Current Project Team Members

• Gerard Beekmans <gerard@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Project Organization/Leadership.

• Matthew Burgess <matthew@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS General Package maintainer, LFS Book editor.

• Craig Colton <meerkats@bellsouth.net> -- LFS, ALFS, BLFS and Hints Project logo creator.

• Jeroen Coumans <jeroen@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Website developer, FAQ maintainer.

• Bruce Dubbs <bruce@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Quality Assurance Team Leader, BLFS Book editor.

• Alex Groenewoud <alex@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Book editor.

• Mark Hymers <markh@linuxfromscratch.org> -- CVS maintainer, BLFS Book Creator, former LFS Book editor.

• James Iwanek <iwanek@linuxfromscratch.org> -- System Administration team member.

• Nicholas Leippe <nicholas@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Wiki maintainer.

• Anderson Lizardo <lizardo@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Website backend scripts creator and maintainer.

• Bill Maltby <bill@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Project Organization/Leadership.

• Scot Mc Pherson <scot@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS NNTP gateway maintainer.

• Ryan Oliver <ryan@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Testing Team Leader, co- creator of PLFS.

• James Robertson <jwrober@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Bugzilla maintainer, Wiki developer, LFS Book editor.

• Greg Schafer <greg@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Toolchain Maintainer, LFS Book editor, co-creator of PLFS.

• Tushar Teredesai <tushar@linuxfromscratch.org> -- BLFS Book editor, Hints and Patches Projects maintainer.

• Jeremy Utley <jeremy@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Book editor, Bugzilla maintainer.

• Countless other people on the various LFS and BLFS mailinglists who are making this book happen by giving their suggestions, testing the book and submitting bug reports, instructions and their experiences with installing various packages.

Translators

• Manuel Canales Esparcia <lfs-es@listas.escomposlinux.org> -- Spanish LFS translation project.

• Johan Lenglet <johan@linuxfromscratch.org> -- French LFS translation project.

• Anderson Lizardo <lizardo@linuxfromscratch.org> -- Portugese LFS translation project.

Mirrors

• Jason Andrade <jason@dstc.edu.au> -- au.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• doc.cs.univ- paris8.fr <archive@doc.cs.univ-paris8.fr> -- www2.fr.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• William Astle <lost@l-w.net> -- ca.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Baque <baque@cict.fr> -- lfs.cict.fr mirror.

• Stephan Brendel <stevie@stevie20.de> -- lfs.netservice-neuss.de mirror.

• Vrije Universiteit Brussels -- linuxfromscratch.rave.org mirror.

• Ian Chilton <ian@ichilton.co.uk> -- us.linuxfromscratch.org, linuxfromscratch.co.uk mirrors.

• Mikhail Pastukhov <miha@xuy.biz> -- lfs.130th.net mirror.

• Fredrik Danerklint: se.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• David D.W. Downey <pgpkeys@aeternamtech.com> -- lfs.learnbyexample.com mirror.

• Eduardo B. Fonseca <ebf@aedsolucoes.com.br> -- br.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Hagen Herrschaft <hrx@hrxnet.de> -- de.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Tim Jackson <tim@idge.net> -- linuxfromscratch.idge.net mirror.

• Barna Koczka <barna@siker.hu> -- hu.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Simon Nicoll <sime@dot-sime.com> -- uk.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Ervin S. Odisho <ervin@activalink.net> -- lfs.activalink.net mirror.

• Guido Passet <guido@primerelay.net> -- nl.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Jeremy Polen <jpolen@rackspace.com> -- us2.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• UK Mirror Service -- linuxfromscratch.mirror.co.uk mirror.

• Thomas Skyt <thomas@sofagang.dk> -- dk.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Antonin Sprinzl <Antonin.Sprinzl@tuwien.ac.at> -- at.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Dag Stenstad <dag@stenstad.net> for providing no.linuxfromscratch.org and Ian Chilton for running it.

• Jesse Tie-Ten- Quee <highos@linuxfromscratch.org> for providing and running the linuxfromscratch.org server.

• Alexander Velin <velin@zadnik.org> -- bg.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

• Martin Voss <Martin.Voss@ada.de> -- lfs.linux-matrix.net mirror.

