig. This can be avoided by issuing the following two seds:
sed -i '/MV.*old/d' Makefile.in sed -i '/{OLDSUFF}/c:' support/shlib-install
Prepare Readline for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/readline-8.0
Compile the package:
make SHLIB_LIBS="-L/tools/lib -lncursesw"
The meaning of the make option:
SHLIB_LIBS="-L/tools/lib
-lncursesw"
This option forces Readline to link against the
libncursesw
library.
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make SHLIB_LIBS="-L/tools/lib -lncursesw" install
Now move the dynamic libraries to a more appropriate location and fix up some permissions and symbolic links:
mv -v /usr/lib/lib{readline,history}.so.* /lib chmod -v u+w /lib/lib{readline,history}.so.* ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libreadline.so) /usr/lib/libreadline.so ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libhistory.so ) /usr/lib/libhistory.so
If desired, install the documentation:
install -v -m644 doc/*.{ps,pdf,html,dvi} /usr/share/doc/readline-8.0
The M4 package contains a macro processor.
First, make some fixes required by glibc-2.28:
sed -i 's/IO_ftrylockfile/IO_EOF_SEEN/' lib/*.c echo "#define _IO_IN_BACKUP 0x100" >> lib/stdio-impl.h
Prepare M4 for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Copies the given files while expanding the macros that they contain [These macros are either built-in or user-defined and can take any number of arguments. Besides performing macro expansion, m4 has built-in functions for including named files, running Unix commands, performing integer arithmetic, manipulating text, recursion, etc. The m4 program can be used either as a front-end to a compiler or as a macro processor in its own right.] |
The Bc package contains an arbitrary precision numeric processing language.
Prepare Bc for compilation:
PREFIX=/usr CC=gcc CFLAGS="-std=c99" ./configure.sh -G -O3
The meaning of the configure options:
CC=gcc
CFLAGS="-std=c99"
These parameters specify the compiler and C standard to use.
-O3
Specify the optimization to use.
-G
Omit parts of the test suite that won't work without a GNU bc present.
Compile the package:
make
To test bc, run:
make test
Install the package:
make install
The Binutils package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files.
Verify that the PTYs are working properly inside the chroot environment by performing a simple test:
expect -c "spawn ls"
This command should output the following:
spawn ls
If, instead, the output includes the message below, then the environment is not set up for proper PTY operation. This issue needs to be resolved before running the test suites for Binutils and GCC:
The system has no more ptys.
Ask your system administrator to create more.
Now remove one test that prevents the tests from running to completion:
sed -i '/@\tincremental_copy/d' gold/testsuite/Makefile.in
The Binutils documentation recommends building Binutils in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare Binutils for compilation:
../configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-gold \ --enable-ld=default \ --enable-plugins \ --enable-shared \ --disable-werror \ --enable-64-bit-bfd \ --with-system-zlib
The meaning of the configure parameters:
--enable-gold
Build the gold linker and install it as ld.gold (along side the default linker).
--enable-ld=default
Build the original bfd linker and install it as both ld (the default linker) and ld.bfd.
--enable-plugins
Enables plugin support for the linker.
--enable-64-bit-bfd
Enables 64-bit support (on hosts with narrower word sizes). May not be needed on 64-bit systems, but does no harm.
--with-system-zlib
Use the installed zlib library rather than building the included version.
Compile the package:
make tooldir=/usr
The meaning of the make parameter:
tooldir=/usr
Normally, the tooldir (the directory where the
executables will ultimately be located) is set to
$(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias)
. For
example, x86_64 machines would expand that to
/usr/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
.
Because this is a custom system, this target-specific
directory in /usr
is not
required. $(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias)
would
be used if the system was used to cross-compile (for
example, compiling a package on an Intel machine that
generates code that can be executed on PowerPC
machines).
The test suite for Binutils in this section is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstances.
Test the results:
make -k check
The ver_test_pr16504.sh test is known to fail.
Install the package:
make tooldir=/usr install
Translates program addresses to file names and line numbers; given an address and the name of an executable, it uses the debugging information in the executable to determine which source file and line number are associated with the address |
|
Creates, modifies, and extracts from archives |
|
An assembler that assembles the output of gcc into object files |
|
Used by the linker to de-mangle C++ and Java symbols and to keep overloaded functions from clashing |
|
The DWARF packaging utility |
|
Updates the ELF header of ELF files |
|
Displays call graph profile data |
|
A linker that combines a number of object and archive files into a single file, relocating their data and tying up symbol references |
|
A cut down version of ld that only supports the elf object file format |
|
Hard link to ld |
|
Lists the symbols occurring in a given object file |
|
Translates one type of object file into another |
|
Displays information about the given object file, with options controlling the particular information to display; the information shown is useful to programmers who are working on the compilation tools |
|
Generates an index of the contents of an archive and stores it in the archive; the index lists all of the symbols defined by archive members that are relocatable object files |
|
Displays information about ELF type binaries |
|
Lists the section sizes and the total size for the given object files |
|
Outputs, for each given file, the sequences of printable characters that are of at least the specified length (defaulting to four); for object files, it prints, by default, only the strings from the initializing and loading sections while for other types of files, it scans the entire file |
|
Discards symbols from object files |
|
The Binary File Descriptor library |
|
The Compat ANSI-C Type Format debugging support library |
|
A libctf variant which does not use libbfd functionality |
|
A library for dealing with opcodes—the “readable text” versions of instructions for the processor; it is used for building utilities like objdump |
The GMP package contains math libraries. These have useful functions for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
If you are building for 32-bit x86, but you have a CPU
which is capable of running 64-bit code and you have specified
CFLAGS
in the environment, the
configure script will attempt to configure for 64-bits and
fail. Avoid this by invoking the configure command below
with
ABI=32
./configure ...
The default settings of GMP produce libraries optimized for the host processor. If libraries suitable for processors less capable than the host's CPU are desired, generic libraries can be created by running the following:
cp -v configfsf.guess config.guess cp -v configfsf.sub config.sub
Prepare GMP for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-cxx \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/gmp-6.2.0
The meaning of the new configure options:
--enable-cxx
This parameter enables C++ support
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gmp-6.2.0
This variable specifies the correct place for the documentation.
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
The test suite for GMP in this section is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstances.
Test the results:
make check 2>&1 | tee gmp-check-log
The code in gmp is highly optimized for the processor where it is built. Occasionally, the code that detects the processor misidentifies the system capabilities and there will be errors in the tests or other applications using the gmp libraries with the message "Illegal instruction". In this case, gmp should be reconfigured with the option --build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu and rebuilt.
Ensure that all 190 tests in the test suite passed. Check the results by issuing the following command:
awk '/# PASS:/{total+=$3} ; END{print total}' gmp-check-log
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make install-html
The MPFR package contains functions for multiple precision math.
Prepare MPFR for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --enable-thread-safe \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/mpfr-4.0.2
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
The test suite for MPFR in this section is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstances.
Test the results and ensure that all tests passed:
make check
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make install-html
The MPC package contains a library for the arithmetic of complex numbers with arbitrarily high precision and correct rounding of the result.
Prepare MPC for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/mpc-1.1.0
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make install-html
The attr package contains utilities to administer the extended attributes on filesystem objects.
Prepare Attr for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/attr-2.4.48
Compile the package:
make
The tests need to be run on a filesystem that supports extended attributes such as the ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystems. To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libattr.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libattr.so) /usr/lib/libattr.so
The Acl package contains utilities to administer Access Control Lists, which are used to define more fine-grained discretionary access rights for files and directories.
Prepare Acl for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --libexecdir=/usr/lib \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/acl-2.2.53
Compile the package:
make
The Acl tests need to be run on a filesystem that supports access controls after Coreutils has been built with the Acl libraries. If desired, return to this package and run make check after Coreutils has been built later in this chapter.
Install the package:
make install
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libacl.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libacl.so) /usr/lib/libacl.so
The Shadow package contains programs for handling passwords in a secure way.
If you would like to enforce the use of strong passwords,
refer to
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/cracklib.html
for installing CrackLib prior to building Shadow. Then add
--with-libcrack
to
the configure
command below.
Disable the installation of the groups program and its man pages, as Coreutils provides a better version. Also, prevent the installation of manual pages that were already installed in Section 6.8, “Man-pages-5.05”:
sed -i 's/groups$(EXEEXT) //' src/Makefile.in find man -name Makefile.in -exec sed -i 's/groups\.1 / /' {} \; find man -name Makefile.in -exec sed -i 's/getspnam\.3 / /' {} \; find man -name Makefile.in -exec sed -i 's/passwd\.5 / /' {} \;
Instead of using the default
crypt method, use the
more secure SHA-512
method of password encryption, which also allows passwords
longer than 8 characters. It is also necessary to change the
obsolete /var/spool/mail
location for user mailboxes that Shadow uses by default to
the /var/mail
location used
currently:
sed -i -e 's@#ENCRYPT_METHOD DES@ENCRYPT_METHOD SHA512@' \ -e 's@/var/spool/mail@/var/mail@' etc/login.defs
If you chose to build Shadow with Cracklib support, run the following:
sed -i 's@DICTPATH.*@DICTPATH\t/lib/cracklib/pw_dict@' etc/login.defs
Make a minor change to make the first group number generated by useradd 1000:
sed -i 's/1000/999/' etc/useradd
Prepare Shadow for compilation:
./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --with-group-name-max-length=32
The meaning of the configure option:
--with-group-name-max-length=32
The maximum user name is 32 characters. Make the maximum group name the same.
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
This package contains utilities to add, modify, and delete
users and groups; set and change their passwords; and perform
other administrative tasks. For a full explanation of what
password shadowing
means, see the doc/HOWTO
file
within the unpacked source tree. If using Shadow support,
keep in mind that programs which need to verify passwords
(display managers, FTP programs, pop3 daemons, etc.) must be
Shadow-compliant. That is, they need to be able to work with
shadowed passwords.
To enable shadowed passwords, run the following command:
pwconv
To enable shadowed group passwords, run:
grpconv
Shadow's stock configuration for the useradd utility has a few
caveats that need some explanation. First, the default action
for the useradd
utility is to create the user and a group of the same name as
the user. By default the user ID (UID) and group ID (GID)
numbers will begin with 1000. This means if you don't pass
parameters to useradd, each user will be
a member of a unique group on the system. If this behavior is
undesirable, you'll need to pass the -g
parameter to useradd. The default
parameters are stored in the /etc/default/useradd
file. You may need to
modify two parameters in this file to suit your particular
needs.
/etc/default/useradd
Parameter Explanations
GROUP=1000
This parameter sets the beginning of the group numbers
used in the /etc/group file. You can modify it to
anything you desire. Note that useradd will never
reuse a UID or GID. If the number identified in this
parameter is used, it will use the next available
number after this. Note also that if you don't have a
group 1000 on your system the first time you use
useradd
without the -g
parameter, you'll get a message displayed on the
terminal that says: useradd: unknown GID 1000
. You
may disregard this message and group number 1000 will
be used.
CREATE_MAIL_SPOOL=yes
This parameter causes useradd to create a
mailbox file for the newly created user. useradd will make the
group ownership of this file to the mail
group with 0660 permissions.
If you would prefer that these mailbox files are not
created by useradd, issue the
following command:
sed -i 's/yes/no/' /etc/default/useradd
Choose a password for user root and set it by running:
passwd root
Used to change the maximum number of days between obligatory password changes |
|
Used to change a user's full name and other information |
|
Used to update group passwords in batch mode |
|
Used to update user passwords in batch mode |
|
Used to change a user's default login shell |
|
Checks and enforces the current password expiration policy |
|
Is used to examine the log of login failures, to set a maximum number of failures before an account is blocked, or to reset the failure count |
|
Is used to add and delete members and administrators to groups |
|
Creates a group with the given name |
|
Deletes the group with the given name |
|
Allows a user to administer his/her own group membership list without the requirement of super user privileges. |
|
Is used to modify the given group's name or GID |
|
Verifies the integrity of the group files
|
|
Creates or updates the shadow group file from the normal group file |
|
Updates |
|
Reports the most recent login of all users or of a given user |
|
Is used by the system to let users sign on |
|
Is a daemon used to enforce restrictions on log-on time and ports |
|
Is used to set the gid mapping of a user namespace |
|
Is used to change the current GID during a login session |
|
Is used to set the uid mapping of a user namespace |
|
Is used to create or update an entire series of user accounts |
|
Displays a message that an account is not available; it is designed to be used as the default shell for accounts that have been disabled |
|
Is used to change the password for a user or group account |
|
Verifies the integrity of the password files
|
|
Creates or updates the shadow password file from the normal password file |
|
Updates |
|
Executes a given command while the user's GID is set to that of the given group |
|
Runs a shell with substitute user and group IDs |
|
Creates a new user with the given name, or updates the default new-user information |
|
Deletes the given user account |
|
Is used to modify the given user's login name, User Identification (UID), shell, initial group, home directory, etc. |
|
Edits the |
|
Edits the |
The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, which includes the C and C++ compilers.
If building on x86_64, change the default directory name for 64-bit libraries to “lib”:
case $(uname -m) in x86_64) sed -e '/m64=/s/lib64/lib/' \ -i.orig gcc/config/i386/t-linux64 ;; esac
As in gcc-pass2, fix a problem introduced by Glibc-2.31:
sed -e '1161 s|^|//|' \ -i libsanitizer/sanitizer_common/sanitizer_platform_limits_posix.cc
The GCC documentation recommends building GCC in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare GCC for compilation:
SED=sed \ ../configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-languages=c,c++ \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-bootstrap \ --with-system-zlib
Note that for other languages, there are some prerequisites that are not yet available. See the BLFS Book for instructions on how to build all of GCC's supported languages.
The meaning of the new configure parameters:
SED=sed
Setting this environment variable prevents a hard-coded path to /tools/bin/sed.
--with-system-zlib
This switch tells GCC to link to the system installed copy of the Zlib library, rather than its own internal copy.
Compile the package:
make
In this section, the test suite for GCC is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstance.
One set of tests in the GCC test suite is known to exhaust the stack, so increase the stack size prior to running the tests:
ulimit -s 32768
Test the results as a non-privileged user, but do not stop at errors:
chown -Rv nobody . su nobody -s /bin/bash -c "PATH=$PATH make -k check"
To receive a summary of the test suite results, run:
../contrib/test_summary
For only the summaries, pipe the output through
grep -A7
Summ
.
Results can be compared with those located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/build-logs/9.1-rc1/ and https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-testresults/.
Six tests related to get_time are known to fail. These are apparently related to the en_HK locale.
Two tests named lookup.cc and reverse.cc in experimental/net are known to fail in LFS chroot environment because they require /etc/hosts and iana-etc.
Two tests named pr57193.c and pr90178.c are known to fail.
A few unexpected failures cannot always be avoided. The GCC developers are usually aware of these issues, but have not resolved them yet. Unless the test results are vastly different from those at the above URL, it is safe to continue.
Install the package and remove an unneeded directory:
make install rm -rf /usr/lib/gcc/$(gcc -dumpmachine)/9.2.0/include-fixed/bits/
The GCC build directory is owned by nobody
now and the ownership of the
installed header directory (and its content) will be
incorrect. Change the ownership to root
user and group:
chown -v -R root:root \ /usr/lib/gcc/*linux-gnu/9.2.0/include{,-fixed}
Create a symlink required by the FHS for "historical" reasons.
ln -sv ../usr/bin/cpp /lib
Many packages use the name cc to call the C compiler. To satisfy those packages, create a symlink:
ln -sv gcc /usr/bin/cc
Add a compatibility symlink to enable building programs with Link Time Optimization (LTO):
install -v -dm755 /usr/lib/bfd-plugins ln -sfv ../../libexec/gcc/$(gcc -dumpmachine)/9.2.0/liblto_plugin.so \ /usr/lib/bfd-plugins/
Now that our final toolchain is in place, it is important to again ensure that compiling and linking will work as expected. We do this by performing the same sanity checks as we did earlier in the chapter:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c cc dummy.c -v -Wl,--verbose &> dummy.log readelf -l a.out | grep ': /lib'
There should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name):
[Requesting program interpreter: /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2]
Now make sure that we're setup to use the correct start files:
grep -o '/usr/lib.*/crt[1in].*succeeded' dummy.log
The output of the last command should be:
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/9.2.0/../../../../lib/crt1.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/9.2.0/../../../../lib/crti.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/9.2.0/../../../../lib/crtn.o succeeded
Depending on your machine architecture, the above may differ
slightly, the difference usually being the name of the
directory after /usr/lib/gcc
.
The important thing to look for here is that gcc has found all three
crt*.o
files under the
/usr/lib
directory.
Verify that the compiler is searching for the correct header files:
grep -B4 '^ /usr/include' dummy.log
This command should return the following output:
#include <...> search starts here:
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/9.2.0/include
/usr/local/include
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/9.2.0/include-fixed
/usr/include
Again, note that the directory named after your target triplet may be different than the above, depending on your architecture.
Next, verify that the new linker is being used with the correct search paths:
grep 'SEARCH.*/usr/lib' dummy.log |sed 's|; |\n|g'
References to paths that have components with '-linux-gnu' should be ignored, but otherwise the output of the last command should be:
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib");
A 32-bit system may see a few different directories. For example, here is the output from an i686 machine:
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib");
Next make sure that we're using the correct libc:
grep "/lib.*/libc.so.6 " dummy.log
The output of the last command should be:
attempt to open /lib/libc.so.6 succeeded
Lastly, make sure GCC is using the correct dynamic linker:
grep found dummy.log
The output of the last command should be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name):
found ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 at /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
If the output does not appear as shown above or is not received at all, then something is seriously wrong. Investigate and retrace the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it. The most likely reason is that something went wrong with the specs file adjustment. Any issues will need to be resolved before continuing with the process.
Once everything is working correctly, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out dummy.log
Finally, move a misplaced file:
mkdir -pv /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib mv -v /usr/lib/*gdb.py /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib
The C++ compiler |
|
The C compiler |
|
The C preprocessor; it is used by the compiler to expand the #include, #define, and similar statements in the source files |
|
The C++ compiler |
|
The C compiler |
|
A wrapper around ar that adds a plugin to the command line. This program is only used to add "link time optimization" and is not useful with the default build options |
|
A wrapper around nm that adds a plugin to the command line. This program is only used to add "link time optimization" and is not useful with the default build options |
|
A wrapper around ranlib that adds a plugin to the command line. This program is only used to add "link time optimization" and is not useful with the default build options |
|
A coverage testing tool; it is used to analyze programs to determine where optimizations will have the most effect |
|
Offline gcda and gcno profile dump tool |
|
Offline gcda profile processing tool |
|
The Address Sanitizer runtime library |
|
GCC atomic built-in runtime library |
|
The C preprocessing library |
|
Contains run-time support for gcc |
|
This library is linked in to a program when GCC is instructed to enable profiling |
|
GNU implementation of the OpenMP API for multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming in C/C++ and Fortran |
|
The Leak Sanitizer runtime library |
|
GCC's Link Time Optimization (LTO) plugin allows GCC to perform optimizations across compilation units |
|
GCC Quad Precision Math Library API |
|
Contains routines supporting GCC's stack-smashing protection functionality |
|
The standard C++ library |
|
ISO/IEC TS 18822:2015 Filesystem library |
|
Provides supporting routines for the C++ programming language |
|
The Thread Sanitizer runtime library |
|
The Undefined Behavior Sanitizer runtime library |
The pkg-config package contains a tool for passing the include path and/or library paths to build tools during the configure and make file execution.
Prepare Pkg-config for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --with-internal-glib \ --disable-host-tool \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/pkg-config-0.29.2
The meaning of the new configure options:
--with-internal-glib
This will allow pkg-config to use its internal version of Glib because an external version is not available in LFS.
--disable-host-tool
This option disables the creation of an undesired hard link to the pkg-config program.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Ncurses package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens.
Don't install a static library that is not handled by configure:
sed -i '/LIBTOOL_INSTALL/d' c++/Makefile.in
Prepare Ncurses for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --mandir=/usr/share/man \ --with-shared \ --without-debug \ --without-normal \ --enable-pc-files \ --enable-widec
The meaning of the new configure options:
--enable-widec
This switch causes wide-character libraries (e.g.,
libncursesw.so.6.2
) to be
built instead of normal ones (e.g., libncurses.so.6.2
). These
wide-character libraries are usable in both multibyte
and traditional 8-bit locales, while normal libraries
work properly only in 8-bit locales. Wide-character and
normal libraries are source-compatible, but not
binary-compatible.
--enable-pc-files
This switch generates and installs .pc files for pkg-config.
--without-normal
This switch disables building and installing most static libraries.
Compile the package:
make
This package has a test suite, but it can only be run after
the package has been installed. The tests reside in the
test/
directory. See the
README
file in that directory
for further details.
Install the package:
make install
Move the shared libraries to the /lib
directory, where they are expected to
reside:
mv -v /usr/lib/libncursesw.so.6* /lib
Because the libraries have been moved, one symlink points to a non-existent file. Recreate it:
ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libncursesw.so) /usr/lib/libncursesw.so
Many applications still expect the linker to be able to find non-wide-character Ncurses libraries. Trick such applications into linking with wide-character libraries by means of symlinks and linker scripts:
for lib in ncurses form panel menu ; do rm -vf /usr/lib/lib${lib}.so echo "INPUT(-l${lib}w)" > /usr/lib/lib${lib}.so ln -sfv ${lib}w.pc /usr/lib/pkgconfig/${lib}.pc done
Finally, make sure that old applications that look for
-lcurses
at build time are
still buildable:
rm -vf /usr/lib/libcursesw.so echo "INPUT(-lncursesw)" > /usr/lib/libcursesw.so ln -sfv libncurses.so /usr/lib/libcurses.so
If desired, install the Ncurses documentation:
mkdir -v /usr/share/doc/ncurses-6.2 cp -v -R doc/* /usr/share/doc/ncurses-6.2
The instructions above don't create non-wide-character Ncurses libraries since no package installed by compiling from sources would link against them at runtime. However, the only known binary-only applications that link against non-wide-character Ncurses libraries require version 5. If you must have such libraries because of some binary-only application or to be compliant with LSB, build the package again with the following commands:
make distclean ./configure --prefix=/usr \ --with-shared \ --without-normal \ --without-debug \ --without-cxx-binding \ --with-abi-version=5 make sources libs cp -av lib/lib*.so.5* /usr/lib
Converts a termcap description into a terminfo description |
|
Clears the screen, if possible |
|
Compares or prints out terminfo descriptions |
|
Converts a terminfo description into a termcap description |
|
Provides configuration information for ncurses |
|
Reinitializes a terminal to its default values |
|
Clears and sets tab stops on a terminal |
|
The terminfo entry-description compiler that translates a terminfo file from source format into the binary format needed for the ncurses library routines [A terminfo file contains information on the capabilities of a certain terminal.] |
|
Lists all available terminal types, giving the primary name and description for each |
|
Makes the values of terminal-dependent capabilities available to the shell; it can also be used to reset or initialize a terminal or report its long name |
|
Can be used to initialize terminals |
|
A link to |
|
Contains functions to display text in many complex ways on a terminal screen; a good example of the use of these functions is the menu displayed during the kernel's make menuconfig |
|
Contains functions to implement forms |
|
Contains functions to implement menus |
|
Contains functions to implement panels |
The Libcap package implements the user-space interfaces to the POSIX 1003.1e capabilities available in Linux kernels. These capabilities are a partitioning of the all powerful root privilege into a set of distinct privileges.
Prevent two static libraries from being installed:
sed -i '/install.*STA...LIBNAME/d' libcap/Makefile
Compile the package:
make lib=lib
The meaning of the make option:
lib=lib
This parameter sets the library directory to
/lib
rather than
/lib64
on x86_64. It has
no effect on x86.
To test the results, issue:
make test
Install the package:
make lib=lib install chmod -v 755 /lib/libcap.so.2.31
A shell wrapper to explore and constrain capability support |
|
Examines file capabilities |
|
Displays the capabilities on the queried process(es) |
|
Sets file capabilities |
|
Contains the library functions for manipulating POSIX 1003.1e capabilities |
|
Contains functions to support POSIX semantics for syscalls associated with the pthread library |
The Sed package contains a stream editor.
First fix an issue in the LFS environment and remove a failing test:
sed -i 's/usr/tools/' build-aux/help2man sed -i 's/testsuite.panic-tests.sh//' Makefile.in
Prepare Sed for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package and its documentation:
make install install -d -m755 /usr/share/doc/sed-4.8 install -m644 doc/sed.html /usr/share/doc/sed-4.8
The Psmisc package contains programs for displaying information about running processes.
Prepare Psmisc for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
Finally, move the killall and fuser programs to the location specified by the FHS:
mv -v /usr/bin/fuser /bin mv -v /usr/bin/killall /bin
Reports the Process IDs (PIDs) of processes that use the given files or file systems |
|
Kills processes by name; it sends a signal to all processes running any of the given commands |
|
Peek at file descriptors of a running process, given its PID |
|
Prints information about a process |
|
Reports current logs path of a process |
|
Displays running processes as a tree |
|
Same as pstree, except that it waits for confirmation before exiting |
The Iana-Etc package provides data for network services and protocols.
The following command converts the raw data provided by IANA
into the correct formats for the /etc/protocols
and /etc/services
data files:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
The Bison package contains a parser generator.
Prepare Bison for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/bison-3.5.2
Compile the package:
make
There is a circular dependency between bison and flex with regard to the checks. If desired, after installing flex in the next section, the bison package can be rebuilt and the bison checks can be run with make check.
Install the package:
make install
Generates, from a series of rules, a program for analyzing the structure of text files; Bison is a replacement for Yacc (Yet Another Compiler Compiler) |
|
A wrapper for bison, meant for
programs that still call yacc instead of
bison; it calls
bison
with the |
|
The Yacc library containing implementations of
Yacc-compatible |
The Flex package contains a utility for generating programs that recognize patterns in text.
First, fix a problem introduced with glibc-2.26:
sed -i "/math.h/a #include <malloc.h>" src/flexdef.h
The build procedure assumes the help2man program is available to create a man page from the executable --help option. This is not present, so we use an environment variable to skip this process. Now, prepare Flex for compilation:
HELP2MAN=/tools/bin/true \ ./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/flex-2.6.4
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (about 0.5 SBU), issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
A few programs do not know about flex yet and try to run its
predecessor, lex. To support those
programs, create a symbolic link named lex
that runs flex
in lex emulation mode:
ln -sv flex /usr/bin/lex
A tool for generating programs that recognize patterns in text; it allows for the versatility to specify the rules for pattern-finding, eradicating the need to develop a specialized program |
|
An extension of flex, is used for generating C++ code and classes. It is a symbolic link to flex |
|
A symbolic link that runs flex in lex emulation mode |
|
The |
The Grep package contains programs for searching through files.
Prepare Grep for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Bash package contains the Bourne-Again SHell.
Incorporate some upstream fixes:
patch -Np1 -i ../bash-5.0-upstream_fixes-1.patch
Prepare Bash for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/bash-5.0 \ --without-bash-malloc \ --with-installed-readline
The meaning of the new configure option:
--with-installed-readline
This option tells Bash to use the readline
library that is already
installed on the system rather than using its own
readline version.
Compile the package:
make
Skip down to “Install the package” if not running the test suite.
To prepare the tests, ensure that the nobody
user can write to the sources
tree:
chown -Rv nobody .
Now, run the tests as the nobody
user:
su nobody -s /bin/bash -c "PATH=$PATH HOME=/home make tests"
Install the package and move the main executable to
/bin
:
make install mv -vf /usr/bin/bash /bin
Run the newly compiled bash program (replacing the one that is currently being executed):
exec /bin/bash --login +h
The parameters used make the bash process an interactive login shell and continue to disable hashing so that new programs are found as they become available.
A widely-used command interpreter; it performs many types of expansions and substitutions on a given command line before executing it, thus making this interpreter a powerful tool |
|
A shell script to help the user compose and mail standard formatted bug reports concerning bash |
|
A symlink to the bash program; when invoked as sh, bash tries to mimic the startup behavior of historical versions of sh as closely as possible, while conforming to the POSIX standard as well |
The Libtool package contains the GNU generic library support script. It wraps the complexity of using shared libraries in a consistent, portable interface.
Prepare Libtool for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
The test time for libtool can be reduced significantly on a system with multiple cores. To do this, append TESTSUITEFLAGS=-j<N> to the line above. For instance, using -j4 can reduce the test time by over 60 percent.
Five tests are known to fail in the LFS build environment due to a circular dependency, but all tests pass if rechecked after automake is installed.
Install the package:
make install
The GDBM package contains the GNU Database Manager. It is a library of database functions that use extensible hashing and work similar to the standard UNIX dbm. The library provides primitives for storing key/data pairs, searching and retrieving the data by its key and deleting a key along with its data.
Prepare GDBM for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --enable-libgdbm-compat
The meaning of the configure option:
--enable-libgdbm-compat
This switch enables the libgdbm compatibility library to be built, as some packages outside of LFS may require the older DBM routines it provides.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Gperf generates a perfect hash function from a key set.
Prepare Gperf for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/gperf-3.1
Compile the package:
make
The tests are known to fail if running multiple simultaneous tests (-j option greater than 1). To test the results, issue:
make -j1 check
Install the package:
make install
The Expat package contains a stream oriented C library for parsing XML.
First fix a problem with the regression tests in the LFS environment:
sed -i 's|usr/bin/env |bin/|' run.sh.in
Prepare Expat for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/expat-2.2.9
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
If desired, install the documentation:
install -v -m644 doc/*.{html,png,css} /usr/share/doc/expat-2.2.9
The Inetutils package contains programs for basic networking.
Prepare Inetutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --localstatedir=/var \ --disable-logger \ --disable-whois \ --disable-rcp \ --disable-rexec \ --disable-rlogin \ --disable-rsh \ --disable-servers
The meaning of the configure options:
--disable-logger
This option prevents Inetutils from installing the logger program, which is used by scripts to pass messages to the System Log Daemon. Do not install it because Util-linux installs a more recent version.
--disable-whois
This option disables the building of the Inetutils whois client, which is out of date. Instructions for a better whois client are in the BLFS book.
--disable-r*
These parameters disable building obsolete programs that should not be used due to security issues. The functions provided by these programs can be provided by the openssh package in the BLFS book.
--disable-servers
This disables the installation of the various network servers included as part of the Inetutils package. These servers are deemed not appropriate in a basic LFS system. Some are insecure by nature and are only considered safe on trusted networks. Note that better replacements are available for many of these servers.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
One test, libls.sh, may fail in the initial chroot environment but will pass if the test is rerun after the LFS system is complete. One test, ping-localhost.sh, will fail if the host system does not have ipv6 capability.
Install the package:
make install
Move some programs so they are available if /usr
is not accessible:
mv -v /usr/bin/{hostname,ping,ping6,traceroute} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/ifconfig /sbin
Show the system's DNS domain name |
|
Is the file transfer protocol program |
|
Reports or sets the name of the host |
|
Manages network interfaces |
|
Sends echo-request packets and reports how long the replies take |
|
A version of ping for IPv6 networks |
|
Is used to chat with another user |
|
An interface to the TELNET protocol |
|
A trivial file transfer program |
|
Traces the route your packets take from the host you are working on to another host on a network, showing all the intermediate hops (gateways) along the way |
The Perl package contains the Practical Extraction and Report Language.
First create a basic /etc/hosts
file to be referenced in one of Perl's configuration files as
well as the optional test suite:
echo "127.0.0.1 localhost $(hostname)" > /etc/hosts
This version of Perl now builds the Compress::Raw::Zlib and Compress::Raw::BZip2 modules. By default Perl will use an internal copy of the sources for the build. Issue the following command so that Perl will use the libraries installed on the system:
export BUILD_ZLIB=False export BUILD_BZIP2=0
To have full control over the way Perl is set up, you can remove the “-des” options from the following command and hand-pick the way this package is built. Alternatively, use the command exactly as below to use the defaults that Perl auto-detects:
sh Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr \ -Dvendorprefix=/usr \ -Dman1dir=/usr/share/man/man1 \ -Dman3dir=/usr/share/man/man3 \ -Dpager="/usr/bin/less -isR" \ -Duseshrplib \ -Dusethreads
The meaning of the configure options:
-Dvendorprefix=/usr
This ensures perl knows how to tell packages where they should install their perl modules.
-Dpager="/usr/bin/less
-isR"
This ensures that less
is used instead
of more
.
-Dman1dir=/usr/share/man/man1
-Dman3dir=/usr/share/man/man3
Since Groff is not installed yet, Configure thinks that we do not want man pages for Perl. Issuing these parameters overrides this decision.
-Duseshrplib
Build a shared libperl needed by some perl modules.
-Dusethreads
Build perl with support for threads.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (approximately 11 SBU), issue:
make test
Install the package and clean up:
make install unset BUILD_ZLIB BUILD_BZIP2
A commandline frontend to Module::CoreList |
|
Interact with the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) from the command line |
|
Builds a Perl extension for the Encode module from either Unicode Character Mappings or Tcl Encoding Files |
|
Guess the encoding type of one or several files |
|
Converts |
|
Converts |
|
Shell script for examining installed Perl modules, and can create a tarball from an installed module |
|
Converts data between certain input and output formats |
|
Can be used to configure the |
|
Combines some of the best features of C, sed, awk and sh into a single swiss-army language |
|
A hard link to perl |
|
Used to generate bug reports about Perl, or the modules that come with it, and mail them |
|
Displays a piece of documentation in pod format that is embedded in the Perl installation tree or in a Perl script |
|
The Perl Installation Verification Procedure; it can be used to verify that Perl and its libraries have been installed correctly |
|
Used to generate thank you messages to mail to the Perl developers |
|
A Perl version of the character encoding converter iconv |
|
A rough tool for converting Perl4 |
|
Converts files from pod format to HTML format |
|
Converts pod data to formatted *roff input |
|
Converts pod data to formatted ASCII text |
|
Prints usage messages from embedded pod docs in files |
|
Checks the syntax of pod format documentation files |
|
Displays selected sections of pod documentation |
|
Command line tool for running tests against the Test::Harness module |
|
A tar-like program written in Perl |
|
A Perl program that compares an extracted archive with an unextracted one |
|
A Perl program that applies pattern matching to the contents of files in a tar archive |
|
Prints or checks SHA checksums |
|
Is used to force verbose warning diagnostics in Perl |
|
Converts Perl XS code into C code |
|
Displays details about the internal structure of a Zip file |
The XML::Parser module is a Perl interface to James Clark's XML parser, Expat.
Prepare XML::Parser for compilation:
perl Makefile.PL
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make test
Install the package:
make install
The Intltool is an internationalization tool used for extracting translatable strings from source files.
First fix a warning that is caused by perl-5.22 and later:
sed -i 's:\\\${:\\\$\\{:' intltool-update.in
Prepare Intltool for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install install -v -Dm644 doc/I18N-HOWTO /usr/share/doc/intltool-0.51.0/I18N-HOWTO
The Autoconf package contains programs for producing shell scripts that can automatically configure source code.
First, fix a bug generated by Perl 5.28.
sed '361 s/{/\\{/' -i bin/autoscan.in
Prepare Autoconf for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
The test suite is currently broken by bash-5 and libtool-2.4.3. To run the tests anyway, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Produces shell scripts that automatically configure software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of Unix-like systems; the configuration scripts it produces are independent—running them does not require the autoconf program |
|
A tool for creating template files of C #define statements for configure to use |
|
A wrapper for the M4 macro processor |
|
Automatically runs autoconf, autoheader, aclocal, automake, gettextize, and libtoolize in the correct order to save time when changes are made to autoconf and automake template files |
|
Helps to create a |
|
Modifies a |
|
Helps when writing |
The Automake package contains programs for generating Makefiles for use with Autoconf.
Prepare Automake for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/automake-1.16.1
Compile the package:
make
Using the -j4 make option speeds up the tests, even on systems with only one processor, due to internal delays in individual tests. To test the results, issue:
make -j4 check
One test is known to fail in the LFS environment: subobj.sh.
Install the package:
make install
Generates |
|
A hard link to aclocal |
|
A tool for automatically generating |
|
A hard link to automake |
The Kmod package contains libraries and utilities for loading kernel modules
Prepare Kmod for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --bindir=/bin \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --with-rootlibdir=/lib \ --with-xz \ --with-zlib
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-xz,
--with-zlib
These options enable Kmod to handle compressed kernel modules.
--with-rootlibdir=/lib
This option ensures different library related files are placed in the correct directories.
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite that can be run in the LFS chroot environment. At a minimum the git program is required and several tests will not run outside of a git repository.
Install the package, and create symlinks for compatibility with Module-Init-Tools (the package that previously handled Linux kernel modules):
make install for target in depmod insmod lsmod modinfo modprobe rmmod; do ln -sfv ../bin/kmod /sbin/$target done ln -sfv kmod /bin/lsmod
Creates a dependency file based on the symbols it finds in the existing set of modules; this dependency file is used by modprobe to automatically load the required modules |
|
Installs a loadable module in the running kernel |
|
Loads and unloads kernel modules |
|
Lists currently loaded modules |
|
Examines an object file associated with a kernel module and displays any information that it can glean |
|
Uses a dependency file, created by depmod, to automatically load relevant modules |
|
Unloads modules from the running kernel |
|
This library is used by other programs to load and unload kernel modules |
The Gettext package contains utilities for internationalization and localization. These allow programs to be compiled with NLS (Native Language Support), enabling them to output messages in the user's native language.
Prepare Gettext for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/gettext-0.20.1
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (this takes a long time, around 3 SBUs), issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install chmod -v 0755 /usr/lib/preloadable_libintl.so
Copies standard Gettext infrastructure files into a source package |
|
Substitutes environment variables in shell format strings |
|
Translates a natural language message into the user's language by looking up the translation in a message catalog |
|
Primarily serves as a shell function library for gettext |
|
Copies all standard Gettext files into the given top-level directory of a package to begin internationalizing it |
|
Filters the messages of a translation catalog according to their attributes and manipulates the attributes |
|
Concatenates and merges the given |
|
Compares two |
|
Finds the messages that are common to the given
|
|
Converts a translation catalog to a different character encoding |
|
Creates an English translation catalog |
|
Applies a command to all translations of a translation catalog |
|
Applies a filter to all translations of a translation catalog |
|
Generates a binary message catalog from a translation catalog |
|
Extracts all messages of a translation catalog that match a given pattern or belong to some given source files |
|
Creates a new |
|
Combines two raw translations into a single file |
|
Decompiles a binary message catalog into raw translation text |
|
Unifies duplicate translations in a translation catalog |
|
Displays native language translations of a textual message whose grammatical form depends on a number |
|
Recodes Serbian text from Cyrillic to Latin script |
|
Extracts the translatable message lines from the given source files to make the first translation template |
|
defines the autosprintf class, which makes C formatted output routines usable in C++ programs, for use with the <string> strings and the <iostream> streams |
|
a private library containing common routines used by the various Gettext programs; these are not intended for general use |
|
Used to write specialized programs that process
|
|
A private library containing common routines used by the various Gettext programs; these are not intended for general use |
|
Text styling library |
|
A library, intended to be used by LD_PRELOAD that
assists |
Libelf is a library for handling ELF (Executable and Linkable Format) files.
Libelf is part of elfutils-0.178 package. Use the elfutils-0.178.tar.bz2 as the source tarball.
Prepare Libelf for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-debuginfod
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
One test, run-elfclassify.sh, is known to fail.
Install only Libelf:
make -C libelf install install -vm644 config/libelf.pc /usr/lib/pkgconfig rm /usr/lib/libelf.a
The Libffi library provides a portable, high level programming interface to various calling conventions. This allows a programmer to call any function specified by a call interface description at run time.
Similar to GMP, libffi builds with optimizations specific to the proccesor in use. If building for another system, export CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS to specify a generic build for your architecture. If this is not done, all applications that link to libffi will trigger Illegal Operation Errors.
Prepare libffi for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static --with-gcc-arch=native
The meaning of the configure option:
--with-gcc-arch=native
Ensure gcc optimizes for the current system. If this is not specified, the system is guessed and the code generated may not be correct for some systems. If the generated code will be copied from the native system to a less capable system, use the less capable system as a parameter. For details about alternative system types, see the x86 options in the gcc manual.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Six tests, all related to test-callback.c, are known to fail.