• Pui Yong <pyng@spam.averse.net> -- sg.linuxfromscratch.org mirror.

Donations

• Dean Benson <dean@vipersoft.co.uk> for several monetary contributions.

• DREAMWVR.COM for their past sponsorship of donating various resources to the LFS and related sub projects.

• Hagen Herrschaft <hrx@hrxnet.de> for donating a P4 2.2Ghz system.

• O'Reilly for donating books on SQL and PHP.

• VA Software who, on behalf of Linux.com, donated a VA Linux 420 (former StartX SP2) workstation.

• Mark Stone for donating shadowfax the linuxfromscratch.org server.

• Jesse Tie-Ten- Quee <highos@linuxfromscratch.org> for donating a Yamaha CDRW 8824E cd writer.

• Countless other people on the various LFS mailinglists who are making this book happen by giving their suggestions, testing the book and submitting bug reports.

Previous Team Members and Contributors

• Timothy Bauscher <timothy@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Book editor, Hints Project maintainer.

• Robert Briggs for originally donating the linuxfromscratch.org and linuxfromscratch.com domain names.

• Ian Chilton <ian@ichilton.co.uk> for maintaining the Hints project

• Marc Heerdink <gimli@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS Book editor.

• Seth W. Klein <sklein@linuxfromscratch.org> -- LFS FAQ Creator.

• Garrett LeSage <garrett@linuxart.com> -- Original LFS banner creator.

• Simon Perreault <nomis80@videotron.ca> -- Hints Project maintainer.

• Geert Poels <Geert.Poels@skynet.be> -- Original BLFS banner creator; based on the original LFS banner by Garrett LeSage.

• Frank Skettino <bkenoah@oswd.org> -- Initial design of the old website - OSWD.

• Jesse Tie-Ten- Quee <highos@linuxfromscratch.org> for answering countless questions on irc and having a great deal of patience.

Things to mention

Apart from a brief explanation of the problem you're having, the essential things to include in your request are:

• the version of the book you are using (being 5.0-pre1),

• the host distribution and version you are using to create LFS from,

• the package or section giving you problems,

• the exact error message or symptom you are receiving,

• whether you have deviated from the book at all.

(Note that saying that you've deviated from the book doesn't mean that we won't help you. After all, LFS is about choice. It'll just help us to see other possible causes of your problem.)

Configure problems

When something goes wrong during the stage where the configure script is run, look through the config.log file. This file may contain errors encountered during configure which weren't printed to the screen. Include those relevant lines if you decide to ask for help.

Compile problems

To help us find the cause of the problem, both screen output and the contents of various files are useful. The screen output from both the ./configure script and the make run can be useful. Don't blindly include the whole thing but on the other hand, don't include too little. As an example, here is some 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 just include the bottom section where it says

make [2]: *** [make] Error 1

and onwards. This isn't enough for us to diagnose the problem because it only tells us that something went wrong, not what went wrong. The whole section, as in the example above, is what should be included to be helpful, because it includes the command that was executed and the command's error message(s).

An excellent article on asking for help on the Internet in general has been written by Eric S. Raymond. It is available online at http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. Read and follow the hints in that document and you are much more likely to get a response to start with and also to get the help you actually need.

Test suite problems

Many packages provide a test suite which, depending on the importance of the package, we may encourage you to run. Sometimes packages will generate false or expected failures. If you encounter these, you can check the LFS Wiki page at http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org to see whether we have already investigated and noted them. If we already know about them, then usually there is no need to be concerned.

Contents of Binutils

(Last checked against version 2.12.1.)

Binutils is a collection of software development tools containing a linker, assembler and other tools to work with object files and archives.

Binutils installs the following files:

Binutils Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.11.2.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib, strip
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, echo, expr, hostname, ln, ls, mkdir
             mv, rm, rmdir, sleep, sort, touch, tr, true, uname, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: ldconfig
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Binutils

It is important that Binutils be the first package to get compiled, because both Glibc and GCC perform various tests on the available linker and assembler to determine which of their own features to enable.

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building Binutils.