Install the package:
make install
The OpenSSL package contains management tools and libraries relating to cryptography. These are useful for providing cryptographic functions to other packages, such as OpenSSH, email applications and web browsers (for accessing HTTPS sites).
Prepare OpenSSL for compilation:
./config --prefix=/usr \ --openssldir=/etc/ssl \ --libdir=lib \ shared \ zlib-dynamic
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make test
One subtest in the test 20-test_enc.t is known to fail.
Install the package:
sed -i '/INSTALL_LIBS/s/libcrypto.a libssl.a//' Makefile make MANSUFFIX=ssl install
If desired, install the documentation:
mv -v /usr/share/doc/openssl /usr/share/doc/openssl-1.1.1d cp -vfr doc/* /usr/share/doc/openssl-1.1.1d
is a Perl script that scans all files in a directory and adds symbolic links to their hash values. |
|
is a command-line tool for using the various cryptography functions of OpenSSL's crypto library from the shell. It can be used for various functions which are documented in man 1 openssl. |
|
implements a wide range of cryptographic algorithms used in various Internet standards. The services provided by this library are used by the OpenSSL implementations of SSL, TLS and S/MIME, and they have also been used to implement OpenSSH, OpenPGP, and other cryptographic standards. |
|
implements the Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocol. It provides a rich API, documentation on which can be found by running man 3 ssl. |
The Python 3 package contains the Python development environment. It is useful for object-oriented programming, writing scripts, prototyping large programs or developing entire applications.
Prepare Python for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-shared \ --with-system-expat \ --with-system-ffi \ --with-ensurepip=yes
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-system-expat
This switch enables linking against system version of Expat.
--with-system-ffi
This switch enables linking against system version of libffi.
--with-ensurepip=yes
This switch enables building pip and setuptools packaging programs.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue make test. Some tests requiring network connection or additional packages are skipped. The test named test_normalization fails because network configuration is not completed yet. For more comprehensive results, the test can be rerun when Python 3 is reinstalled in BLFS.
Install the package:
make install chmod -v 755 /usr/lib/libpython3.8.so chmod -v 755 /usr/lib/libpython3.so ln -sfv pip3.8 /usr/bin/pip3
The meaning of the install commands:
Fix permissions for libraries to be consistent with other libraries.
If desired, install the preformatted documentation:
install -v -dm755 /usr/share/doc/python-3.8.1/html tar --strip-components=1 \ --no-same-owner \ --no-same-permissions \ -C /usr/share/doc/python-3.8.1/html \ -xvf ../python-3.8.1-docs-html.tar.bz2
The meaning of the documentation install commands:
--no-same-owner
and --no-same-permissions
Ensure the installed files have the correct ownership and permissions. Without these options, using tar will install the package files with the upstream creator's values.
is a Python program that reads Python 2.x source code and applies a series of fixes to transform it into valid Python 3.x code. |
|
is a wrapper script that opens a Python aware GUI editor. For this script to run, you must have installed Tk before Python so that the Tkinter Python module is built. |
|
The package installer for Python. You can use pip to install packages from Python Package Index and other indexes. |
|
is the Python documentation tool. |
|
is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. |
Ninja is a small build system with a focus on speed.
When run, ninja normally runs a maximum number of processes in parallel. By default this is the number of cores on the system plus two. In some cases this can overheat a CPU or run a system out of memory. If run from the command line, passing a -jN parameter will limit the number of parallel processes, but some packages embed the execution of ninja and do not pass a -j parameter.
Using the optional procedure below allows a user to limit the number of parallel processes via an environment variable, NINJAJOBS. For example, setting:
export NINJAJOBS=4
will limit ninja to four parallel processes.
If desired, add the capability to use the environment variable NINJAJOBS by running:
sed -i '/int Guess/a \ int j = 0;\ char* jobs = getenv( "NINJAJOBS" );\ if ( jobs != NULL ) j = atoi( jobs );\ if ( j > 0 ) return j;\ ' src/ninja.cc
Build Ninja with:
python3 configure.py --bootstrap
The meaning of the build option:
--bootstrap
This parameter forces ninja to rebuild itself for the current system.
To test the results, issue:
./ninja ninja_test ./ninja_test --gtest_filter=-SubprocessTest.SetWithLots
Install the package:
install -vm755 ninja /usr/bin/ install -vDm644 misc/bash-completion /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/ninja install -vDm644 misc/zsh-completion /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_ninja
Meson is an open source build system meant to be both extremely fast, and, even more importantly, as user friendly as possible.
Compile Meson with the following command:
python3 setup.py build
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
python3 setup.py install --root=dest cp -rv dest/* /
The meaning of the install parameters:
--root=dest
By default python3 setup.py install installs various files (such as man pages) into Python Eggs. With a specified root location, setup.py installs these files into a standard hierarchy. Then we can just copy the hierarchy so the files will be in the standard location.
The Coreutils package contains utilities for showing and setting the basic system characteristics.
POSIX requires that programs from Coreutils recognize character boundaries correctly even in multibyte locales. The following patch fixes this non-compliance and other internationalization-related bugs.
patch -Np1 -i ../coreutils-8.31-i18n-1.patch
In the past, many bugs were found in this patch. When reporting new bugs to Coreutils maintainers, please check first if they are reproducible without this patch.
Suppress a test which on some machines can loop forever:
sed -i '/test.lock/s/^/#/' gnulib-tests/gnulib.mk
Now prepare Coreutils for compilation:
autoreconf -fiv FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1 ./configure \ --prefix=/usr \ --enable-no-install-program=kill,uptime
The meaning of the configure options:
This command updates generated configuration files consistent with the latest version of automake.
FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1
This environment variable allows the package to be built as the root user.
--enable-no-install-program=kill,uptime
The purpose of this switch is to prevent Coreutils from installing binaries that will be installed by other packages later.
Compile the package:
make
Skip down to “Install the package” if not running the test suite.
Now the test suite is ready to be run. First, run the tests
that are meant to be run as user root
:
make NON_ROOT_USERNAME=nobody check-root
We're going to run the remainder of the tests as the
nobody
user. Certain tests,
however, require that the user be a member of more than one
group. So that these tests are not skipped we'll add a
temporary group and make the user nobody
a part of it:
echo "dummy:x:1000:nobody" >> /etc/group
Fix some of the permissions so that the non-root user can compile and run the tests:
chown -Rv nobody .
Now run the tests. Make sure the PATH in the su
environment includes
/tools/bin.
su nobody -s /bin/bash \ -c "PATH=$PATH make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check"
The test program test-getlogin is known to fail in a partially built system environment like the chroot environment here, but passes if run at the end of this chapter. The test program tty.sh is also known to fail.
Remove the temporary group:
sed -i '/dummy/d' /etc/group
Install the package:
make install
Move programs to the locations specified by the FHS:
mv -v /usr/bin/{cat,chgrp,chmod,chown,cp,date,dd,df,echo} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/{false,ln,ls,mkdir,mknod,mv,pwd,rm} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/{rmdir,stty,sync,true,uname} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/chroot /usr/sbin mv -v /usr/share/man/man1/chroot.1 /usr/share/man/man8/chroot.8 sed -i s/\"1\"/\"8\"/1 /usr/share/man/man8/chroot.8
mv -v /usr/bin/{head,nice,sleep,touch} /bin
Encodes and decodes data according to the base32 specification (RFC 4648) |
|
Encodes and decodes data according to the base64 specification (RFC 4648) |
|
Prints or checks BLAKE2 (512-bit) checksums |
|
Strips any path and a given suffix from a file name |
|
Encodes or decodes data using various algorithms |
|
Concatenates files to standard output |
|
Changes security context for files and directories |
|
Changes the group ownership of files and directories |
|
Changes the permissions of each file to the given mode; the mode can be either a symbolic representation of the changes to make or an octal number representing the new permissions |
|
Changes the user and/or group ownership of files and directories |
|
Runs a command with the specified directory as the
|
|
Prints the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) checksum and the byte counts of each specified file |
|
Compares two sorted files, outputting in three columns the lines that are unique and the lines that are common |
|
Copies files |
|
Splits a given file into several new files, separating them according to given patterns or line numbers and outputting the byte count of each new file |
|
Prints sections of lines, selecting the parts according to given fields or positions |
|
Displays the current time in the given format, or sets the system date |
|
Copies a file using the given block size and count, while optionally performing conversions on it |
|
Reports the amount of disk space available (and used) on all mounted file systems, or only on the file systems holding the selected files |
|
Lists the contents of each given directory (the same as the ls command) |
|
Outputs commands to set the |
|
Strips the non-directory suffix from a file name |
|
Reports the amount of disk space used by the current directory, by each of the given directories (including all subdirectories) or by each of the given files |
|
Displays the given strings |
|
Runs a command in a modified environment |
|
Converts tabs to spaces |
|
Evaluates expressions |
|
Prints the prime factors of all specified integer numbers |
|
Does nothing, unsuccessfully; it always exits with a status code indicating failure |
|
Reformats the paragraphs in the given files |
|
Wraps the lines in the given files |
|
Reports a user's group memberships |
|
Prints the first ten lines (or the given number of lines) of each given file |
|
Reports the numeric identifier (in hexadecimal) of the host |
|
Reports the effective user ID, group ID, and group memberships of the current user or specified user |
|
Copies files while setting their permission modes and, if possible, their owner and group |
|
Joins the lines that have identical join fields from two separate files |
|
Creates a hard link with the given name to a file |
|
Makes hard links or soft (symbolic) links between files |
|
Reports the current user's login name |
|
Lists the contents of each given directory |
|
Reports or checks Message Digest 5 (MD5) checksums |
|
Creates directories with the given names |
|
Creates First-In, First-Outs (FIFOs), a "named pipe" in UNIX parlance, with the given names |
|
Creates device nodes with the given names; a device node is a character special file, a block special file, or a FIFO |
|
Creates temporary files in a secure manner; it is used in scripts |
|
Moves or renames files or directories |
|
Runs a program with modified scheduling priority |
|
Numbers the lines from the given files |
|
Runs a command immune to hangups, with its output redirected to a log file |
|
Prints the number of processing units available to a process |
|
Converts numbers to or from human-readable strings |
|
Dumps files in octal and other formats |
|
Merges the given files, joining sequentially corresponding lines side by side, separated by tab characters |
|
Checks if file names are valid or portable |
|
Is a lightweight finger client; it reports some information about the given users |
|
Paginates and columnates files for printing |
|
Prints the environment |
|
Prints the given arguments according to the given format, much like the C printf function |
|
Produces a permuted index from the contents of the given files, with each keyword in its context |
|
Reports the name of the current working directory |
|
Reports the value of the given symbolic link |
|
Prints the resolved path |
|
Removes files or directories |
|
Removes directories if they are empty |
|
Runs a command with specified security context |
|
Prints a sequence of numbers within a given range and with a given increment |
|
Prints or checks 160-bit Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA1) checksums |
|
Prints or checks 224-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Prints or checks 256-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Prints or checks 384-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Prints or checks 512-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Overwrites the given files repeatedly with complex patterns, making it difficult to recover the data |
|
Shuffles lines of text |
|
Pauses for the given amount of time |
|
Sorts the lines from the given files |
|
Splits the given file into pieces, by size or by number of lines |
|
Displays file or filesystem status |
|
Runs commands with altered buffering operations for its standard streams |
|
Sets or reports terminal line settings |
|
Prints checksum and block counts for each given file |
|
Flushes file system buffers; it forces changed blocks to disk and updates the super block |
|
Concatenates the given files in reverse |
|
Prints the last ten lines (or the given number of lines) of each given file |
|
Reads from standard input while writing both to standard output and to the given files |
|
Compares values and checks file types |
|
Runs a command with a time limit |
|
Changes file timestamps, setting the access and modification times of the given files to the current time; files that do not exist are created with zero length |
|
Translates, squeezes, and deletes the given characters from standard input |
|
Does nothing, successfully; it always exits with a status code indicating success |
|
Shrinks or expands a file to the specified size |
|
Performs a topological sort; it writes a completely ordered list according to the partial ordering in a given file |
|
Reports the file name of the terminal connected to standard input |
|
Reports system information |
|
Converts spaces to tabs |
|
Discards all but one of successive identical lines |
|
Removes the given file |
|
Reports the names of the users currently logged on |
|
Is the same as ls -l |
|
Reports the number of lines, words, and bytes for each given file, as well as a total line when more than one file is given |
|
Reports who is logged on |
|
Reports the user name associated with the current effective user ID |
|
Repeatedly outputs “y” or a given string until killed |
|
Library used by stdbuf |
Check is a unit testing framework for C.
Prepare Check for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Build the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. To run the Check test suite, issue the following command:
make check
Note that the Check test suite may take a relatively long (up to 4 SBU) time.
Install the package and fix a script:
make docdir=/usr/share/doc/check-0.14.0 install && sed -i '1 s/tools/usr/' /usr/bin/checkmk
The Diffutils package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories.
Prepare Diffutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Gawk package contains programs for manipulating text files.
First, ensure some unneeded files are not installed:
sed -i 's/extras//' Makefile.in
Prepare Gawk for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
If desired, install the documentation:
mkdir -v /usr/share/doc/gawk-5.0.1 cp -v doc/{awkforai.txt,*.{eps,pdf,jpg}} /usr/share/doc/gawk-5.0.1
The Findutils package contains programs to find files. These programs are provided to recursively search through a directory tree and to create, maintain, and search a database (often faster than the recursive find, but unreliable if the database has not been recently updated).
Prepare Findutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/locate
The meaning of the configure options:
--localstatedir
This option changes the location of the locate database to be
in /var/lib/locate
, which
is FHS-compliant.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Two tests are known to fail in the chroot environment: sv-bug-54171.old-O3 and sv-bug-54171.new-O3.
Install the package:
make install
Some packages in BLFS and beyond expect the find program in
/bin
, so make sure it's placed
there:
mv -v /usr/bin/find /bin sed -i 's|find:=${BINDIR}|find:=/bin|' /usr/bin/updatedb
Searches given directory trees for files matching the specified criteria |
|
Searches through a database of file names and reports the names that contain a given string or match a given pattern |
|
Updates the locate database; it scans the entire file system (including other file systems that are currently mounted, unless told not to) and puts every file name it finds into the database |
|
Can be used to apply a given command to a list of files |
The Groff package contains programs for processing and formatting text.
Groff expects the environment variable PAGE
to contain the default paper size. For
users in the United States, PAGE=letter
is appropriate.
Elsewhere, PAGE=A4
may be more suitable. While the default paper size is
configured during compilation, it can be overridden later by
echoing either “A4” or “letter” to the /etc/papersize
file.
Prepare Groff for compilation:
PAGE=<paper_size>
./configure --prefix=/usr
This package does not support parallel build. Compile the package:
make -j1
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
Reads a troff font file and adds some additional font-metric information that is used by the groff system |
|
Creates a font file for use with groff and grops |
|
Groff preprocessor for producing chemical structure diagrams |
|
Compiles descriptions of equations embedded within troff input files into commands that are understood by troff |
|
Converts a troff EQN (equation) into a cropped image |
|
Marks differences between groff/nroff/troff files |
|
Transforms sheet music written in the lilypond language into the groff language |
|
Preprocesor for groff, allowing addition of perl code into groff files |
|
Preprocesor for groff, allowing addition of Chinese European-like language Pinyin into groff files. |
|
Converts a grap diagram into a cropped bitmap image |
|
A groff preprocessor for gremlin files |
|
A driver for groff that produces TeX dvi format |
|
A front-end to the groff document formatting system; normally, it runs the troff program and a post-processor appropriate for the selected device |
|
Displays groff files and man pages on X and tty terminals |
|
Reads files and guesses which of the groff options
|
|
Is a groff driver for Canon CAPSL printers (LBP-4 and LBP-8 series laser printers) |
|
Is a driver for groff that produces output in PCL5 format suitable for an HP LaserJet 4 printer |
|
Translates the output of GNU troff to PDF |
|
Translates the output of GNU troff to PostScript |
|
Translates the output of GNU troff into a form suitable for typewriter-like devices |
|
Creates a font file for use with groff -Tlj4 from an HP-tagged font metric file |
|
Creates an inverted index for the bibliographic databases with a specified file for use with refer, lookbib, and lkbib |
|
Searches bibliographic databases for references that contain specified keys and reports any references found |
|
Prints a prompt on the standard error (unless the standard input is not a terminal), reads a line containing a set of keywords from the standard input, searches the bibliographic databases in a specified file for references containing those keywords, prints any references found on the standard output, and repeats this process until the end of input |
|
A simple preprocessor for groff |
|
Formats equations for American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) output |
|
A script that emulates the nroff command using groff |
|
Is a wrapper around groff that facilitates the production of PDF documents from files formatted with the mom macros. |
|
Creates pdf documents using groff |
|
Translates a PostScript font in |
|
Compiles descriptions of pictures embedded within troff or TeX input files into commands understood by TeX or troff |
|
Converts a PIC diagram into a cropped image |
|
Translates the output of GNU troff to HTML |
|
Converts encoding of input files to something GNU troff understands |
|
Translates the output of GNU troff to HTML |
|
Copies the contents of a file to the standard output, except that lines between .[ and .] are interpreted as citations, and lines between .R1 and .R2 are interpreted as commands for how citations are to be processed |
|
Transforms roff files into DVI format |
|
Transforms roff files into HTML format |
|
Transforms roff files into PDFs |
|
Transforms roff files into ps files |
|
Transforms roff files into text files |
|
Transforms roff files into other formats |
|
Reads files and replaces lines of the form .so file by the contents of the mentioned file |
|
Compiles descriptions of tables embedded within troff input files into commands that are understood by troff |
|
Creates a font file for use with groff -Tdvi |
|
Is highly compatible with Unix troff; it should usually be invoked using the groff command, which will also run preprocessors and post-processors in the appropriate order and with the appropriate options |
The GRUB package contains the GRand Unified Bootloader.
Prepare GRUB for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --sbindir=/sbin \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --disable-efiemu \ --disable-werror
The meaning of the new configure options:
--disable-werror
This allows the build to complete with warnings introduced by more recent Flex versions.
--disable-efiemu
This option minimizes what is built by disabling a feature and testing programs not needed for LFS.
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install mv -v /etc/bash_completion.d/grub /usr/share/bash-completion/completions
Using GRUB to make your LFS system bootable will be discussed in Section 8.4, “Using GRUB to Set Up the Boot Process”.
Is a helper program for grub-install |
|
A tool to edit the environment block |
|
Checks if FILE is of the specified type. |
|
Tool to debug the filesystem driver |
|
Processes ia32 and amd64 EFI images and glues them according to Apple format. |
|
Install GRUB on your drive |
|
Script that converts an xkb layout into one recognized by GRUB |
|
Mac-style bless on HFS or HFS+ files |
|
Converts a GRUB Legacy |
|
Generate a grub config file |
|
Make a bootable image of GRUB |
|
Generates a GRUB keyboard layout file |
|
Prepares a GRUB netboot directory |
|
Generates an encrypted PBKDF2 password for use in the boot menu |
|
Makes a system pathname relative to its root |
|
Make a bootable image of GRUB suitable for a floppy disk or CDROM/DVD |
|
Generates a standalone image |
|
Is a helper program that prints the path of a GRUB device |
|
Probe device information for a given path or device |
|
Sets the default boot entry for GRUB for the next boot only |
|
Render Apple .disk_label for Apple Macs |
|
Checks GRUB configuration script for syntax errors |
|
Sets the default boot entry for GRUB |
|
Is a helper program for grub-setup |
|
Transform a syslinux config file into grub.cfg format |
The Less package contains a text file viewer.
Prepare Less for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
The meaning of the configure options:
--sysconfdir=/etc
This option tells the programs created by the package
to look in /etc
for the
configuration files.
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
The Gzip package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files.
Prepare Gzip for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Two tests are known to fail in the LFS environment: help-version and zmore.
Install the package:
make install
Move a program that needs to be on the root filesystem:
mv -v /usr/bin/gzip /bin
Decompresses gzipped files |
|
Creates self-decompressing executable files |
|
Compresses the given files using Lempel-Ziv (LZ77) coding |
|
Decompresses compressed files |
|
Decompresses the given gzipped files to standard output |
|
Runs cmp on gzipped files |
|
Runs diff on gzipped files |
|
Runs egrep on gzipped files |
|
Runs fgrep on gzipped files |
|
Forces a |
|
Runs grep on gzipped files |
|
Runs less on gzipped files |
|
Runs more on gzipped files |
|
Re-compresses files from compress format
to gzip
format— |
Zstandard is a real-time compression algorithm, providing high compression ratios. It offers a very wide range of compression / speed trade-offs, while being backed by a very fast decoder.
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make prefix=/usr install
Remove the static library and move the shared library to
/lib
. Also, the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
rm -v /usr/lib/libzstd.a mv -v /usr/lib/libzstd.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libzstd.so) /usr/lib/libzstd.so
The IPRoute2 package contains programs for basic and advanced IPV4-based networking.
The arpd program included in this package will not be built since it is dependent on Berkeley DB, which is not installed in LFS. However, a directory for arpd and a man page will still be installed. Prevent this by running the commands below. If the arpd binary is needed, instructions for compiling Berkeley DB can be found in the BLFS Book at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/server/databases.html#db.
sed -i /ARPD/d Makefile rm -fv man/man8/arpd.8
It is also necessary to disable building two modules that requires http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/iptables.html.
sed -i 's/.m_ipt.o//' tc/Makefile
Compile the package:
make
This package does not have a working test suite.
Install the package:
make DOCDIR=/usr/share/doc/iproute2-5.5.0 install
Configures network bridges |
|
Connection status utility |
|
Generic netlink utility frontend |
|
A shell script wrapper for the ip command [Note that it requires the arping and rdisk programs from the iputils package found at http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/.] |
|
Shows the interface statistics, including the amount of transmitted and received packets by interface |
|
The main executable. It has several different functions:
ip link ip addr allows users to look at addresses and their properties, add new addresses, and delete old ones ip neighbor allows users to look at neighbor bindings and their properties, add new neighbor entries, and delete old ones ip rule allows users to look at the routing policies and change them ip route allows users to look at the routing table and change routing table rules ip tunnel allows users to look at the IP tunnels and their properties, and change them ip maddr allows users to look at the multicast addresses and their properties, and change them ip mroute allows users to set, change, or delete the multicast routing ip monitor allows users to continuously monitor the state of devices, addresses and routes |
|
Provides Linux network statistics; it is a generalized and more feature-complete replacement for the old rtstat program |
|
Shows network statistics |
|
A component of ip route. This is for flushing the routing tables |
|
A component of ip route. This is for listing the routing tables |
|
Displays the contents of |
|
Route monitoring utility |
|
Converts the output of ip -o back into a readable form |
|
Route status utility |
|
Similar to the netstat command; shows active connections |
|
Traffic Controlling Executable; this is for Quality Of Service (QOS) and Class Of Service (COS) implementations tc qdisc allows users to setup the queueing discipline tc class allows users to setup classes based on the queuing discipline scheduling tc estimator allows users to estimate the network flow into a network tc filter allows users to setup the QOS/COS packet filtering tc policy allows users to setup the QOS/COS policies |
The Kbd package contains key-table files, console fonts, and keyboard utilities.
The behaviour of the Backspace and Delete keys is not consistent across the keymaps in the Kbd package. The following patch fixes this issue for i386 keymaps:
patch -Np1 -i ../kbd-2.2.0-backspace-1.patch
After patching, the Backspace key generates the character with code 127, and the Delete key generates a well-known escape sequence.
Remove the redundant resizecons program (it requires the defunct svgalib to provide the video mode files - for normal use setfont sizes the console appropriately) together with its manpage.
sed -i 's/\(RESIZECONS_PROGS=\)yes/\1no/g' configure sed -i 's/resizecons.8 //' docs/man/man8/Makefile.in
Prepare Kbd for compilation:
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/tools/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-vlock
The meaning of the configure options:
--disable-vlock
This option prevents the vlock utility from being built, as it requires the PAM library, which isn't available in the chroot environment.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
For some languages (e.g., Belarusian) the Kbd package doesn't provide a useful keymap where the stock “by” keymap assumes the ISO-8859-5 encoding, and the CP1251 keymap is normally used. Users of such languages have to download working keymaps separately.
If desired, install the documentation:
mkdir -v /usr/share/doc/kbd-2.2.0 cp -R -v docs/doc/* /usr/share/doc/kbd-2.2.0
Changes the foreground virtual terminal |
|
Deallocates unused virtual terminals |
|
Dumps the keyboard translation tables |
|
Prints the number of the active virtual terminal |
|
Prints the kernel scancode-to-keycode mapping table |
|
Obtains information about the status of a console |
|
Reports or sets the keyboard mode |
|
Sets the keyboard repeat and delay rates |
|
Loads the keyboard translation tables |
|
Loads the kernel unicode-to-font mapping table |
|
An obsolete program that used to load a user-defined output character mapping table into the console driver; this is now done by setfont |
|
Starts a program on a new virtual terminal (VT) |
|
Adds a Unicode character table to a console font |
|
Extracts the embedded Unicode character table from a console font |
|
Removes the embedded Unicode character table from a console font |
|
Handles Unicode character tables for console fonts |
|
Changes the Enhanced Graphic Adapter (EGA) and Video Graphics Array (VGA) fonts on the console |
|
Loads kernel scancode-to-keycode mapping table entries; this is useful if there are unusual keys on the keyboard |
|
Sets the keyboard flags and Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) |
|
Defines the keyboard meta-key handling |
|
Sets the console color map in all virtual terminals |
|
Shows the current EGA/VGA console screen font |
|
Reports the scancodes, keycodes, and ASCII codes of the keys pressed on the keyboard |
|
Puts the keyboard and console in UNICODE mode [Don't use this program unless your keymap file is in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. For other encodings, this utility produces incorrect results.] |
|
Reverts keyboard and console from UNICODE mode |
The Libpipeline package contains a library for manipulating pipelines of subprocesses in a flexible and convenient way.
Prepare Libpipeline for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Make package contains a program for compiling packages.
Prepare Make for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
The test suite needs to know where supporting perl files are located. We use an environment variable to accomplish this. To test the results, issue:
make PERL5LIB=$PWD/tests/ check
Install the package:
make install
The Patch package contains a program for modifying or creating files by applying a “patch” file typically created by the diff program.
Prepare Patch for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Man-DB package contains programs for finding and viewing man pages.
Prepare Man-DB for compilation:
sed -i '/find/s@/usr@@' init/systemd/man-db.service.in ./configure --prefix=/usr \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/man-db-2.9.0 \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --disable-setuid \ --enable-cache-owner=bin \ --with-browser=/usr/bin/lynx \ --with-vgrind=/usr/bin/vgrind \ --with-grap=/usr/bin/grap
The meaning of the configure options:
This changes a harcoded path to the find utility, which
we install in /bin
.
--disable-setuid
This disables making the man program setuid to
user man
.
--enable-cache-owner=bin
This makes the system-wide cache files be owned by user bin.
--with-...
These three parameters are used to set some default programs. lynx is a text-based web browser (see BLFS for installation instructions), vgrind converts program sources to Groff input, and grap is useful for typesetting graphs in Groff documents. The vgrind and grap programs are not normally needed for viewing manual pages. They are not part of LFS or BLFS, but you should be able to install them yourself after finishing LFS if you wish to do so.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The following table shows the character set that Man-DB
assumes manual pages installed under /usr/share/man/<ll>
will be encoded
with. In addition to this, Man-DB correctly determines if
manual pages installed in that directory are UTF-8 encoded.
Table 6.1. Expected character encoding of legacy 8-bit manual pages
Language (code) | Encoding | Language (code) | Encoding |
---|---|---|---|
Danish (da) | ISO-8859-1 | Croatian (hr) | ISO-8859-2 |
German (de) | ISO-8859-1 | Hungarian (hu) | ISO-8859-2 |
English (en) | ISO-8859-1 | Japanese (ja) | EUC-JP |
Spanish (es) | ISO-8859-1 | Korean (ko) | EUC-KR |
Estonian (et) | ISO-8859-1 | Lithuanian (lt) | ISO-8859-13 |
Finnish (fi) | ISO-8859-1 | Latvian (lv) | ISO-8859-13 |
French (fr) | ISO-8859-1 | Macedonian (mk) | ISO-8859-5 |
Irish (ga) | ISO-8859-1 | Polish (pl) | ISO-8859-2 |
Galician (gl) | ISO-8859-1 | Romanian (ro) | ISO-8859-2 |
Indonesian (id) | ISO-8859-1 | Russian (ru) | KOI8-R |
Icelandic (is) | ISO-8859-1 | Slovak (sk) | ISO-8859-2 |
Italian (it) | ISO-8859-1 | Slovenian (sl) | ISO-8859-2 |
Norwegian Bokmal (nb) | ISO-8859-1 | Serbian Latin (sr@latin) | ISO-8859-2 |
Dutch (nl) | ISO-8859-1 | Serbian (sr) | ISO-8859-5 |
Norwegian Nynorsk (nn) | ISO-8859-1 | Turkish (tr) | ISO-8859-9 |
Norwegian (no) | ISO-8859-1 | Ukrainian (uk) | KOI8-U |
Portuguese (pt) | ISO-8859-1 | Vietnamese (vi) | TCVN5712-1 |
Swedish (sv) | ISO-8859-1 | Simplified Chinese (zh_CN) | GBK |
Belarusian (be) | CP1251 | Simplified Chinese, Singapore (zh_SG) | GBK |
Bulgarian (bg) | CP1251 | Traditional Chinese, Hong Kong (zh_HK) | BIG5HKSCS |
Czech (cs) | ISO-8859-2 | Traditional Chinese (zh_TW) | BIG5 |
Greek (el) | ISO-8859-7 |
Manual pages in languages not in the list are not supported.
Dumps the whatis database contents in human-readable form |
|
Searches the whatis database and displays the short descriptions of system commands that contain a given string |
|
Creates or updates the pre-formatted manual pages |
|
Displays one-line summary information about a given manual page |
|
Formats and displays the requested manual page |
|
Creates or updates the whatis database |
|
Displays the contents of $MANPATH or (if $MANPATH is not set) a suitable search path based on the settings in man.conf and the user's environment |
|
Searches the whatis database and displays the short descriptions of system commands that contain the given keyword as a separate word |
|
Contains run-time support for man |
|
Contains run-time support for man |
The Tar package contains an archiving program.
Prepare Tar for compilation:
FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1 \ ./configure --prefix=/usr \ --bindir=/bin
The meaning of the configure options:
FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1
This forces the test for mknod
to be run as root. It is
generally considered dangerous to run this test as the
root user, but as it is being run on a system that has
only been partially built, overriding it is OK.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (about 3 SBU), issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install make -C doc install-html docdir=/usr/share/doc/tar-1.32
The Texinfo package contains programs for reading, writing, and converting info pages.
Prepare Texinfo for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
The meaning of the configure options:
--disable-static
In this case, the top-level configure script will
complain that this is an unrecognized option, but the
configure script for XSParagraph recognizes it and uses
it to disable installing a static XSParagraph.a
to /usr/lib/texinfo
.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Optionally, install the components belonging in a TeX installation:
make TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf install-tex
The meaning of the make parameter:
TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf
The TEXMF
makefile variable
holds the location of the root of the TeX tree if, for
example, a TeX package will be installed later.
The Info documentation system uses a plain text file to hold
its list of menu entries. The file is located at /usr/share/info/dir
. Unfortunately, due to
occasional problems in the Makefiles of various packages, it
can sometimes get out of sync with the info pages installed
on the system. If the /usr/share/info/dir
file ever needs to be
recreated, the following optional commands will accomplish
the task:
pushd /usr/share/info rm -v dir for f in * do install-info $f dir 2>/dev/null done popd
Used to read info pages which are similar to man pages, but often go much deeper than just explaining all the available command line options [For example, compare man bison and info bison.] |
|
Used to install info pages; it updates entries in the info index file |
|
Translates the given Texinfo source documents into info pages, plain text, or HTML |
|
Used to format the given Texinfo document into a Portable Document Format (PDF) file |
|
Converts Pod to Texinfo format |
|
Translate Texinfo source documentation to various other formats |
|
Used to format the given Texinfo document into a device-independent file that can be printed |
|
Used to format the given Texinfo document into a Portable Document Format (PDF) file |
|
Used to sort Texinfo index files |
The Vim package contains a powerful text editor.
If you prefer another editor—such as Emacs, Joe, or Nano—please refer to http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/editors.html for suggested installation instructions.
First, change the default location of the vimrc
configuration file to /etc
:
echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h
Prepare Vim for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To prepare the tests, ensure that the nobody
user can write to the sources
tree:
chown -Rv nobody .
Now run the tests as the nobody
user:
su nobody -s /bin/bash -c "LANG=en_US.UTF-8 make -j1 test" &> vim-test.log
The test suite outputs a lot of binary data to the screen. This can cause issues with the settings of the current terminal. The problem can be avoided by redirecting the output to a log file as shown above. A successful test will result in the words "ALL DONE" in the log file at completion.
Install the package:
make install
Many users are used to using vi instead of vim. To allow execution of vim when users habitually enter vi, create a symlink for both the binary and the man page in the provided languages:
ln -sv vim /usr/bin/vi for L in /usr/share/man/{,*/}man1/vim.1; do ln -sv vim.1 $(dirname $L)/vi.1 done
By default, Vim's documentation is installed in /usr/share/vim
. The following symlink
allows the documentation to be accessed via /usr/share/doc/vim-8.2.0190
, making it
consistent with the location of documentation for other
packages:
ln -sv ../vim/vim82/doc /usr/share/doc/vim-8.2.0190
If an X Window System is going to be installed on the LFS system, it may be necessary to recompile Vim after installing X. Vim comes with a GUI version of the editor that requires X and some additional libraries to be installed. For more information on this process, refer to the Vim documentation and the Vim installation page in the BLFS book at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/postlfs/vim.html.
By default, vim runs in vi-incompatible mode. This may be new to users who have used other editors in the past. The “nocompatible” setting is included below to highlight the fact that a new behavior is being used. It also reminds those who would change to “compatible” mode that it should be the first setting in the configuration file. This is necessary because it changes other settings, and overrides must come after this setting. Create a default vim configuration file by running the following:
cat > /etc/vimrc << "EOF"
" Begin /etc/vimrc
" Ensure defaults are set before customizing settings, not after
source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim
let skip_defaults_vim=1
set nocompatible
set backspace=2
set mouse=
syntax on
if (&term == "xterm") || (&term == "putty")
set background=dark
endif
" End /etc/vimrc
EOF
The set nocompatible
setting makes vim behave in a more useful
way (the default) than the vi-compatible manner. Remove the
“no” to keep the old vi behavior. The set backspace=2
setting allows
backspacing over line breaks, autoindents, and the start of
insert. The syntax on
parameter enables vim's syntax highlighting. The set mouse=
setting enables
proper pasting of text with the mouse when working in chroot
or over a remote connection. Finally, the if statement with the set background=dark
setting
corrects vim's
guess about the background color of some terminal emulators.
This gives the highlighting a better color scheme for use on
the black background of these programs.
Documentation for other available options can be obtained by running the following command:
vim -c ':options'
By default, Vim only installs spell files for the English
language. To install spell files for your preferred
language, download the *.spl
and optionally, the *.sug
files for your language and character encoding from
ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/runtime/spell/
and save them to /usr/share/vim/vim82/spell/
.
To use these spell files, some configuration in
/etc/vimrc
is needed, e.g.:
set spelllang=en,ru
set spell
For more information, see the appropriate README file located at the URL above.
Starts vim in ex mode |
|
Is a restricted version of view; no shell commands can be started and view cannot be suspended |
|
Is a restricted version of vim; no shell commands can be started and vim cannot be suspended |
|
Link to vim |
|
Starts vim in read-only mode |
|
Is the editor |
|
Edits two or three versions of a file with vim and shows differences |
|
Teaches the basic keys and commands of vim |
|
Creates a hex dump of the given file; it can also do the reverse, so it can be used for binary patching |
The systemd package contains programs for controlling the startup, running, and shutdown of the system.
Create a symlink to work around missing xsltproc:
ln -sf /tools/bin/true /usr/bin/xsltproc
Because we have not yet installed the final version of Util-Linux, create links to the libraries in the appropriate location:
for file in /tools/lib/lib{blkid,mount,uuid}.so*; do ln -sf $file /usr/lib/ done
Set up the man pages:
tar -xf ../systemd-man-pages-244.tar.xz
Remove tests that cannot be built in chroot:
sed '177,$ d' -i src/resolve/meson.build
Remove an unneeded group, render
, from the default udev rules:
sed -i 's/GROUP="render", //' rules.d/50-udev-default.rules.in
Prepare systemd for compilation:
mkdir -p build cd build PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/tools/lib/pkgconfig" \ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 \ meson --prefix=/usr \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --localstatedir=/var \ -Dblkid=true \ -Dbuildtype=release \ -Ddefault-dnssec=no \ -Dfirstboot=false \ -Dinstall-tests=false \ -Dkmod-path=/bin/kmod \ -Dldconfig=false \ -Dmount-path=/bin/mount \ -Drootprefix= \ -Drootlibdir=/lib \ -Dsplit-usr=true \ -Dsulogin-path=/sbin/sulogin \ -Dsysusers=false \ -Dumount-path=/bin/umount \ -Db_lto=false \ -Drpmmacrosdir=no \ ..
The meaning of the meson options:
-D*-path=*
These switches provide location of binaries needed by
systemd at runtime that have not yet been installed, or
who's pkgconfig files are currently only in
/tools/lib/pkgconfig
.
-Ddefault-dnssec=no
This switch turns off the experimental DNSSEC support.
-Dfirstboot=false
This switch prevents installation of systemd services responsible for setting up the system for the first time. They are not useful for LFS because everything is done manually.
-Dinstall-tests=false
This switch prevents installation of the compiled tests.
-Dldconfig=false
This switch prevents installation of a systemd unit that runs ldconfig at boot, which is not useful for source distributions such as LFS and makes the boot time longer. Remove it if the described feature is desired.
-Droot*
These switches ensure that core programs and shared libraries are installed in the subdirectories of the root partition.
-Dsplit-usr=true
This switch ensures that systemd will work on systems where /bin, /lib and /sbin directories are not symlinks to their /usr counterparts.
-Dsysusers=false
This switch prevents installation of systemd services
responsible for setting up the /etc/group
and /etc/passwd
files. Both files were
created earlier in this chapter.
-Drpmmacrosdir=no
This switch disables installation of RPM Macros for use with systemd because LFS does not support RPM.