It is recommended by the Binutils installation documentation to build Binutils outside of the source directory in a dedicated directory:

mkdir ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build

Next, prepare Binutils to be compiled:

../binutils-2.14/configure \ --prefix=/tools --disable-nls

The meaning of the configure switches:

• --prefix=/tools: This tells the configure script to prepare to install the Binutils programs in the /tools directory.

• --disable-nls: This disables internationalization (a word often shortened to i18n). We don't need this for our static programs and nls often causes problems when linking statically.

Continue with compiling the package:

make configure-host make LDFLAGS="-all-static"

The meaning of the make option:

• LDFLAGS="-all-static": This tells the linker that all the Binutils programs should be linked statically.

And install the package:

make install

Now prepare the linker for the "locking in" of Glibc later on:

make -C ld clean make -C ld LIB_PATH=/tools/lib

Contents of GCC

(Last checked against version 3.1.)

The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, including the C and C++ compilers.

GCC installs the following files:

GCC Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.95.3.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, dirname, echo, expr, hostname, ln
             ls, mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tail, touch, tr, true, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Find: find
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Tar: tar
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of GCC

Unpack only the GCC-core tarball, as we won't be needing a C++ compiler for the moment.

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building GCC.

It is recommended by the GCC installation documentation to build GCC outside of the source directory in a dedicated directory:

mkdir ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build

Prepare GCC to be compiled:

../gcc-3.3.1/configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-local-prefix=/tools \ --disable-nls --enable-shared \ --enable-languages=c

The meaning of the new configure options:

• --with-local-prefix=/tools: The purpose of this switch is to remove /usr/local/include from gcc's include search path. This is not absolutely essential; however, we want to try to minimize the influence of the host system, thus making this a sensible thing to do.

• --enable-shared: This switch may seem counter-intuitive at first. But using it allows the building of libgcc_s.so.1 and libgcc_eh.a, and having libgcc_eh.a available ensures that the configure script for Glibc (the next package we compile) produces the proper results. Note that the gcc binaries will still be linked statically, as this is controlled by the -static value of BOOT_LDFLAGS further on.

• --enable-languages=c: This option ensures that only the C compiler is built. The option is only needed when you have downloaded and unpacked the full GCC tarball.

Continue with compiling the package:

make BOOT_LDFLAGS="-static" bootstrap

The meaning of the make parameters:

• BOOT_LDFLAGS="-static": This tells GCC to link its programs statically.

• bootstrap: This target doesn't 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. It then compares these second and third compiles to make sure it can reproduce itself flawlessly, which most probably means that it was compiled correctly.

And install the package:

make install

As a finishing touch we'll create the /tools/bin/cc symlink. Many programs and scripts run cc instead of gcc, a thing meant to keep programs generic and therefore usable on all kinds of Unix systems. Not everybody has the GNU C compiler installed. Simply running cc leaves the system administrator free to decide what C compiler to install, as long as there's a symlink pointing to it:

ln -sf gcc /tools/bin/cc

Contents of Linux

(Last checked against version 2.4.18.)

The Linux kernel is at the core of every Linux system. It's what makes Linux tick. When a computer is turned on and boots a Linux system, the very first piece of Linux software that gets loaded is the kernel. The kernel initializes the system's hardware components: serial ports, parallel ports, sound cards, network cards, IDE controllers, SCSI controllers and a lot more. In a nutshell the kernel makes the hardware available so that the software can run.

Linux installs the following files:

Linux Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.4.17.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, objcopy
Coreutils: basename, cat, cp, date, expr, ln, md5sum, mkdir, mv,
             pwd, rm, sort, stty, tail, touch, uname, whoami, yes
Findutils: find, xargs
Gawk: awk
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Modutils: depmod, genksyms
Net-tools: dnsdomainname, hostname
Sed: sed

Installation of the kernel headers

As some packages need to refer to the kernel header files, we're going to unpack the kernel archive now, set it up, and copy the required files to a place where gcc can later find them.

Prepare for the header installation with:

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. You shouldn't rely on the source tree being clean after untarring.

Create the include/linux/version.h file:

make include/linux/version.h

Create the platform-specific include/asm symlink:

make symlinks

Install the platform-specific header files:

mkdir /tools/include/asm cp include/asm/* /tools/include/asm cp -R include/asm-generic /tools/include

Install the cross-platform kernel header files:

cp -R include/linux /tools/include

There are a few kernel header files which make use of the autoconf.h header file. Since we do not yet configure the kernel, we need to create this file ourselves in order to avoid compilation failures. Create an empty autoconf.h file:

touch /tools/include/linux/autoconf.h

Contents of Glibc

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Glibc is the C library that provides the system calls and basic functions such as open, malloc, printf, etc. The C library is used by all dynamically linked programs.

Glibc installs the following files:

Glibc Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib, readelf
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, cut, date, expr, hostname, install, ln,
             mknod, mv, mkdir, rm, pwd, sort, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Glibc installation

Before starting to install Glibc, you must cd into the glibc-2.3.2 directory and unpack Glibc-linuxthreads in that directory, not in /usr/src as you would normally do.

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting them when building Glibc.

Basically, compiling Glibc in any other way than the book suggests is putting the stability of your system at risk.

Though it is a harmless message, the install stage of Glibc will complain about the absence of /tools/etc/ld.so.conf. Fix this annoying little error with:

mkdir /tools/etc touch /tools/etc/ld.so.conf

Also, Glibc has a subtle problem when compiled with GCC 3.3.1. Apply the following patch to fix this:

patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.3.2-sscanf-1.patch

The documentation that comes with Glibc recommends to build the package not in the source directory but in a separate, dedicated directory:

mkdir ../glibc-build cd ../glibc-build

Next, prepare Glibc to be compiled:

../glibc-2.3.2/configure --prefix=/tools \ --disable-profile --enable-add-ons \ --with-headers=/tools/include \ --with-binutils=/tools/bin \ --without-gd

The meaning of the new configure options:

• --disable-profile: This disables the building of the libraries with profiling information. Omit this option if you plan to do profiling.

• --enable-add-ons: This enables any add-ons that were installed with Glibc, in our case Linuxthreads.

• --with-binutils=/tools/bin and --with-headers=/tools/include: Strictly speaking these switches are not required. But they ensure nothing can go wrong with regard to what kernel headers and Binutils programs get used during the Glibc build.

• --without-gd: This switch ensures that we don't build the memusagestat program, which strangely enough insists on linking against the host's libraries (libgd, libpng, libz, and so forth).

During this stage you will see the following warning:

configure: warning: *** These auxiliary programs are missing or too old: msgfmt *** some features will be disabled. *** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.

The missing msgfmt program (from the Gettext package, which we'll install later) won't cause any problems. The msgfmt is used to generate the binary translation files that can make your system talk in a different language. Because these translation files have already been generated for you, there is no need for msgfmt. You'd only need the program if you change the translation source files (the *.po files in the po subdirectory), which would require you to regenerate the binary files.

Continue with compiling the package:

make make check make install

The glibc make check process is highly dependent on certain functions of your host operating system. The most common is a host that fails to mount a tmpfs filesystem at /dev/shm, which may cause glibc tests to fail.

The locales (used by Glibc to make your Linux system respond in a different language) weren't installed when you ran the previous command, so we have to do that ourselves now:

make localedata/install-locales

An alternative to running the previous command is to install only those locales which you need or want. This can be achieved by using the localedef command. Information on this can be found in the INSTALL file in the glibc-2.3.2 tree. However, there are a number of locales that are essential for the tests of future packages to pass correctly, in particular, the libstdc++ tests from GCC. The following instructions, in place of the install-locales command above, will install the minimum set of locales necessary for the tests to run successfully:

mkdir -p /tools/lib/locale localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro 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 es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP

Installation of Tcl

This package and the next two are only installed to be able to run the test suites for GCC and Binutils. Installing three packages just for testing purposes may seem like overkill, but it is very reassuring, if not essential, to know that our most important tools are working properly.

Prepare Tcl to be compiled:

cd unix ./configure --prefix=/tools

Build the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

TZ=UTC make -k test

Sometimes, package testsuites will give false failures. You can consult the LFS Wiki at http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org to verify that these failures are normal. This applies to all tests throughout the book.