Compile the package:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 ninja
Install the package:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 ninja install
Remove an unnecessary symbolic link:
rm -f /usr/bin/xsltproc
Create the /etc/machine-id
file
needed by systemd-journald:
systemd-machine-id-setup
Setup the basic target structure:
systemctl preset-all
Disable a service that is known to cause problems with systems that use a network configuration other than what is provided by systemd-networkd:
systemctl disable systemd-time-wait-sync.service
Cleanup symbolic links to Util-Linux libraries:
rm -fv /usr/lib/lib{blkid,uuid,mount}.so*
Used to query the firmware and boot manager settings |
|
Used to introspect and monitor the D-Bus bus |
|
Used to retrieve coredumps from the systemd journal |
|
Normally invokes shutdown with the
|
|
Used to query and change the system hostname and related settings |
|
The first process to be started when the kernel has initialized the hardware which takes over the boot process and starts all processes according to its configuration files |
|
Used to query the contents of the systemd journal |
|
Used to add and remove kernel and initramfs images to and from /boot |
|
Used to query and change the system locale and keyboard layout settings |
|
Used to introspect and control the state of the systemd Login Manager |
|
Used to introspect and control the state of the systemd Virtual Machine and Container Registration Manager |
|
Used to introspect the state of the network links as seen by systemd-networkd |
|
Used to attach or detach portable services from the local system |
|
Tells the kernel to halt the system and switch off the computer (see halt) |
|
Tells the kernel to reboot the system (see halt) |
|
Register DNS server and domain configuration with systemd-resolved |
|
Send control commands to the network name resolution manager, or resolve domain names, IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, DNS records, and services. |
|
Reports the previous and the current run-level, as
noted in the last run-level record in |
|
Brings the system down in a secure way, signaling all processes and notifying all logged-in users |
|
Used to introspect and control the state of the systemd system and service manager |
|
Used to determine system boot-up performance of the current boot |
|
Used to query a system password or passphrase from the user, using a question message specified on the command line |
|
Used to connect STDOUT and STDERR of a process with the Journal |
|
Recursively shows the contents of the selected Linux control group hierarchy in a tree |
|
Shows the top control groups of the local Linux control group hierarchy, ordered by their CPU, memory and disk I/O load |
|
Used to identify and compare configuration files in
|
|
Detects execution in a virtualized environment |
|
Used to escape strings for inclusion in systemd unit names |
|
Used to manage hardware database (hwdb) |
|
Generate and print id128 strings |
|
Used to execute a program with a shutdown, sleep or idle inhibitor lock taken |
|
Used by system installer tools to initialize the
machine ID stored in |
|
A tool to temporarily mount or auto-mount a drive. |
|
Used by daemon scripts to notify the init system about status changes |
|
Used to run a command or OS in a light-weight namespace container |
|
Used to query system and user paths |
|
Used to resolve domain names, IPV4 and IPv6 addresses, DNS resource records, and services |
|
Used to create and start a transient .service or a .scope unit and run the specified command in it |
|
A tool to listen on socket devices and launch a process upon connection. |
|
Creates, deletes and cleans up volatile and
temporary files and directories, based on the
configuration file format and location specified in
|
|
Unmount mount points |
|
Used to list or process pending systemd password requests |
|
Tells init which run-level to change to |
|
Used to query and change the system clock and its settings |
|
Generic udev administration tool: controls the udevd daemon, provides info from the Udev database, monitors uevents, waits for uevents to finish, tests udev configuration, and triggers uevents for a given device |
|
The main systemd utility library |
|
A library to access Udev device information |
D-Bus is a message bus system, a simple way for applications to talk to one another. D-Bus supplies both a system daemon (for events such as "new hardware device added" or "printer queue changed") and a per-user-login-session daemon (for general IPC needs among user applications). Also, the message bus is built on top of a general one-to-one message passing framework, which can be used by any two applications to communicate directly (without going through the message bus daemon).
Prepare D-Bus for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --localstatedir=/var \ --disable-static \ --disable-doxygen-docs \ --disable-xml-docs \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/dbus-1.12.16 \ --with-console-auth-dir=/run/console
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-console-auth-dir=/run/console
This specifies the location of the ConsoleKit auth directory.
Compile the package:
make
This package does come with a test suite, but it requires several packages that are not included in LFS. Instructions for running the test suite can be found in the BLFS book at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/general/dbus.html.
Install the package:
make install
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so) /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so
Create a symlink, so that D-Bus and systemd can use the same
machine-id
file:
ln -sfv /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus
Used to clean up leftover sockets in a directory |
|
The D-Bus message bus daemon |
|
Starts dbus-daemon from a shell script |
|
Monitors messages passing through a D-Bus message bus |
|
Starts a session bus instance of dbus-daemon from a shell script and starts a specified program in that session |
|
Sends a message to a D-Bus message bus |
|
A tool to help packages test D-Bus |
|
Updates environment variables that will be set for D-Bus session services |
|
Generates a universally unique ID |
|
Contains API functions used to communicate with the D-Bus message bus |
The Procps-ng package contains programs for monitoring processes.
Prepare procps-ng for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --exec-prefix= \ --libdir=/usr/lib \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/procps-ng-3.3.15 \ --disable-static \ --disable-kill \ --with-systemd
The meaning of the configure options:
--disable-kill
This switch disables building the kill command that will be installed by the Util-linux package.
Compile the package:
make
The test suite needs some custom modifications for LFS. Remove a test that fails when scripting does not use a tty device and fix two others. To run the test suite, run the following commands:
sed -i -r 's|(pmap_initname)\\\$|\1|' testsuite/pmap.test/pmap.exp sed -i '/set tty/d' testsuite/pkill.test/pkill.exp rm testsuite/pgrep.test/pgrep.exp make check
Install the package:
make install
Finally, move essential libraries to a location that can be
found if /usr
is not mounted.
mv -v /usr/lib/libprocps.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libprocps.so) /usr/lib/libprocps.so
Reports the amount of free and used memory (both physical and swap memory) in the system |
|
Looks up processes based on their name and other attributes |
|
Reports the PIDs of the given programs |
|
Signals processes based on their name and other attributes |
|
Reports the memory map of the given process |
|
Lists the current running processes |
|
Reports the current working directory of a process |
|
Displays detailed kernel slab cache information in real time |
|
Modifies kernel parameters at run time |
|
Prints a graph of the current system load average |
|
Displays a list of the most CPU intensive processes; it provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time |
|
Reports how long the system has been running, how many users are logged on, and the system load averages |
|
Reports virtual memory statistics, giving information about processes, memory, paging, block Input/Output (IO), traps, and CPU activity |
|
Shows which users are currently logged on, where, and since when |
|
Runs a given command repeatedly, displaying the first screen-full of its output; this allows a user to watch the output change over time |
|
Contains the functions used by most programs in this package |
The Util-linux package contains miscellaneous utility programs. Among them are utilities for handling file systems, consoles, partitions, and messages.
The FHS recommends using the /var/lib/hwclock
directory instead of the
usual /etc
directory as the
location for the adjtime
file.
First create a directory to enable storage for the
hwclock
program:
mkdir -pv /var/lib/hwclock
Remove the earlier created symlinks:
rm -vf /usr/include/{blkid,libmount,uuid}
Prepare Util-linux for compilation:
./configure ADJTIME_PATH=/var/lib/hwclock/adjtime \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/util-linux-2.35.1 \ --disable-chfn-chsh \ --disable-login \ --disable-nologin \ --disable-su \ --disable-setpriv \ --disable-runuser \ --disable-pylibmount \ --disable-static \ --without-python
The --disable and --without options prevent warnings about building components that require packages not in LFS or are inconsistent with programs installed by other packages.
Compile the package:
make
If desired, run the test suite as a non-root user:
Running the test suite as the root user can be harmful to your system. To run it, the CONFIG_SCSI_DEBUG option for the kernel must be available in the currently running system, and must be built as a module. Building it into the kernel will prevent booting. For complete coverage, other BLFS packages must be installed. If desired, this test can be run after rebooting into the completed LFS system and running:
bash tests/run.sh --srcdir=$PWD --builddir=$PWD
chown -Rv nobody . su nobody -s /bin/bash -c "PATH=$PATH make -k check"
Install the package:
make install
Informs the Linux kernel of new partitions |
|
Opens a tty port, prompts for a login name, and then invokes the login program |
|
Discards sectors on a device |
|
A command line utility to locate and print block device attributes |
|
Runs zone command on the given block device |
|
Allows users to call block device ioctls from the command line |
|
Displays a simple calendar |
|
Manipulates the partition table of the given device |
|
Modifies the state of CPUs |
|
Configures memory |
|
Displays and adjusts OOM-killer score |
|
Manipulates real-time attributes of a process |
|
Filters out reverse line feeds |
|
Filters nroff output for terminals that lack some capabilities, such as overstriking and half-lines |
|
Filters out the given columns |
|
Formats a given file into multiple columns |
|
Sets the function of the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination to a hard or a soft reset |
|
Asks the Linux kernel to remove a partition |
|
Dumps the kernel boot messages |
|
Ejects removable media |
|
Preallocates space to a file |
|
Low-level formats a floppy disk |
|
Manipulates the partition table of the given device |
|
Counts pages of file contents in core |
|
Finds a file system by label or Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) |
|
Is a command line interface to the libmount library for work with mountinfo, fstab and mtab files |
|
Acquires a file lock and then executes a command with the lock held |
|
Is used to check, and optionally repair, file systems |
|
Performs a consistency check on the Cramfs file system on the given device |
|
Performs a consistency check on the Minix file system on the given device |
|
Is a very simple wrapper around FIFREEZE/FITHAW ioctl kernel driver operations |
|
Discards unused blocks on a mounted filesystem |
|
Parses options in the given command line |
|
Dumps the given file in hexadecimal or in another given format |
|
Reads or sets the system's hardware clock, also called the Real-Time Clock (RTC) or Basic Input-Output System (BIOS) clock |
|
A symbolic link to setarch |
|
Gets or sets the io scheduling class and priority for a program |
|
Creates various IPC resources |
|
Removes the given Inter-Process Communication (IPC) resource |
|
Provides IPC status information |
|
Reports the size of an iso9660 file system |
|
Sends signals to processes |
|
Shows which users last logged in (and out),
searching back through the |
|
Shows the failed login attempts, as logged in
|
|
Attaches a line discipline to a serial line |
|
A symbolic link to setarch |
|
A symbolic link to setarch |
|
Enters the given message into the system log |
|
Displays lines that begin with the given string |
|
Sets up and controls loop devices |
|
Lists information about all or selected block devices in a tree-like format |
|
Prints CPU architecture information |
|
Prints information on IPC facilities currently employed in the system |
|
Lists local system locks |
|
Lists information about users, groups and system accounts |
|
Lists the ranges of available memory with their online status |
|
Lists namespaces |
|
Generates magic cookies (128-bit random hexadecimal numbers) for xauth |
|
Controls whether other users can send messages to the current user's terminal |
|
Builds a file system on a device (usually a hard disk partition) |
|
Creates a Santa Cruz Operations (SCO) bfs file system |
|
Creates a cramfs file system |
|
Creates a Minix file system |
|
Initializes the given device or file to be used as a swap area |
|
A filter for paging through text one screen at a time |
|
Attaches the file system on the given device to a specified directory in the file-system tree |
|
Checks if the directory is a mountpoint |
|
Shows the symbolic links in the given pathnames |
|
Runs a program with namespaces of other processes |
|
Tells the kernel about the presence and numbering of on-disk partitions |
|
Makes the given file system the new root file system of the current process |
|
Get and set a process' resource limits |
|
Bind a Linux raw character device to a block device |
|
Reads kernel profiling information |
|
Renames the given files, replacing a given string with another |
|
Alters the priority of running processes |
|
Asks the Linux kernel to resize a partition |
|
Reverses the lines of a given file |
|
Tool for enabling and disabling wireless devices |
|
Used to enter a system sleep state until specified wakeup time |
|
Makes a typescript of a terminal session |
|
Plays back typescripts using timing information |
|
Changes reported architecture in a new program environment and sets personality flags |
|
Runs the given program in a new session |
|
Sets terminal attributes |
|
A disk partition table manipulator |
|
Allows |
|
Allows to change swaparea UUID and label |
|
Disables devices and files for paging and swapping |
|
Enables devices and files for paging and swapping and lists the devices and files currently in use |
|
Switches to another filesystem as the root of the mount tree |
|
Tracks the growth of a log file; displays the last 10 lines of a log file, then continues displaying any new entries in the log file as they are created |
|
Retrieves or sets a process' CPU affinity |
|
A filter for translating underscores into escape sequences indicating underlining for the terminal in use |
|
Disconnects a file system from the system's file tree |
|
A symbolic link to setarch |
|
Runs a program with some namespaces unshared from parent |
|
Displays the content of the given login file in a more user-friendly format |
|
A daemon used by the UUID library to generate time-based UUIDs in a secure and guaranteed-unique fashion |
|
Creates new UUIDs. Each new UUID can reasonably be considered unique among all UUIDs created, on the local system and on other systems, in the past and in the future |
|
An utility to parse unique identifiers |
|
Displays the contents of a file or, by default, its standard input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users |
|
Shows hardware watchdog status |
|
Reports the location of the binary, source, and man page for the given command |
|
Wipes a filesystem signature from a device |
|
A symbolic link to setarch |
|
A program to set up and control zram (compressed ram disk) devices |
|
Contains routines for device identification and token extraction |
|
Contains routines for manipulating partition tables |
|
Contains routines for block device mounting and unmounting |
|
Contains routines for aiding screen output in tabular form |
|
Contains routines for generating unique identifiers for objects that may be accessible beyond the local system |
The E2fsprogs package contains the utilities for handling the
ext2
file system. It also
supports the ext3
and
ext4
journaling file systems.
The E2fsprogs documentation recommends that the package be built in a subdirectory of the source tree:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare E2fsprogs for compilation:
../configure --prefix=/usr \ --bindir=/bin \ --with-root-prefix="" \ --enable-elf-shlibs \ --disable-libblkid \ --disable-libuuid \ --disable-uuidd \ --disable-fsck
The meaning of the environment variable and configure options:
--with-root-prefix=""
and
--bindir=/bin
Certain programs (such as the e2fsck program) are
considered essential programs. When, for example,
/usr
is not mounted,
these programs still need to be available. They belong
in directories like /lib
and /sbin
. If this option
is not passed to E2fsprogs' configure, the programs are
installed into the /usr
directory.
--enable-elf-shlibs
This creates the shared libraries which some programs in this package use.
--disable-*
This prevents E2fsprogs from building and installing
the libuuid
and
libblkid
libraries, the
uuidd
daemon, and the
fsck
wrapper, as Util-Linux installs more recent versions.
Compile the package:
make
To run the tests, issue:
make check
One of the E2fsprogs tests will attempt to allocate 256 MB of memory. If you do not have significantly more RAM than this, be sure to enable sufficient swap space for the test. See Section 2.5, “Creating a File System on the Partition” and Section 2.7, “Mounting the New Partition” for details on creating and enabling swap space.
Install the package:
make install
Make the installed static libraries writable so debugging symbols can be removed later:
chmod -v u+w /usr/lib/{libcom_err,libe2p,libext2fs,libss}.a
This package installs a gzipped .info
file but doesn't update the
system-wide dir
file. Unzip
this file and then update the system dir
file using the following commands:
gunzip -v /usr/share/info/libext2fs.info.gz install-info --dir-file=/usr/share/info/dir /usr/share/info/libext2fs.info
If desired, create and install some additional documentation by issuing the following commands:
makeinfo -o doc/com_err.info ../lib/et/com_err.texinfo install -v -m644 doc/com_err.info /usr/share/info install-info --dir-file=/usr/share/info/dir /usr/share/info/com_err.info
Searches a device (usually a disk partition) for bad blocks |
|
Changes the attributes of files on an |
|
An error table compiler; it converts a table of
error-code names and messages into a C source file
suitable for use with the |
|
A file system debugger; it can be used to examine
and change the state of an |
|
Prints the super block and blocks group information for the file system present on a given device |
|
Reports free space fragmentation information |
|
Is used to check, and optionally repair
|
|
Is used to save critical |
|
Displays or changes the file system label on the
|
|
Checks MMP status of an ext4 filesystem |
|
Checks the contents of a mounted ext[234] filesystem |
|
Checks all mounted ext[234] filesystems for errors |
|
Replays the undo log undo_log for an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem found on a device [This can be used to undo a failed operation by an e2fsprogs program.] |
|
Ext4 filesystem encryption utility |
|
Online defragmenter for ext4 filesystems |
|
Reports on how badly fragmented a particular file might be |
|
By default checks |
|
By default checks |
|
By default checks |
|
Saves the output of a command in a log file |
|
Lists the attributes of files on a second extended file system |
|
Converts a table of command names and help messages
into a C source file suitable for use with the
|
|
Creates an |
|
By default creates |
|
By default creates |
|
By default creates |
|
Used to create a |
|
Can be used to enlarge or shrink an |
|
Adjusts tunable file system parameters on an
|
|
The common error display routine |
|
Used by dumpe2fs, chattr, and lsattr |
|
Contains routines to enable user-level programs to
manipulate an |
|
Used by debugfs |
Most programs and libraries are, by default, compiled with
debugging symbols included (with gcc's -g
option). This means that when
debugging a program or library that was compiled with debugging
information included, the debugger can provide not only memory
addresses, but also the names of the routines and variables.
However, the inclusion of these debugging symbols enlarges a program or library significantly. The following is an example of the amount of space these symbols occupy:
A bash binary with debugging symbols: 1200 KB
A bash binary without debugging symbols: 480 KB
Glibc and GCC files (/lib
and /usr/lib
) with
debugging symbols: 87 MB
Glibc and GCC files without debugging symbols: 16 MB
Sizes may vary depending on which compiler and C library were used, but when comparing programs with and without debugging symbols, the difference will usually be a factor between two and five.
Because most users will never use a debugger on their system software, a lot of disk space can be regained by removing these symbols. The next section shows how to strip all debugging symbols from the programs and libraries.
This section is optional. If the intended user is not a programmer and does not plan to do any debugging on the system software, the system size can be decreased by about 90 MB by removing the debugging symbols from binaries and libraries. This causes no inconvenience other than not being able to debug the software fully anymore.
Most people who use the commands mentioned below do not experience any difficulties. However, it is easy to make a typo and render the new system unusable, so before running the strip commands, it is a good idea to make a backup of the LFS system in its current state.
First place the debugging symbols for selected libraries in separate files. This debugging information is needed if running regression tests that use valgrind or gdb later in BLFS.
save_lib="ld-2.31.so libc-2.31.so libpthread-2.31.so libthread_db-1.0.so" cd /lib for LIB in $save_lib; do objcopy --only-keep-debug $LIB $LIB.dbg strip --strip-unneeded $LIB objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=$LIB.dbg $LIB done save_usrlib="libquadmath.so.0.0.0 libstdc++.so.6.0.27 libitm.so.1.0.0 libatomic.so.1.2.0" cd /usr/lib for LIB in $save_usrlib; do objcopy --only-keep-debug $LIB $LIB.dbg strip --strip-unneeded $LIB objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=$LIB.dbg $LIB done unset LIB save_lib save_usrlib
Before performing the stripping, take special care to ensure that none of the binaries that are about to be stripped are running:
exec /tools/bin/bash
Now the binaries and libraries can be safely stripped:
/tools/bin/find /usr/lib -type f -name \*.a \ -exec /tools/bin/strip --strip-debug {} ';' /tools/bin/find /lib /usr/lib -type f \( -name \*.so* -a ! -name \*dbg \) \ -exec /tools/bin/strip --strip-unneeded {} ';' /tools/bin/find /{bin,sbin} /usr/{bin,sbin,libexec} -type f \ -exec /tools/bin/strip --strip-all {} ';'
A large number of files will be reported as having their file format not recognized. These warnings can be safely ignored. These warnings indicate that those files are scripts instead of binaries.
Finally, clean up some extra files left around from running tests:
rm -rf /tmp/*
Now log out and reenter the chroot environment with an updated chroot command. From now on, use this updated chroot command any time you need to reenter the chroot environment after exiting:
logout chroot "$LFS" /usr/bin/env -i \ HOME=/root TERM="$TERM" \ PS1='(lfs chroot) \u:\w\$ ' \ PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin \ /bin/bash --login
The reason for this is that the programs in /tools
are no longer needed. For this reason
you can delete the /tools
directory if so desired.
Removing /tools
will also
remove the temporary copies of Tcl, Expect, and DejaGNU which
were used for running the toolchain tests. If you need these
programs later on, they will need to be recompiled and
re-installed. The BLFS book has instructions for this (see
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/).
If the virtual kernel file systems have been unmounted, either manually or through a reboot, ensure that the virtual kernel file systems are mounted when reentering the chroot. This process was explained in Section 6.2.2, “Mounting and Populating /dev” and Section 6.2.3, “Mounting Virtual Kernel File Systems”.
There were several static libraries that were not suppressed earlier in the chapter in order to satisfy the regression tests in several packages. These libraries are from binutils, bzip2, e2fsprogs, flex, libtool, and zlib. If desired, remove them now:
rm -f /usr/lib/lib{bfd,opcodes}.a rm -f /usr/lib/libbz2.a rm -f /usr/lib/lib{com_err,e2p,ext2fs,ss}.a rm -f /usr/lib/libltdl.a rm -f /usr/lib/libfl.a rm -f /usr/lib/libz.a
There are also several files installed in the /usr/lib and /usr/libexec directories with a file name extention of .la. These are "libtool archive" files and generally unneeded on a linux system. None of these are necessary at this point. To remove them, run:
find /usr/lib /usr/libexec -name \*.la -delete
For more information about libtool archive files, see the BLFS section "About Libtool Archive (.la) files".