Install the package:

make install

Make a link:

ln -s tclsh8.4 /tools/bin/tclsh

Installation of Expect

First apply a patch:

patch -Np1 -i ../expect-5.39.0.patch

This fixes a bug in Expect that can result in bogus failures during the GCC test suite run.

Now prepare Expect to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools --with-tcl=/tools/lib --with-x=no

Build the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make test

And install:

make install

You can now remove the source directories of both Tcl and Expect.

Installation of DejaGnu

Prepare DejaGnu to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Build and install the package:

make make install

Re-installation of GCC

The tools required to test GCC and Binutils are installed now (Expect, Tcl and DejaGnu). We can continue on rebuilding GCC and Binutils, link them against the new Glibc, and test them properly. One thing to note, however, is that these test suites are highly dependent on the features supported by your host distribution. Most notably, a host distribution which does not properly support the devpts filesystem will cause most of these tests to fail.

Unpack all three GCC tarballs in one and the same working directory. They will all unfold into a single gcc-3.3.1/ subdir.

First correct one problem and make an essential adjustment:

patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-3.3.1-no_fixincludes-2.patch patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-3.3.1-specs-1.patch

The first patch disables the GCC "fixincludes" script. We mentioned this briefly earlier, but a slightly more in-depth explanation of the fixincludes process is warranted here. Under normal circumstances, the GCC fixincludes script scans your system for header files that need to be fixed. It might find that the Glibc header files on your host system need to be fixed, fix them and put them in the GCC private include directory. Then, later on in Chapter 6, after we've installed the newer Glibc, this private include directory would be searched before the system include directory, resulting in GCC finding the fixed headers from the host system, which would most likely not match the Glibc version actually used for the LFS system.

The last patch changes GCC's default location of the dynamic linker (ld). Patching now rather than adjusting the specs file after installation ensures that our new dynamic linker gets used during the actual build of GCC. That is, all the final (and temporary) binaries created during the build will link against the new Glibc.

Create a separate build directory again:

mkdir ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build

Before starting to build GCC, remember to unset any environment variables that override the default optimization flags.

Now prepare GCC to be compiled:

../gcc-3.3.1/configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-local-prefix=/tools \ --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-shared \ --enable-threads=posix --enable-__cxa_atexit \ --enable-languages=c,c++

Compile the package:

make

There is no need to use the bootstrap target now, as the compiler we're using to compile this GCC has been built from the exact same sources.

Test the results:

make -k check

The -k flag is used to make the test suite run through to completion and not stop at the first failure. The GCC test suite is very comprehensive and is almost guaranteed to generate a few failures. To get a summary of the test suite results, run this:

../gcc-3.3.1/contrib/test_summary | less

You can compare your results to those posted to the gcc-testresults mailing list for similar configurations to your own. For an example of how current GCC-3.3.1 should look on i686-pc-linux-gnu, see http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-testresults/2003-08/msg01612.html.

Note that the results contain:

* 1 XPASS (unexpected pass) for g++
* 1 FAIL for g++
* 2 FAIL for gcc
* 26 XPASS's for libstdc++

The unexpected pass for g++ is due to the use of --enable-__cxa_atexit. Apparently not all platforms supported by GCC have support for "__cxa_atexit" in their C libraries, so this test is not always expected to pass.

The 26 unexpected passes for libstdc++ are due to the use of --enable-clocale=gnu, which is the correct choice on Glibc-based systems of versions 2.2.5 and above. The underlying locale support in the GNU C library is superior to that of the otherwise selected "generic" model (which may be applicable if for instance you were using Newlibc, Sun-libc or whatever libc). The libstdc++ test suite is apparently expecting the "generic" model, hence those tests are not always expected to pass.

And finally install the package:

make install

Re-installation of Binutils

First create a separate build directory again:

mkdir ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build

Now prepare Binutils to be compiled:

../binutils-2.14/configure --prefix=/tools \ --enable-shared --with-lib-path=/tools/lib

Before starting to build Binutils, remember to unset any environment variables that override the default optimization flags.

Compile the package:

make

Test the results (nothing should fail here):

make check

And install the package:

make install

Now prepare Binutils for the re-adjusting of the toolchain in the next chapter:

make -C ld clean make -C ld LIB_PATH=/usr/lib:/lib

Contents of Gawk

(Last checked against version 3.1.1.)

Gawk is an awk implementation that is used to manipulate text files.

Gawk installs the following:

Gawk Installation Dependencies

(No dependencies checked yet.)

Installation of Gawk

Prepare Gawk to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install it:

make install

Contents of Coreutils

The Coreutils package contains a whole series of basic shell utilities.

Coreutils installs the following:

Coreutils Installation Dependencies

Not yet checked but probably something like this:

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, chown, echo, expr, hostname,
             install, ls, mv, rm, sleep, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Gettext: msgfmt, xgettext
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Perl: perl
Sed: sed
Tar: tar
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Coreutils

Prepare Coreutils to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Bzip2

(Last checked against version 1.0.2.)

Bzip2 is a block-sorting file compressor which generally achieves a better compression than the traditional gzip does.

Bzip2 installs the following files:

Bzip2 Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.0.1.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: cp, ln, rm
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Make: make

Installation of Bzip2

The Bzip2 package doesn't contain a configure script. Compile and install it with a straightforward:

make PREFIX=/tools install

Contents of Gzip

(Last checked against version 1.2.4a.)

The gzip package contains programs to compress and decompress files using the Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77).

Gzip installs the following:

Gzip Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.2.4a.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld, nm
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, hostname, install, ln, mv, rm, tr
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Gzip

Prepare Gzip to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the package:

make

And install it:

make install

Contents of Diffutils

(Last checked against version 2.8.1.)

The programs from this package show you the differences between two files or directories. It's most common use is to create software patches.

Diffutils installs the following files:

Diffutils Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.7.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ld, as
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp,  date, hostname, install, mv, rm, tr
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Diffutils

Prepare Diffutils to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the package:

make

And install it:

make install

Contents of Findutils

(Last checked against version 4.1.)

The Findutils package contains programs to find files, either on-the-fly (by doing a live recursive search through directories and only showing files that match the specifications) or by searching through a database.

Findutils installs the following:

Findutils Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 4.1.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, hostname, install, mv, rm, tr
Diffutils: cmp
Grep: egrep, grep
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Make: make
Patch: patch
Sed: sed

Installing Findutils

Prepare Findutils to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Make

(Last checked against version 3.79.1.)

Make determines, automatically, which pieces of a large program need to be recompiled and issues the commands to recompile them.

Make installs the following:

Make Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 3.79.1.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: basename, cat, chgrp, chmod, echo, expr, hostname,
             install, ls, mv, rm, sleep, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Make

Prepare Make to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the program:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Then install it and its documentation:

make install

Contents of Grep

(Last checked against version 2.5.)

Grep is a program used to print lines from a file matching a specified pattern.

Grep installs the following:

Grep Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.4.2.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install,
             ls, mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Gettext: msgfmt, xgettext
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Grep

Prepare Grep to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools \ --disable-perl-regexp --with-included-regex

The meaning of the configure switches:

• --disable-perl-regexp: This makes sure that grep does not get linked against a PCRE library that may be present on the host, but would not be available once we enter the chroot environment.

• --with-included-regex: This ensures that Grep uses its internal regular expression code. Without it, it will use the code from Glibc, which is known to be slightly buggy.

Compile the programs:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Then install them and their documentation:

make install

Contents of Sed

(Last checked against version 3.02.)

sed is a stream editor. A stream editor is used to perform basic text transformations on an input stream (a file or input from a pipeline).

Sed installs the following:

Sed Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 3.02.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: cat, chmod, expr, hostname, install, ls, mv, rm, echo, sleep, tr
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Sed

Prepare Sed to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the program:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Then install it and its documentation:

make install

Contents of Gettext

(Last checked against version 0.11.2.)

The Gettext package is used for internationalization and localization. Programs can be compiled with Native Language Support (NLS) which enable them to output messages in the user's native language.

Gettext installs the following:

Gettext Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 0.10.40.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib, strip
Bison: bison
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install, ln,
             ls, mkdir, mv, rm, rmdir, sleep, sort, tr, uname, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Gettext

Prepare Gettext to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the programs:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Then install them and their documentation:

make install

Contents of Ncurses

(Last checked against version 5.2.)