This chapter discusses configuration files and systemd services. First, the general configuration files needed to set up networking are presented.
Second, issues that affect the proper setup of devices are discussed.
Third, configuring the system clock and keyboard layout.
Fourth, a brief introduction to the scripts and configuration files used when the user logs into the system.
And finally, configuring the systemd behavior.
This section only applies if a network card is to be configured.
Starting with version 209, systemd ships a network
configuration daemon called systemd-networkd which can
be used for basic network configuration. Additionally, since
version 213, DNS name resolution can be handled by
systemd-resolved in place
of a static /etc/resolv.conf
file. Both services are enabled by default.
Configuration files for systemd-networkd (and
systemd-resolved) can be
placed in /usr/lib/systemd/network
or /etc/systemd/network
. Files in /etc/systemd/network
have a higher priority
than the ones in /usr/lib/systemd/network
. There are three
types of configuration files: .link
, .netdev
and .network
files. For detailed descriptions
and example contents of these configuration files, consult
the systemd-link(5)
,
systemd-netdev(5)
and
systemd-network(5)
manual
pages.
Udev normally assigns network card interface names based on system physical characteristics such as enp2s1. If you are not sure what your interface name is, you can always run ip link after you have booted your system.
For most systems, there is only one network interface for each type of connection. For example, the classic interface name for a wired connection is eth0. A wireless connection will usually have the name wifi0 or wlan0.
If you prefer to use the classic or customized network interface names, there are three alternative ways to do that:
Mask udev's .link file for the default policy:
ln -s /dev/null /etc/systemd/network/99-default.link
Create a manual naming scheme, for example by naming the interfaces something like "internet0", "dmz0", or "lan0". For that, create .link files in /etc/systemd/network/, that choose an explicit name or a better naming scheme for one, some, or all of your interfaces. For example:
cat > /etc/systemd/network/10-ether0.link << "EOF"
[Match]
# Change the MAC address as appropriate for your network device
MACAddress=12:34:45:78:90:AB
[Link]
Name=ether0
EOF
See the man page systemd.link(5) for more information.
In /boot/grub/grub.cfg, pass the option net.ifnames=0 on the kernel command line.
The command below creates a basic configuration file for a Static IP setup (using both systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved):
cat > /etc/systemd/network/10-eth-static.network << "EOF"
[Match]
Name=<network-device-name>
[Network]
Address=192.168.0.2/24
Gateway=192.168.0.1
DNS=192.168.0.1
Domains=<Your Domain Name>
EOF
Multiple DNS entries can be added if you have more than one
DNS server. Do not include DNS or Domains entries if you
intend to use a static /etc/resolv.conf
file.
If the system is going to be connected to the Internet, it
will need some means of Domain Name Service (DNS) name
resolution to resolve Internet domain names to IP addresses,
and vice versa. This is best achieved by placing the IP
address of the DNS server, available from the ISP or network
administrator, into /etc/resolv.conf
.
If using another means to configure your network
interfaces (ex: ppp, network-manager, etc.), or if using
any type of local resolver (ex: bind, dnsmasq, etc.), or
any other software that generates an /etc/resolv.conf
(ex: resolvconf), the
systemd-resolved
service should not be used.
When using systemd-resolved for DNS
configuration, it creates the file /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf
. Create
a symlink in /etc
to use the
generated file:
ln -sfv /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
If a static /etc/resolv.conf
is desired, create it by running the following command:
cat > /etc/resolv.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/resolv.conf
domain <Your Domain Name>
nameserver <IP address of your primary nameserver>
nameserver <IP address of your secondary nameserver>
# End /etc/resolv.conf
EOF
The domain
statement can be
omitted or replaced with a search
statement. See the man page for
resolv.conf for more details.
Replace <IP address of the
nameserver>
with the IP address of the DNS
most appropriate for the setup. There will often be more
than one entry (requirements demand secondary servers for
fallback capability). If you only need or want one DNS
server, remove the second nameserver line from the file.
The IP address may also be a router on the local network.
The Google Public IPv4 DNS addresses are 8.8.8.8
and 8.8.4.4
for IPv4, and
2001:4860:4860::8888
and
2001:4860:4860::8844
for
IPv6.
During the boot process, the file /etc/hostname
is used for establishing the
system's hostname.
Create the /etc/hostname
file
and enter a hostname by running:
echo "<lfs>
" > /etc/hostname
<lfs>
needs
to be replaced with the name given to the computer. Do not
enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) here. That
information is put in the /etc/hosts
file.
Decide on a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), and possible
aliases for use in the /etc/hosts
file. If using static addresses,
you'll also need to decide on an IP address. The syntax for a
hosts file entry is:
IP_address myhost.example.org aliases
Unless the computer is to be visible to the Internet (i.e., there is a registered domain and a valid block of assigned IP addresses—most users do not have this), make sure that the IP address is in the private network IP address range. Valid ranges are:
Private Network Address Range Normal Prefix
10.0.0.1 - 10.255.255.254 8
172.x.0.1 - 172.x.255.254 16
192.168.y.1 - 192.168.y.254 24
x can be any number in the range 16-31. y can be any number in the range 0-255.
A valid private IP address could be 192.168.1.1. A valid FQDN for this IP could be lfs.example.org.
Even if not using a network card, a valid FQDN is still required. This is necessary for certain programs to operate correctly.
If using DHCP, DHCPv6, IPv6 Autoconfiguration, or if a
network card is not going to be configured, create the
/etc/hosts
file by running the
following command:
cat > /etc/hosts << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 <FQDN>
<HOSTNAME>
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
# End /etc/hosts
EOF
The ::1 entry is the IPv6 counterpart of 127.0.0.1 and represents the IPv6 loopback interface. 127.0.1.1 is a loopback entry reserved specifically for the FQDN.
If using a static address, create the /etc/hosts
file by running this command
instead:
cat > /etc/hosts << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 <FQDN>
<HOSTNAME>
<192.168.0.2>
<FQDN>
<HOSTNAME>
[alias1] [alias2] ...
::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
# End /etc/hosts
EOF
The <192.168.0.2>
,
<FQDN>
, and
<HOSTNAME>
values need to be changed for specific uses or requirements
(if assigned an IP address by a network/system administrator
and the machine will be connected to an existing network).
The optional alias name(s) can be omitted.
In Chapter 6, we installed the Udev package when systemd was built. Before we go into the details regarding how this works, a brief history of previous methods of handling devices is in order.
Linux systems in general traditionally used a static device
creation method, whereby a great many device nodes were created
under /dev
(sometimes literally
thousands of nodes), regardless of whether the corresponding
hardware devices actually existed. This was typically done via
a MAKEDEV script,
which contains a number of calls to the mknod program with the
relevant major and minor device numbers for every possible
device that might exist in the world.
Using the Udev method, only those devices which are detected by
the kernel get device nodes created for them. Because these
device nodes will be created each time the system boots, they
will be stored on a devtmpfs
file system (a virtual file system that resides entirely in
system memory). Device nodes do not require much space, so the
memory that is used is negligible.
In February 2000, a new filesystem called devfs
was merged into the 2.3.46 kernel
and was made available during the 2.4 series of stable
kernels. Although it was present in the kernel source itself,
this method of creating devices dynamically never received
overwhelming support from the core kernel developers.
The main problem with the approach adopted by devfs
was the way it handled device
detection, creation, and naming. The latter issue, that of
device node naming, was perhaps the most critical. It is
generally accepted that if device names are allowed to be
configurable, then the device naming policy should be up to a
system administrator, not imposed on them by any particular
developer(s). The devfs
file
system also suffered from race conditions that were inherent
in its design and could not be fixed without a substantial
revision to the kernel. It was marked as deprecated for a
long period – due to a lack of maintenance – and
was finally removed from the kernel in June, 2006.
With the development of the unstable 2.5 kernel tree, later
released as the 2.6 series of stable kernels, a new virtual
filesystem called sysfs
came
to be. The job of sysfs
is to
export a view of the system's hardware configuration to
userspace processes. With this userspace-visible
representation, the possibility of developing a userspace
replacement for devfs
became
much more realistic.
The sysfs
filesystem was
mentioned briefly above. One may wonder how sysfs
knows about the devices present
on a system and what device numbers should be used for
them. Drivers that have been compiled into the kernel
directly register their objects with a sysfs
(devtmpfs internally) as they are
detected by the kernel. For drivers compiled as modules,
this registration will happen when the module is loaded.
Once the sysfs
filesystem
is mounted (on /sys), data which the drivers register with
sysfs
are available to
userspace processes and to udevd for processing (including
modifications to device nodes).
Device files are created by the kernel by the devtmpfs
filesystem. Any driver that
wishes to register a device node will go through the
devtmpfs
(via the driver
core) to do it. When a devtmpfs
instance is mounted on
/dev
, the device node will
initially be created with a fixed name, permissions, and
owner.
A short time later, the kernel will send a uevent to
udevd. Based
on the rules specified in the files within the /etc/udev/rules.d
, /lib/udev/rules.d
, and /run/udev/rules.d
directories,
udevd will
create additional symlinks to the device node, or change
its permissions, owner, or group, or modify the internal
udevd
database entry (name) for that object.
The rules in these three directories are numbered and all
three directories are merged together. If udevd can't find a rule
for the device it is creating, it will leave the
permissions and ownership at whatever devtmpfs
used initially.
Device drivers compiled as modules may have aliases built
into them. Aliases are visible in the output of the
modinfo
program and are usually related to the bus-specific
identifiers of devices supported by a module. For example,
the snd-fm801 driver
supports PCI devices with vendor ID 0x1319 and device ID
0x0801, and has an alias of “pci:v00001319d00000801sv*sd*bc04sc01i*”.
For most devices, the bus driver exports the alias of the
driver that would handle the device via sysfs
. E.g., the /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:0d.0/modalias
file might contain the string “pci:v00001319d00000801sv00001319sd00001319bc04sc01i00”.
The default rules provided with Udev will cause
udevd to call
out to /sbin/modprobe with the
contents of the MODALIAS
uevent
environment variable (which should be the same as the
contents of the modalias
file
in sysfs), thus loading all modules whose aliases match
this string after wildcard expansion.
In this example, this means that, in addition to snd-fm801, the obsolete (and unwanted) forte driver will be loaded if it is available. See below for ways in which the loading of unwanted drivers can be prevented.
The kernel itself is also able to load modules for network protocols, filesystems and NLS support on demand.
There are a few possible problems when it comes to automatically creating device nodes.
Udev will only load a module if it has a bus-specific alias
and the bus driver properly exports the necessary aliases
to sysfs
. In other cases,
one should arrange module loading by other means. With
Linux-5.5.3, Udev is known to load properly-written drivers
for INPUT, IDE, PCI, USB, SCSI, SERIO, and FireWire
devices.
To determine if the device driver you require has the
necessary support for Udev, run modinfo with the module
name as the argument. Now try locating the device directory
under /sys/bus
and check
whether there is a modalias
file there.
If the modalias
file exists
in sysfs
, the driver
supports the device and can talk to it directly, but
doesn't have the alias, it is a bug in the driver. Load the
driver without the help from Udev and expect the issue to
be fixed later.
If there is no modalias
file
in the relevant directory under /sys/bus
, this means that the kernel
developers have not yet added modalias support to this bus
type. With Linux-5.5.3, this is the case with ISA busses.
Expect this issue to be fixed in later kernel versions.
Udev is not intended to load “wrapper” drivers such as snd-pcm-oss and non-hardware drivers such as loop at all.
If the “wrapper” module only enhances
the functionality provided by some other module (e.g.,
snd-pcm-oss enhances
the functionality of snd-pcm by making the sound
cards available to OSS applications), configure
modprobe to
load the wrapper after Udev loads the wrapped module. To do
this, add a “softdep” line to the
corresponding /etc/modprobe.d/
file. For example:
<filename>
.conf
softdep snd-pcm post: snd-pcm-oss
Note that the “softdep” command also allows
pre:
dependencies, or a
mixture of both pre:
and
post:
. See the modprobe.d(5)
manual page for more
information on “softdep” syntax and
capabilities.
If the module in question is not a wrapper and is useful by
itself, configure the modules bootscript to
load this module on system boot. To do this, add the module
name to the /etc/sysconfig/modules
file on a separate
line. This works for wrapper modules too, but is suboptimal
in that case.
Either don't build the module, or blacklist it in a
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
file as
done with the forte
module in the example below:
blacklist forte
Blacklisted modules can still be loaded manually with the explicit modprobe command.
This usually happens if a rule unexpectedly matches a device. For example, a poorly-written rule can match both a SCSI disk (as desired) and the corresponding SCSI generic device (incorrectly) by vendor. Find the offending rule and make it more specific, with the help of the udevadm info command.
This may be another manifestation of the previous problem.
If not, and your rule uses sysfs
attributes, it may be a kernel
timing issue, to be fixed in later kernels. For now, you
can work around it by creating a rule that waits for the
used sysfs
attribute and
appending it to the /etc/udev/rules.d/10-wait_for_sysfs.rules
file (create this file if it does not exist). Please notify
the LFS Development list if you do so and it helps.
Further text assumes that the driver is built statically into the kernel or already loaded as a module, and that you have already checked that Udev doesn't create a misnamed device.
Udev has no information needed to create a device node if a
kernel driver does not export its data to sysfs
. This is most common with third
party drivers from outside the kernel tree. Create a static
device node in /lib/udev/devices
with the appropriate
major/minor numbers (see the file devices.txt
inside the kernel
documentation or the documentation provided by the third
party driver vendor). The static device node will be copied
to /dev
by udev.
This is due to the fact that Udev, by design, handles uevents and loads modules in parallel, and thus in an unpredictable order. This will never be “fixed”. You should not rely upon the kernel device names being stable. Instead, create your own rules that make symlinks with stable names based on some stable attributes of the device, such as a serial number or the output of various *_id utilities installed by Udev. See Section 7.4, “Managing Devices” and Section 7.2, “General Network Configuration” for examples.
Additional helpful documentation is available at the following sites:
A Userspace Implementation of devfs
http://www.kroah.com/linux/talks/ols_2003_udev_paper/Reprint-Kroah-Hartman-OLS2003.pdf
The sysfs
Filesystem
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mochel/doc/papers/ols-2005/mochel.pdf
As explained in Section 7.3,
“Overview of Device and Module Handling”, the
order in which devices with the same function appear in
/dev
is essentially random.
E.g., if you have a USB web camera and a TV tuner, sometimes
/dev/video0
refers to the
camera and /dev/video1
refers
to the tuner, and sometimes after a reboot the order changes
to the opposite one. For all classes of hardware except sound
cards and network cards, this is fixable by creating Udev
rules for custom persistent symlinks. The case of network
cards is covered separately in Section 7.2,
“General Network Configuration”, and sound
card configuration can be found in
BLFS.
For each of your devices that is likely to have this problem
(even if the problem doesn't exist in your current Linux
distribution), find the corresponding directory under
/sys/class
or /sys/block
. For video devices, this may be
/sys/class/video4linux/video
. Figure out the
attributes that identify the device uniquely (usually, vendor
and product IDs and/or serial numbers work):
X
udevadm info -a -p /sys/class/video4linux/video0
Then write rules that create the symlinks, e.g.:
cat > /etc/udev/rules.d/83-duplicate_devs.rules << "EOF"
# Persistent symlinks for webcam and tuner
KERNEL=="video*", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1910", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0d81", \
SYMLINK+="webcam"
KERNEL=="video*", ATTRS{device}=="0x036f", ATTRS{vendor}=="0x109e", \
SYMLINK+="tvtuner"
EOF
The result is that /dev/video0
and /dev/video1
devices still
refer randomly to the tuner and the web camera (and thus
should never be used directly), but there are symlinks
/dev/tvtuner
and /dev/webcam
that always point to the
correct device.
This section discusses how to configure the systemd-timedated system service, which configures system clock and timezone.
If you cannot remember whether or not the hardware clock is set
to UTC, find out by running the hwclock --localtime --show
command. This will display what the current time is according
to the hardware clock. If this time matches whatever your watch
says, then the hardware clock is set to local time. If the
output from hwclock is not local time,
chances are it is set to UTC time. Verify this by adding or
subtracting the proper amount of hours for the timezone to the
time shown by hwclock. For example, if you
are currently in the MST timezone, which is also known as GMT
-0700, add seven hours to the local time.
systemd-timedated
reads /etc/adjtime
, and depending
on the contents of the file, it sets the clock to either UTC or
local time.
Create the /etc/adjtime
file with
the following contents if your hardware clock is set to local
time:
cat > /etc/adjtime << "EOF"
0.0 0 0.0
0
LOCAL
EOF
If /etc/adjtime
isn't present at
first boot, systemd-timedated will assume
that hardware clock is set to UTC and adjust the file according
to that.
You can also use the timedatectl utility to tell systemd-timedated if your hardware clock is set to UTC or local time:
timedatectl set-local-rtc 1
timedatectl can also be used to change system time and time zone.
To change your current system time, issue:
timedatectl set-time YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
Hardware clock will also be updated accordingly.
To change your current time zone, issue:
timedatectl set-timezone TIMEZONE
You can get a list of available time zones by running:
timedatectl list-timezones
Please note that the timedatectl command can be used only on a system booted with systemd.
Starting with version 213, systemd ships a daemon called systemd-timesyncd which can be used to synchronize the system time with remote NTP servers.
The daemon is not intended as a replacement for the well established NTP daemon, but as a client only implementation of the SNTP protocol which can be used for less advanced tasks and on resource limited systems.
Starting with systemd version 216, the systemd-timesyncd daemon is enabled by default. If you want to disable it, issue the following command:
systemctl disable systemd-timesyncd
The /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf
file can be used to change the NTP servers that systemd-timesyncd
synchronizes with.
Please note that when system clock is set to Local Time, systemd-timesyncd won't update hardware clock.
This section discusses how to configure the systemd-vconsole-setup system service, which configures the virtual console font and console keymap.
The systemd-vconsole-setup
service reads the /etc/vconsole.conf
file for configuration
information. Decide which keymap and screen font will be used.
Various language-specific HOWTOs can also help with this, see
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/other-lang.html.
Examine localectl
list-keymaps output for a list of valid console
keymaps. Look in /usr/share/consolefonts
directory for valid
screen fonts.
The /etc/vconsole.conf
file
should contain lines of the form: VARIABLE="value". The
following variables are recognized:
This variable specifies the key mapping table for the
keyboard. If unset, it defaults to us
.
This variable can be used to configure a second toggle keymap and is unset by default.
This variable specifies the font used by the virtual console.
This variable specifies the console map to be used.
This variable specifies the Unicode font map.
An example for a German keyboard and console is given below:
cat > /etc/vconsole.conf << "EOF"
KEYMAP=de-latin1
FONT=Lat2-Terminus16
EOF
You can change KEYMAP value at runtime by using the localectl utility:
localectl set-keymap MAP
Please note that the localectl command can be used only on a system booted with systemd.
You can also use localectl utility with the corresponding parameters to change X11 keyboard layout, model, variant and options:
localectl set-x11-keymap LAYOUT [MODEL] [VARIANT] [OPTIONS]
To list possible values for localectl set-x11-keymap parameters, run localectl with parameters listed below:
Show known X11 keyboard mapping models.
Show known X11 keyboard mapping layouts.
Show known X11 keyboard mapping variants.
Show known X11 keyboard mapping options.
Using any of the parameters listed above requires the XKeyboard Config package from BLFS.
The /etc/locale.conf
below sets
some environment variables necessary for native language
support. Setting them properly results in:
The output of programs translated into the native language
Correct classification of characters into letters, digits and other classes. This is necessary for bash to properly accept non-ASCII characters in command lines in non-English locales
The correct alphabetical sorting order for the country
Appropriate default paper size
Correct formatting of monetary, time, and date values
Replace <ll>
below with the two-letter code for the desired language (e.g.,
“en”) and <CC>
with the two-letter
code for the appropriate country (e.g., “GB”).
<charmap>
should be replaced with the canonical charmap for your chosen
locale. Optional modifiers such as “@euro”
may also be present.
The list of all locales supported by Glibc can be obtained by running the following command:
locale -a
Charmaps can have a number of aliases, e.g., “ISO-8859-1” is also referred to as
“iso8859-1” and “iso88591”. Some applications cannot
handle the various synonyms correctly (e.g., require that
“UTF-8” is written as “UTF-8”,
not “utf8”), so it is safest in most
cases to choose the canonical name for a particular locale. To
determine the canonical name, run the following command, where
<locale name>
is the output given by locale
-a for your preferred locale (“en_GB.iso88591” in our example).
LC_ALL=<locale name>
locale charmap
For the “en_GB.iso88591” locale, the above command will print:
ISO-8859-1
This results in a final locale setting of “en_GB.ISO-8859-1”. It is important that the locale found using the heuristic above is tested prior to it being added to the Bash startup files:
LC_ALL=<locale name> locale language LC_ALL=<locale name> locale charmap LC_ALL=<locale name> locale int_curr_symbol LC_ALL=<locale name> locale int_prefix
The above commands should print the language name, the character encoding used by the locale, the local currency, and the prefix to dial before the telephone number in order to get into the country. If any of the commands above fail with a message similar to the one shown below, this means that your locale was either not installed in Chapter 6 or is not supported by the default installation of Glibc.
locale: Cannot set LC_* to default locale: No such file or directory
If this happens, you should either install the desired locale using the localedef command, or consider choosing a different locale. Further instructions assume that there are no such error messages from Glibc.
Some packages beyond LFS may also lack support for your chosen locale. One example is the X library (part of the X Window System), which outputs the following error message if the locale does not exactly match one of the character map names in its internal files:
Warning: locale not supported by Xlib, locale set to C
In several cases Xlib expects that the character map will be listed in uppercase notation with canonical dashes. For instance, "ISO-8859-1" rather than "iso88591". It is also possible to find an appropriate specification by removing the charmap part of the locale specification. This can be checked by running the locale charmap command in both locales. For example, one would have to change "de_DE.ISO-8859-15@euro" to "de_DE@euro" in order to get this locale recognized by Xlib.
Other packages can also function incorrectly (but may not necessarily display any error messages) if the locale name does not meet their expectations. In those cases, investigating how other Linux distributions support your locale might provide some useful information.
Once the proper locale settings have been determined, create
the /etc/locale.conf
file:
cat > /etc/locale.conf << "EOF"
LANG=<ll>_<CC>.<charmap><@modifiers>
EOF
Note that you can modify /etc/locale.conf
with the systemd
localectl
utility. To use localectl for the example
above, run:
localectl set-locale LANG="<ll>_<CC>.<charmap><@modifiers>
"
You can also specify other language specific environment
variables such as LANG
, LC_CTYPE
, LC_NUMERIC
or any other environment variable from locale output. Just separate
them with a space. An example where LANG
is set as en_US.UTF-8 but LC_CTYPE
is set as just en_US is:
localectl set-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LC_CTYPE="en_US"
Please note that the localectl command can be used only on a system booted with systemd.
The “C” (default) and “en_US” (the recommended one for United States English users) locales are different. “C” uses the US-ASCII 7-bit character set, and treats bytes with the high bit set as invalid characters. That's why, e.g., the ls command substitutes them with question marks in that locale. Also, an attempt to send mail with such characters from Mutt or Pine results in non-RFC-conforming messages being sent (the charset in the outgoing mail is indicated as “unknown 8-bit”). So you can use the “C” locale only if you are sure that you will never need 8-bit characters.
UTF-8 based locales are not supported well by many programs. Work is in progress to document and, if possible, fix such problems, see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/introduction/locale-issues.html.
The inputrc
file is the
configuration file for the Readline library, which provides
editing capabilities while the user is entering a line from the
terminal. It works by translating keyboard inputs into specific
actions. Readline is used by Bash and most other shells as well
as many other applications.
Most people do not need user-specific functionality so the
command below creates a global /etc/inputrc
used by everyone who logs in. If
you later decide you need to override the defaults on a
per-user basis, you can create a .inputrc
file in the user's home directory
with the modified mappings.
For more information on how to edit the inputrc
file, see info bash under the
Readline Init File
section. info
readline is also a good source of information.
Below is a generic global inputrc
along with comments to explain what the various options do.
Note that comments cannot be on the same line as commands.
Create the file using the following command:
cat > /etc/inputrc << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/inputrc
# Modified by Chris Lynn <[email protected]>
# Allow the command prompt to wrap to the next line
set horizontal-scroll-mode Off
# Enable 8bit input
set meta-flag On
set input-meta On
# Turns off 8th bit stripping
set convert-meta Off
# Keep the 8th bit for display
set output-meta On
# none, visible or audible
set bell-style none
# All of the following map the escape sequence of the value
# contained in the 1st argument to the readline specific functions
"\eOd": backward-word
"\eOc": forward-word
# for linux console
"\e[1~": beginning-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line
"\e[5~": beginning-of-history
"\e[6~": end-of-history
"\e[3~": delete-char
"\e[2~": quoted-insert
# for xterm
"\eOH": beginning-of-line
"\eOF": end-of-line
# for Konsole
"\e[H": beginning-of-line
"\e[F": end-of-line
# End /etc/inputrc
EOF
The shells
file contains a list
of login shells on the system. Applications use this file to
determine whether a shell is valid. For each shell a single
line should be present, consisting of the shell's path,
relative to the root of the directory structure (/).
For example, this file is consulted by chsh to determine whether an unprivileged user may change the login shell for her own account. If the command name is not listed, the user will be denied of change.
It is a requirement for applications such as GDM which does not populate the face
browser if it can't find /etc/shells
, or FTP daemons which
traditionally disallow access to users with shells not included
in this file.
cat > /etc/shells << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/shells
/bin/sh
/bin/bash
# End /etc/shells
EOF
The /etc/systemd/system.conf
file contains a set of options to control basic systemd
operations. The default file has all entries commented out
with the default settings indicated. This file is where the
log level may be changed as well as some basic logging
settings. See the systemd-system.conf(5)
manual page for
details on each configuration option.
The normal behavior for systemd is to clear the screen at the end of the boot sequence. If desired, this behavior may be changed by running the following command:
mkdir -pv /etc/systemd/system/[email protected]
cat > /etc/systemd/system/[email protected]/noclear.conf << EOF
[Service]
TTYVTDisallocate=no
EOF
The boot messages can always be reviewed by using the
journalctl -b
command as the root user.
By default, /tmp
is created as
a tmpfs. If this is not desired, it can be overridden by the
following:
ln -sfv /dev/null /etc/systemd/system/tmp.mount
Alternatively, if a a separate partition for /tmp
is desired, specify that partition in
an /etc/fstab
entry.
Do not create the symbolic link above if a separate
partition is used for /tmp
.
This will prevent the root file system (/) from being
remounted r/w and make the system unusable when booted.
There are several services that create or delete files or directories:
systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
The system location for the configuration files is
/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/*.conf
. The
local configuration files are in /etc/tmpfiles.d
. Files in /etc/tmpfiles.d
override files with the
same name in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d
. See tmpfiles.d(5)
manual page for file format
details.
Note that the syntax for the /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/*.conf
files can be
confusing. For example, the default deletion of files in the
/tmp directory is located in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf
with the line:
q /tmp 1777 root root 10d
The type field, q, discusses creating a subvolume with quotas which is really only applicable to btrfs filesystems. It references type v which in turn references type d (directory). This then creates the specified directory if is is not present and adjusts the permissions and ownership as specified. Contents of the directory will be subject to time based cleanup if the age argument is specified.
If the default parameters are not desired, then the file
should be copied to /etc/tmpfiles.d
and edited as desired. For
example:
mkdir -p /etc/tmpfiles.d cp /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf /etc/tmpfiles.d
The parameter of a unit can be overriden by creating a
directory and a configuration file in /etc/systemd/system
. For example:
mkdir -pv /etc/systemd/system/foobar.service.d
cat > /etc/systemd/system/foobar.service.d/foobar.conf << EOF
[Service]
Restart=always
RestartSec=30
EOF
See systemd.unit(5)
manual page
for more information. After creating the configuration file,
run systemctl
daemon-reload
and systemctl restart foobar
to
activate the changes to a service.
Rather than plain shell scripts used in SysVinit or BSD style init systems, systemd uses a unified format for different types of startup files (or units). The command systemctl is used to enable, disable, control state, and obtain status of unit files. Here are some examples of frequently used commands:
systemctl list-units -t
<service>
[--all]: lists loaded unit files of
type service.
systemctl list-units -t
<target>
[--all]: lists loaded unit files of
type target.
systemctl show -p Wants
<multi-user.target>
:
shows all units that depend on the multi-user target.
Targets are special unit files that are anogalous to
runlevels under SysVinit.
systemctl status
<servicename.service>
:
shows the status of the servicename service. The
.service extension can be omitted if there are no other
unit files with the same name, such as .socket files
(which create a listening socket that provides similar
functionality to inetd/xinetd).
Logging on a system booted with systemd is handled with systemd-journald (by default), rather than a typical unix syslog daemon. You can also add a normal syslog daemon and have both work side by side if desired. The systemd-journald program stores journal entries in a binary format rather than a plain text log file. To assist with parsing the file, the command journalctl is provided. Here are some examples of frequently used commands:
journalctl -r: shows all contents of the journal in reverse chronological order.
journalctl -u UNIT
:
shows the journal entries associated with the specified
UNIT file.
journalctl -b[=ID] -r: shows the journal entries since last successful boot (or for boot ID) in reverse chronological order.
journalctl -f: povides functionality similar to tail -f (follow).
Beginning with systemd-230, all user processes are killed
when a user session is ended, even if nohup is used, or the
process uses the daemon()
or
setsid()
functions. This is a
deliberate change from a historically permissive environment
to a more restrictive one. The new behavior may cause issues
if you depend on long running programs (e.g., screen or tmux) to remain active
after ending your user session. There are three ways to
enable lingering processes to remain after a user session is
ended.
Enable process lingering for
only selected users: Normal users have
permission to enable process lingering with the command
loginctl
enable-linger for their own user.
System administrators can use the same command with a
user
argument
to enable for a user. That user can then use the
systemd-run command
to start long running processes. For example:
systemd-run --scope
--user /usr/bin/screen. If you enable
lingering for your user, the [email protected] will remain
even after all login sessions are closed, and will
automatically start at system boot. This has the
advantage of explicitly allowing and disallowing
processes to run after the user session has ended, but
breaks backwards compatibility with tools like
nohup and
utilities that use deamon()
.
Enable system-wide process
lingering: You can set KillUserProcesses=no
in
/etc/systemd/logind.conf
to enable process lingering globally for all users.
This has the benefit of leaving the old method
available to all users at the expense of explicit
control.
Disable at
build-time: You can enable lingering by
default while building systemd by adding the switch
-Ddefault-kill-user-processes=false
to the meson command for
systemd. This completely disables the ability of
systemd to kill user processes at session end.
It is time to make the LFS system bootable. This chapter
discusses creating an fstab
file,
building a kernel for the new LFS system, and installing the
GRUB boot loader so that the LFS system can be selected for
booting at startup.
The /etc/fstab
file is used by
some programs to determine where file systems are to be mounted
by default, in which order, and which must be checked (for
integrity errors) prior to mounting. Create a new file systems
table like this:
cat > /etc/fstab << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/fstab
# file system mount-point type options dump fsck
# order
/dev/<xxx>
/ <fff>
defaults 1 1
/dev/<yyy>
swap swap pri=1 0 0
# End /etc/fstab
EOF
Replace <xxx>
,
<yyy>
, and
<fff>
with the
values appropriate for the system, for example, sda2
, sda5
, and
ext4
. For details on the six
fields in this file, see man 5
fstab.
Filesystems with MS-DOS or Windows origin (i.e. vfat, ntfs,
smbfs, cifs, iso9660, udf) need a special option, utf8, in
order for non-ASCII characters in file names to be interpreted
properly. For non-UTF-8 locales, the value of iocharset
should be set to be the same as the
character set of the locale, adjusted in such a way that the
kernel understands it. This works if the relevant character set
definition (found under File systems -> Native Language
Support when configuring the kernel) has been compiled into the
kernel or built as a module. However, if the character set of
the locale is UTF-8, the corresponding option iocharset=utf8
would make the file system case
sensitive. To fix this, use the special option utf8
instead of iocharset=utf8
, for UTF-8 locales. The
“codepage” option is also needed for
vfat and smbfs filesystems. It should be set to the codepage
number used under MS-DOS in your country. For example, in order
to mount USB flash drives, a ru_RU.KOI8-R user would need the
following in the options portion of its mount line in
/etc/fstab
:
noauto,user,quiet,showexec,codepage=866,iocharset=koi8r
The corresponding options fragment for ru_RU.UTF-8 users is:
noauto,user,quiet,showexec,codepage=866,utf8
Note that using iocharset
is the
default for iso8859-1
(which keeps
the file system case insensitive), and the utf8
option tells the kernel to convert the
file names using UTF-8 so they can be interpreted in the UTF-8
locale.
It is also possible to specify default codepage and iocharset
values for some filesystems during kernel configuration. The
relevant parameters are named “Default NLS
Option” (CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT)
, “Default Remote NLS
Option” (CONFIG_SMB_NLS_DEFAULT
), “Default codepage for
FAT” (CONFIG_FAT_DEFAULT_CODEPAGE
), and “Default iocharset for
FAT” (CONFIG_FAT_DEFAULT_IOCHARSET
). There is no way
to specify these settings for the ntfs filesystem at kernel
compilation time.
It is possible to make the ext3 filesystem reliable across
power failures for some hard disk types. To do this, add the
barrier=1
mount option to the
appropriate entry in /etc/fstab
.
To check if the disk drive supports this option, run
hdparm on the applicable disk drive. For example, if:
hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep NCQ
returns non-empty output, the option is supported.
Note: Logical Volume Management (LVM) based partitions cannot
use the barrier
option.
The Linux package contains the Linux kernel.
Building the kernel involves a few steps—configuration,
compilation, and installation. Read the README
file in the kernel source tree for
alternative methods to the way this book configures the
kernel.
Prepare for compilation by running the following command:
make mrproper
This ensures that the kernel tree is absolutely clean. The kernel team recommends that this command be issued prior to each kernel compilation. Do not rely on the source tree being clean after un-tarring.
Configure the kernel via a menu-driven interface. For general information on kernel configuration see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/kernel-configuration.txt. BLFS has some information regarding particular kernel configuration requirements of packages outside of LFS at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/longindex.html#kernel-config-index. Additional information about configuring and building the kernel can be found at http://www.kroah.com/lkn/
A good starting place for setting up the kernel configuration is to run make defconfig. This will set the base configuration to a good state that takes your current system architecture into account.
Be sure to enable/disable/set the following features or the system might not work correctly or boot at all:
General setup --> [ ] Enable deprecated sysfs features to support old userspace tools [CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED] [ ] Enable deprecated sysfs features by default [CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2] [*] open by fhandle syscalls [CONFIG_FHANDLE] [ ] Auditing support [CONFIG_AUDIT] [*] Control Group support [CONFIG_CGROUPS] Processor type and features ---> [*] Enable seccomp to safely compute untrusted bytecode [CONFIG_SECCOMP] Networking support ---> Networking options ---> <*> The IPv6 protocol [CONFIG_IPV6] Device Drivers ---> Generic Driver Options ---> [ ] Support for uevent helper [CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER] [*] Maintain a devtmpfs filesystem to mount at /dev [CONFIG_DEVTMPFS] [ ] Fallback user-helper invocation for firmware loading [CONFIG_FW_LOADER_USER_HELPER] Firmware Drivers ---> [*] Export DMI identification via sysfs to userspace [CONFIG_DMIID] File systems ---> [*] Inotify support for userspace [CONFIG_INOTIFY_USER] <*> Kernel automounter version 4 support (also supports v3) [CONFIG_AUTOFS4_FS] Pseudo filesystems ---> [*] Tmpfs POSIX Access Control Lists [CONFIG_TMPFS_POSIX_ACL] [*] Tmpfs extended attributes [CONFIG_TMPFS_XATTR] Kernel hacking ---> Choose kernel unwinder (Frame pointer unwinder) ---> [CONFIG_UNWINDER_FRAME_POINTER]
While "The IPv6 Protocol" is not strictly required, it is highly recommended by the systemd developers.
If your host hardware is using UEFI, then the 'make defconfig' above should automatically add in some EFI-related kernel options.
In order to allow your LFS kernel to be booted from within your host's UEFI boot environment, your kernel must have this option selected:
Processor type and features ---> [*] EFI stub support [CONFIG_EFI_STUB]
A fuller description of managing UEFI environments from within LFS is covered by the lfs-uefi.txt hint at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/lfs-uefi.txt.
The rationale for the above configuration items:
Support
for uevent helper
Having this option set may interfere with device management when using Udev/Eudev.
Maintain a
devtmpfs
This will create automated device nodes which are populated by the kernel, even without Udev running. Udev then runs on top of this, managing permissions and adding symlinks. This configuration item is required for all users of Udev/Eudev.
make menuconfig
The meaning of optional make environment variables:
LANG=<host_LANG_value>
LC_ALL=
This establishes the locale setting to the one used on the host. This may be needed for a proper menuconfig ncurses interface line drawing on a UTF-8 linux text console.
If used, be sure to replace <host_LANG_value>
by the value of the $LANG
variable from your host. You can alternatively use
instead the host's value of $LC_ALL
or $LC_CTYPE
.
Alternatively, make
oldconfig may be more appropriate in some
situations. See the README
file
for more information.
If desired, skip kernel configuration by copying the kernel
config file, .config
, from the
host system (assuming it is available) to the unpacked
linux-5.5.3
directory. However,
we do not recommend this option. It is often better to
explore all the configuration menus and create the kernel
configuration from scratch.
Compile the kernel image and modules:
make
If using kernel modules, module configuration in /etc/modprobe.d
may be required.
Information pertaining to modules and kernel configuration is
located in Section 7.3,
“Overview of Device and Module Handling” and
in the kernel documentation in the linux-5.5.3/Documentation
directory. Also,
modprobe.d(5)
may be of
interest.
Unless module support has been disabled in the kernel configuration, install the modules with:
make modules_install
After kernel compilation is complete, additional steps are
required to complete the installation. Some files need to be
copied to the /boot
directory.
If the host system has a separate /boot partition, the files copied below should go there. The easiest way to do that is to bind /boot on the host (outside chroot) to /mnt/lfs/boot before proceeding. As the root user in the host system:
mount --bind /boot /mnt/lfs/boot
The path to the kernel image may vary depending on the platform being used. The filename below can be changed to suit your taste, but the stem of the filename should be vmlinuz to be compatible with the automatic setup of the boot process described in the next section. The following command assumes an x86 architecture:
cp -iv arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-5.5.3-lfs-9.1-systemd-rc1
System.map
is a symbol file for
the kernel. It maps the function entry points of every
function in the kernel API, as well as the addresses of the
kernel data structures for the running kernel. It is used as
a resource when investigating kernel problems. Issue the
following command to install the map file:
cp -iv System.map /boot/System.map-5.5.3
The kernel configuration file .config
produced by the make menuconfig step above
contains all the configuration selections for the kernel that
was just compiled. It is a good idea to keep this file for
future reference:
cp -iv .config /boot/config-5.5.3
Install the documentation for the Linux kernel:
install -d /usr/share/doc/linux-5.5.3 cp -r Documentation/* /usr/share/doc/linux-5.5.3
It is important to note that the files in the kernel source directory are not owned by root. Whenever a package is unpacked as user root (like we did inside chroot), the files have the user and group IDs of whatever they were on the packager's computer. This is usually not a problem for any other package to be installed because the source tree is removed after the installation. However, the Linux source tree is often retained for a long time. Because of this, there is a chance that whatever user ID the packager used will be assigned to somebody on the machine. That person would then have write access to the kernel source.
In many cases, the configuration of the kernel will need to be updated for packages that will be installed later in BLFS. Unlike other packages, it is not necessary to remove the kernel source tree after the newly built kernel is installed.