The Ncurses package provides character and terminal handling libraries, including panels and menus.

Ncurses installs the following:

Ncurses Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 5.2.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, expr, hostname, install,
             ln, mkdir, mv, rm, sort, tr, uname, wc
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: c++, cc1, cc1plus, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: ldconfig
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Ncurses

Fix two minor things:

patch -Np1 -i ../ncurses-5.3-etip-2.patch patch -Np1 -i ../ncurses-5.3-vsscanf.patch

The first patch corrects the etip.h header file, and the second patch prevents some compiler warnings being issued on the use of deprecated headers.

Now prepare Ncurses to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools --with-shared \ --without-debug --without-ada

The meaning of the configure options:

• --without-ada: This tells Ncurses not to build its Ada bindings, even if an Ada compiler is installed on the host. This must be done because once we enter the chroot environment, Ada will no longer be available.

Compile the programs and libraries:

make

Then install them and their documentation:

make install

Contents of Patch

(Last checked against version 2.5.4.)

The patch program modifies a file according to a patch file. A patch file usually is a list, created by the diff program, that contains instructions on how an original file needs to be modified.

Patch installs the following:

Patch Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.5.4.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install, mv, rm, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Patch

Prepare Patch to be compiled:

CPPFLAGS=-D_GNU_SOURCE ./configure --prefix=/tools

The preprocessor flag -D_GNU_SOURCE is only needed on the PowerPC platform. On other architectures you can leave it out.

Compile the program:

make

Then install it and its documentation:

make install

Contents of Tar

(Last checked against version 1.13.)

Tar is an archiving program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tar file.

Tar installs the following:

Tar Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.13.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, echo, expr, install, ls, mv, rm,
             sleep, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Gettext: msgfmt, xgettext
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Net-tools: hostname
Patch: patch
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Tar

Prepare Tar to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the programs:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Then install them and their documentation:

make install

Contents of Texinfo

(Last checked against version 4.2.)

The Texinfo package contains programs used for reading, writing and converting Info documents, which provide system documentation.

Texinfo installs the following:

Texinfo Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 4.0.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install, ln, ls,
             mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tr
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: makeinfo

Installation of Texinfo

Prepare Texinfo to be compiled:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the programs:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Then install them and their documentation:

make install

Contents of Bash

(Last checked against version 2.05a.)

bash is the Bourne-Again SHell, which is a widely used command interpreter on Unix systems. The bash program reads from standard input (the keyboard). A user types something and the program will evaluate what he has typed and do something with it, like running a program.

Bash installs the following files:

Bash Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.05a.)

Bash: bash, sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib, size
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, echo, expr, hostname, install,
             ln, ls, mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tr, uname, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: awk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Ncurses: (libraries)
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info

Installation of Bash

Bash contains several known bugs. Fix these with the following patch:

patch -Np1 -i ../bash-2.05b-2.patch

Now prepare Bash for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/tools --with-curses

Compile the program:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make tests

Then install it and its documentation:

make install

And make a link for the programs that use sh for a shell:

ln -s bash /tools/bin/sh

Contents of Util-linux

(Last checked against version 2.11t.)

The Util-linux package contains a number of miscellaneous utility programs. Some of the more prominent utilities are used to mount, unmount, format, partition and manage disk drives, open tty ports and fetch kernel messages.

Util-linux installs the following:

Util-linux Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.11n.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: cat, chgrp, chmod, cp, install, ln, mv, rm, uname, whoami
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp, cpp0
Gettext: msgfmt, xgettext
Glibc: rpcgen
Grep: grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Util-linux

Util-linux doesn't use the freshly installed headers and libraries from the /tools directory. This is fixed by altering the configure script:

cp configure configure.backup sed "s@/usr/include@/tools/include@g" configure.backup > configure

Prepare Util-linux for compilation:

./configure

Compile some support routines:

make -C lib

And, since you'll need only a couple of the utilities contained in this package, build just those:

make -C mount mount umount make -C text-utils more

Now copy these programs to the temporary tools directory:

cp mount/{,u}mount text-utils/more /tools/bin

Contents of Perl

(Last checked against version 5.6.1.)