If the kernel source tree is going to be retained, run
chown -R 0:0
on the linux-5.5.3
directory
to ensure all files are owned by user root.
Some kernel documentation recommends creating a symlink
from /usr/src/linux
pointing
to the kernel source directory. This is specific to kernels
prior to the 2.6 series and must
not be created on an LFS system as it can cause
problems for packages you may wish to build once your base
LFS system is complete.
The headers in the system's include
directory (/usr/include
) should always be the ones against which
Glibc was compiled, that is, the sanitised headers
installed in Section 6.7,
“Linux-5.5.3 API Headers”. Therefore, they
should never be
replaced by either the raw kernel headers or any other
kernel sanitized headers.
Most of the time Linux modules are loaded automatically, but
sometimes it needs some specific direction. The program that
loads modules, modprobe or insmod, uses /etc/modprobe.d/usb.conf
for this purpose.
This file needs to be created so that if the USB drivers
(ehci_hcd, ohci_hcd and uhci_hcd) have been built as modules,
they will be loaded in the correct order; ehci_hcd needs to
be loaded prior to ohci_hcd and uhci_hcd in order to avoid a
warning being output at boot time.
Create a new file /etc/modprobe.d/usb.conf
by running the
following:
install -v -m755 -d /etc/modprobe.d
cat > /etc/modprobe.d/usb.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/modprobe.d/usb.conf
install ohci_hcd /sbin/modprobe ehci_hcd ; /sbin/modprobe -i ohci_hcd ; true
install uhci_hcd /sbin/modprobe ehci_hcd ; /sbin/modprobe -i uhci_hcd ; true
# End /etc/modprobe.d/usb.conf
EOF
Contains all the configuration selections for the kernel |
|
The engine of the Linux system. When turning on the computer, the kernel is the first part of the operating system that gets loaded. It detects and initializes all components of the computer's hardware, then makes these components available as a tree of files to the software and turns a single CPU into a multitasking machine capable of running scores of programs seemingly at the same time |
|
A list of addresses and symbols; it maps the entry points and addresses of all the functions and data structures in the kernel |
Configuring GRUB incorrectly can render your system inoperable without an alternate boot device such as a CD-ROM. This section is not required to boot your LFS system. You may just want to modify your current boot loader, e.g. Grub-Legacy, GRUB2, or LILO.
Ensure that an emergency boot disk is ready to “rescue” the computer if the
computer becomes unusable (un-bootable). If you do not
already have a boot device, you can create one. In order for
the procedure below to work, you need to jump ahead to BLFS
and install xorriso
from the
libisoburn package.
cd /tmp grub-mkrescue --output=grub-img.iso xorriso -as cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrw blank=as_needed grub-img.iso
To boot LFS on host systems that have UEFI enabled, the kernel needs to have been built with the CONFIG_EFI_STUB capabality described in the previous section. However, LFS can be booted using GRUB2 without such an addition. To do this, the UEFI Mode and Secure Boot capabilities in the host system's BIOS need to be turned off. For details, see the lfs-uefi.txt hint at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/lfs-uefi.txt.
GRUB uses its own naming structure for drives and partitions
in the form of (hdn,m), where n is the hard drive number and
m is the partition
number. The hard drive number starts from zero, but the
partition number starts from one for normal partitions and
five for extended partitions. Note that this is different
from earlier versions where both numbers started from zero.
For example, partition sda1
is
(hd0,1) to GRUB and
sdb3
is (hd1,3). In contrast to Linux,
GRUB does not consider CD-ROM drives to be hard drives. For
example, if using a CD on hdb
and a second hard drive on hdc
,
that second hard drive would still be (hd1).
GRUB works by writing data to the first physical track of the hard disk. This area is not part of any file system. The programs there access GRUB modules in the boot partition. The default location is /boot/grub/.
The location of the boot partition is a choice of the user
that affects the configuration. One recommendation is to have
a separate small (suggested size is 100 MB) partition just
for boot information. That way each build, whether LFS or
some commercial distro, can access the same boot files and
access can be made from any booted system. If you choose to
do this, you will need to mount the separate partition, move
all files in the current /boot
directory (e.g. the linux kernel you just built in the
previous section) to the new partition. You will then need to
unmount the partition and remount it as /boot
. If you do this, be sure to update
/etc/fstab
.
Using the current lfs partition will also work, but configuration for multiple systems is more difficult.
Using the above information, determine the appropriate
designator for the root partition (or boot partition, if a
separate one is used). For the following example, it is
assumed that the root (or separate boot) partition is
sda2
.
Install the GRUB files into /boot/grub
and set up the boot track:
The following command will overwrite the current boot loader. Do not run the command if this is not desired, for example, if using a third party boot manager to manage the Master Boot Record (MBR).
grub-install /dev/sda
If the system has been booted using UEFI, grub-install will try to
install files for the x86_64-efi target, but those
files have not been installed in chapter 6. If this is the
case, add --target i386-pc
to
the command above.
Generate /boot/grub/grub.cfg
:
cat > /boot/grub/grub.cfg << "EOF"
# Begin /boot/grub/grub.cfg
set default=0
set timeout=5
insmod ext2
set root=(hd0,2)
menuentry "GNU/Linux, Linux 5.5.3-lfs-9.1-systemd-rc1" {
linux /boot/vmlinuz-5.5.3-lfs-9.1-systemd-rc1 root=/dev/sda2 ro
}
EOF
From GRUB's perspective, the kernel files are relative to the partition used. If you used a separate /boot partition, remove /boot from the above linux line. You will also need to change the set root line to point to the boot partition.
GRUB is an extremely powerful program and it provides a tremendous number of options for booting from a wide variety of devices, operating systems, and partition types. There are also many options for customization such as graphical splash screens, playing sounds, mouse input, etc. The details of these options are beyond the scope of this introduction.
There is a command, grub-mkconfig, that can write a configuration file automatically. It uses a set of scripts in /etc/grub.d/ and will destroy any customizations that you make. These scripts are designed primarily for non-source distributions and are not recommended for LFS. If you install a commercial Linux distribution, there is a good chance that this program will be run. Be sure to back up your grub.cfg file.
Well done! The new LFS system is installed! We wish you much success with your shiny new custom-built Linux system.
It may be a good idea to create an /etc/lfs-release
file. By having this file,
it is very easy for you (and for us if you need to ask for help
at some point) to find out which LFS version is installed on
the system. Create this file by running:
echo 9.1-systemd-rc1 > /etc/lfs-release
Two files describing the installed system may be used by packages that will be installed on the system, either in binary form or by building them.
The first one shows the status of your new system with respect to the Linux Standards Base (LSB). To create this file, run:
cat > /etc/lsb-release << "EOF" DISTRIB_ID="Linux From Scratch" DISTRIB_RELEASE="9.1-systemd-rc1" DISTRIB_CODENAME="<your name here>" DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Linux From Scratch" EOF
The second one contains roughly the same information, and is used by systemd and some graphical desktop environments. To create this file, run:
cat > /etc/os-release << "EOF" NAME="Linux From Scratch" VERSION="9.1-systemd-rc1" ID=lfs PRETTY_NAME="Linux From Scratch 9.1-systemd-rc1" VERSION_CODENAME="<your name here>" EOF
Be sure to put some sort of customization for the fields 'DISTRIB_CODENAME' and 'VERSION_CODENAME' to make the system uniquely yours.
Now that you have finished the book, do you want to be counted as an LFS user? Head over to http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/cgi-bin/lfscounter.php and register as an LFS user by entering your name and the first LFS version you have used.
Let's reboot into LFS now.
Now that all of the software has been installed, it is time to reboot your computer. However, you should be aware of a few things. The system you have created in this book is quite minimal, and most likely will not have the functionality you would need to be able to continue forward. By installing a few extra packages from the BLFS book while still in our current chroot environment, you can leave yourself in a much better position to continue on once you reboot into your new LFS installation. Here are some suggestions:
A text mode browser such as Lynx will allow you to easily view the BLFS book in one virtual terminal, while building packages in another.
The GPM package will allow you to perform copy/paste actions in your virtual terminals.
If you are in a situation where static IP configuration does not meet your networking requirements, installing a package such as dhcpcd or the client portion of dhcp may be useful.
Installing sudo may be useful for building packages as a non-root user and easily installing the resulting packages in your new system.
If you want to access your new system from a remote system within a comfortable GUI environment, install openssh.
To make fetching files over the internet easier, install wget.
If one or more of your disk drives have a GUID partition table (GPT), either gptfdisk or parted will be useful.
Finally, a review of the following configuration files is also appropriate at this point.
/etc/bashrc
/etc/dircolors
/etc/fstab
/etc/hosts
/etc/inputrc
/etc/profile
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/vimrc
/root/.bash_profile
/root/.bashrc
Now that we have said that, let's move on to booting our shiny new LFS installation for the first time! First exit from the chroot environment:
logout
Then unmount the virtual file systems:
umount -v $LFS/dev/pts umount -v $LFS/dev umount -v $LFS/run umount -v $LFS/proc umount -v $LFS/sys
Unmount the LFS file system itself:
umount -v $LFS
If multiple partitions were created, unmount the other partitions before unmounting the main one, like this:
umount -v $LFS/usr umount -v $LFS/home umount -v $LFS
Now, reboot the system with:
shutdown -r now
Assuming the GRUB boot loader was set up as outlined earlier, the menu is set to boot LFS 9.1-rc1 automatically.
When the reboot is complete, the LFS system is ready for use and more software may be added to suit your needs.
Thank you for reading this LFS book. We hope that you have found this book helpful and have learned more about the system creation process.
Now that the LFS system is installed, you may be wondering “What next?” To answer that question, we have compiled a list of resources for you.
Maintenance
Bugs and security notices are reported regularly for all software. Since an LFS system is compiled from source, it is up to you to keep abreast of such reports. There are several online resources that track such reports, some of which are shown below:
CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team)
CERT has a mailing list that publishes security alerts concerning various operating systems and applications. Subscription information is available at http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/signup.html.
Bugtraq
Bugtraq is a full-disclosure computer security mailing list. It publishes newly discovered security issues, and occasionally potential fixes for them. Subscription information is available at http://www.securityfocus.com/archive.
Beyond Linux From Scratch
The Beyond Linux From Scratch book covers installation procedures for a wide range of software beyond the scope of the LFS Book. The BLFS project is located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/.
LFS Hints
The LFS Hints are a collection of educational documents submitted by volunteers in the LFS community. The hints are available at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/list.html.
Mailing lists
There are several LFS mailing lists you may subscribe to if you are in need of help, want to stay current with the latest developments, want to contribute to the project, and more. See Chapter 1 - Mailing Lists for more information.
The Linux Documentation Project
The goal of The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is to collaborate on all of the issues of Linux documentation. The TLDP features a large collection of HOWTOs, guides, and man pages. It is located at http://www.tldp.org/.
ABI |
Application Binary Interface |
ALFS |
Automated Linux From Scratch |
API |
Application Programming Interface |
ASCII |
American Standard Code for Information Interchange |
BIOS |
Basic Input/Output System |
BLFS |
Beyond Linux From Scratch |
BSD |
Berkeley Software Distribution |
chroot |
change root |
CMOS |
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor |
COS |
Class Of Service |
CPU |
Central Processing Unit |
CRC |
Cyclic Redundancy Check |
CVS |
Concurrent Versions System |
DHCP |
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol |
DNS |
Domain Name Service |
EGA |
Enhanced Graphics Adapter |
ELF |
Executable and Linkable Format |
EOF |
End of File |
EQN |
equation |
ext2 |
second extended file system |
ext3 |
third extended file system |
ext4 |
fourth extended file system |
FAQ |
Frequently Asked Questions |
FHS |
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard |
FIFO |
First-In, First Out |
FQDN |
Fully Qualified Domain Name |
FTP |
File Transfer Protocol |
GB |
Gigabytes |
GCC |
GNU Compiler Collection |
GID |
Group Identifier |
GMT |
Greenwich Mean Time |
HTML |
Hypertext Markup Language |
IDE |
Integrated Drive Electronics |
IEEE |
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers |
IO |
Input/Output |
IP |
Internet Protocol |
IPC |
Inter-Process Communication |
IRC |
Internet Relay Chat |
ISO |
International Organization for Standardization |
ISP |
Internet Service Provider |
KB |
Kilobytes |
LED |
Light Emitting Diode |
LFS |
Linux From Scratch |
LSB |
Linux Standard Base |
MB |
Megabytes |
MBR |
Master Boot Record |
MD5 |
Message Digest 5 |
NIC |
Network Interface Card |
NLS |
Native Language Support |
NNTP |
Network News Transport Protocol |
NPTL |
Native POSIX Threading Library |
OSS |
Open Sound System |
PCH |
Pre-Compiled Headers |
PCRE |
Perl Compatible Regular Expression |
PID |
Process Identifier |
PTY |
pseudo terminal |
QOS |
Quality Of Service |
RAM |
Random Access Memory |
RPC |
Remote Procedure Call |
RTC |
Real Time Clock |
SBU |
Standard Build Unit |
SCO |
The Santa Cruz Operation |
SHA1 |
Secure-Hash Algorithm 1 |
TLDP |
The Linux Documentation Project |
TFTP |
Trivial File Transfer Protocol |
TLS |
Thread-Local Storage |
UID |
User Identifier |
umask |
user file-creation mask |
USB |
Universal Serial Bus |
UTC |
Coordinated Universal Time |
UUID |
Universally Unique Identifier |
VC |
Virtual Console |
VGA |
Video Graphics Array |
VT |
Virtual Terminal |
We would like to thank the following people and organizations for their contributions to the Linux From Scratch Project.
Gerard Beekmans <gerard AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Creator
Bruce Dubbs <bdubbs AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Managing Editor
Jim Gifford <jim AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – CLFS Project Co-Leader
Pierre Labastie <pierre AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – BLFS Editor and ALFS Lead
DJ Lucas <dj AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS and BLFS Editor
Ken Moffat <ken AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – BLFS Editor
Countless other people on the various LFS and BLFS mailing lists who helped make this book possible by giving their suggestions, testing the book, and submitting bug reports, instructions, and their experiences with installing various packages.
Manuel Canales Esparcia <macana AT macana-es D0T com> – Spanish LFS translation project
Johan Lenglet <johan AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – French LFS translation project until 2008
Jean-Philippe Mengual <jmengual AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – French LFS translation project 2008-2016
Julien Lepiller <jlepiller AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – French LFS translation project 2017-present
Anderson Lizardo <lizardo AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – Portuguese LFS translation project
Thomas Reitelbach <tr AT erdfunkstelle D0T de> – German LFS translation project
Anton Maisak <info AT linuxfromscratch D0T org D0T ru> – Russian LFS translation project
Elena Shevcova <helen AT linuxfromscratch D0T org D0T ru> – Russian LFS translation project
Scott Kveton <scott AT osuosl D0T org> – lfs.oregonstate.edu mirror
William Astle <lost AT l-w D0T net> – ca.linuxfromscratch.org mirror
Eujon Sellers <[email protected]> – lfs.introspeed.com mirror
Justin Knierim <[email protected]> – lfs-matrix.net mirror
Manuel Canales Esparcia <manuel AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – lfsmirror.lfs-es.info mirror
Luis Falcon <Luis Falcon> – torredehanoi.org mirror
Guido Passet <guido AT primerelay D0T net> – nl.linuxfromscratch.org mirror
Bastiaan Jacques <baafie AT planet D0T nl> – lfs.pagefault.net mirror
Sven Cranshoff <sven D0T cranshoff AT lineo D0T be> – lfs.lineo.be mirror
Scarlet Belgium – lfs.scarlet.be mirror
Sebastian Faulborn <info AT aliensoft D0T org> – lfs.aliensoft.org mirror
Stuart Fox <stuart AT dontuse D0T ms> – lfs.dontuse.ms mirror
Ralf Uhlemann <admin AT realhost D0T de> – lfs.oss-mirror.org mirror
Antonin Sprinzl <Antonin D0T Sprinzl AT tuwien D0T ac D0T at> – at.linuxfromscratch.org mirror
Fredrik Danerklint <fredan-lfs AT fredan D0T org> – se.linuxfromscratch.org mirror
Franck <franck AT linuxpourtous D0T com> – lfs.linuxpourtous.com mirror
Philippe Baque <baque AT cict D0T fr> – lfs.cict.fr mirror
Vitaly Chekasin <gyouja AT pilgrims D0T ru> – lfs.pilgrims.ru mirror
Benjamin Heil <kontakt AT wankoo D0T org> – lfs.wankoo.org mirror
Anton Maisak <info AT linuxfromscratch D0T org D0T ru> – linuxfromscratch.org.ru mirror
Satit Phermsawang <satit AT wbac D0T ac D0T th> – lfs.phayoune.org mirror
Shizunet Co.,Ltd. <info AT shizu-net D0T jp> – lfs.mirror.shizu-net.jp mirror
Init World <http://www.initworld.com/> – lfs.initworld.com mirror
Jason Andrade <jason AT dstc D0T edu D0T au> – au.linuxfromscratch.org mirror
Christine Barczak <theladyskye AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Book Editor
Archaic <[email protected]> – LFS Technical Writer/Editor, HLFS Project Leader, BLFS Editor, Hints and Patches Project Maintainer
Matthew Burgess <matthew AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Project Leader, LFS Technical Writer/Editor
Nathan Coulson <nathan AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS-Bootscripts Maintainer
Timothy Bauscher
Robert Briggs
Ian Chilton
Jeroen Coumans <jeroen AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – Website Developer, FAQ Maintainer
Manuel Canales Esparcia <manuel AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS/BLFS/HLFS XML and XSL Maintainer
Alex Groenewoud – LFS Technical Writer
Marc Heerdink
Jeremy Huntwork <jhuntwork AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Technical Writer, LFS LiveCD Maintainer
Bryan Kadzban <bryan AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Technical Writer
Mark Hymers
Seth W. Klein – FAQ maintainer
Nicholas Leippe <nicholas AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – Wiki Maintainer
Anderson Lizardo <lizardo AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – Website Backend-Scripts Maintainer
Randy McMurchy <randy AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – BLFS Project Leader, LFS Editor
Dan Nicholson <dnicholson AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS and BLFS Editor
Alexander E. Patrakov <alexander AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Technical Writer, LFS Internationalization Editor, LFS Live CD Maintainer
Simon Perreault
Scot Mc Pherson <scot AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS NNTP Gateway Maintainer
Douglas R. Reno <renodr AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – Systemd Editor
Ryan Oliver <ryan AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – CLFS Project Co-Leader
Greg Schafer <gschafer AT zip D0T com D0T au> – LFS Technical Writer and Architect of the Next Generation 64-bit-enabling Build Method
Jesse Tie-Ten-Quee – LFS Technical Writer
James Robertson <jwrober AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – Bugzilla Maintainer
Tushar Teredesai <tushar AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – BLFS Book Editor, Hints and Patches Project Leader
Jeremy Utley <jeremy AT linuxfromscratch D0T org> – LFS Technical Writer, Bugzilla Maintainer, LFS-Bootscripts Maintainer
Zack Winkles <zwinkles AT gmail D0T com> – LFS Technical Writer
Every package built in LFS relies on one or more other packages in order to build and install properly. Some packages even participate in circular dependencies, that is, the first package depends on the second which in turn depends on the first. Because of these dependencies, the order in which packages are built in LFS is very important. The purpose of this page is to document the dependencies of each package built in LFS.
For each package we build, we have listed three, and sometimes four, types of dependencies. The first lists what other packages need to be available in order to compile and install the package in question. The second lists what packages, in addition to those on the first list, need to be available in order to run the test suites. The third list of dependencies are packages that require this package to be built and installed in its final location before they are built and installed. In most cases, this is because these packages will hard code paths to binaries within their scripts. If not built in a certain order, this could result in paths of /tools/bin/[binary] being placed inside scripts installed to the final system. This is obviously not desirable.
The last list of dependencies are optional packages that are not addressed in LFS, but could be useful to the user. These packages may have additional mandatory or optional dependencies of their own. For these dependencies, the recommended practice is to install them after completion of the LFS book and then go back and rebuild the LFS package. In several cases, re-installation is addressed in BLFS.
This book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License.
Computer instructions may be extracted from the book under the MIT License.
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