The Perl package contains perl, the Practical Extraction and Report Language. Perl combines some of the best features of C, sed, awk and sh into one powerful language.

Perl installs the following:

Perl Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 5.6.1.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, comm, cp, date, echo, expr, hostname, ln,
             ls, mkdir, mv, pwd, rm, sort, split, touch, tr, uname, wc,
             whoami, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: awk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Perl

First adapt some hard-wired paths to the C library:

patch -Np1 -i ../perl-5.8.0-libc-3.patch

And make sure some static extensions get built:

chmod u+w hints/linux.sh echo 'static_ext="IO re Fcntl"' >> hints/linux.sh

Now prepare Perl for compilation:

./configure.gnu --prefix=/tools

Compile only the required tools:

make perl utilities

Then copy these tools and their libraries:

cp perl pod/pod2man /tools/bin mkdir -p /tools/lib/perl5/5.8.0 cp -R lib/* /tools/lib/perl5/5.8.0

FHS compliance note

We have based our directory tree on the FHS standard (available at http://www.pathname.com/fhs/). Besides the above created tree this standard stipulates the existence of /usr/local/games and /usr/share/games, but we don't much like these for a base system. However, feel free to make your system FHS-compliant. As to the structure of the /usr/local/share subdirectory, the FHS isn't precise, so we created here the directories that we think are needed.

Contents of MAKEDEV

(Last checked against version 1.5.)

The MAKEDEV script creates the static device nodes which usually reside in the /dev directory. Detailed information about device nodes may be found in the Documentation/devices.txt file under the Linux kernel source tree.

MAKEDEV installs the following:

MAKEDEV Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.5.)

Bash: sh
Coreutils: chmod, chown, cp, expr, id, ln, mknod, mv, rm
Grep: grep

Creating devices

Please note that unpacking the MAKEDEV-1.7.bz2 file doesn't create a directory for you to cd into, as the file contains one shell script.

Install the MAKEDEV script:

bzcat MAKEDEV-1.7.bz2 > /dev/MAKEDEV chmod 754 /dev/MAKEDEV

Run the script to create the device files:

cd /dev ./MAKEDEV -v generic-nopty

If a device you need is missing, try running ./MAKEDEV -v <device>. Alternatively, you may create devices via the mknod program. Please refer to the man and info pages of mknod if you need more information.

Contents of Linux

(Last checked against version 2.4.18.)

The Linux kernel is at the core of every Linux system. It's what makes Linux tick. When a computer is turned on and boots a Linux system, the very first piece of Linux software that gets loaded is the kernel. The kernel initializes the system's hardware components: serial ports, parallel ports, sound cards, network cards, IDE controllers, SCSI controllers and a lot more. In a nutshell the kernel makes the hardware available so that the software can run.

Linux installs the following files:

Linux Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.4.17.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, objcopy
Coreutils: basename, cat, cp, date, expr, ln, md5sum, mkdir, mv,
             pwd, rm, sort, stty, tail, touch, uname, whoami, yes
Findutils: find, xargs
Gawk: awk
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Modutils: depmod, genksyms
Net-tools: dnsdomainname, hostname
Sed: sed

Installation of the kernel headers

We won't be compiling a new kernel yet -- we'll do that when we have finished the installation of all the packages. But as some packages need the kernel header files, we're going to unpack the kernel archive now, set it up and copy the header files so they can be found by these packages.

It is important to note that the files in the kernel source directory are not owned by root. Whenever you unpack a package as user root (like we do here inside chroot), the files end up having the user and group IDs of whatever they were on the packager's computer. This is usually not a problem for any other package you install because you remove the source tree after the installation. But the Linux kernel source tree is often kept around for a long time, so there's a chance that whatever user ID the packager used will be assigned to somebody on your machine and then that person would have write access to the kernel source.

In light of this, you might want to run chown -R 0:0 on the linux-2.4.22 directory to ensure all files are owned by user root.

Prepare for header installation:

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. You shouldn't rely on the source tree being clean after untarring.

Create the include/linux/version.h file:

make include/linux/version.h

Create the platform-specific include/asm symlink:

make symlinks

Install the platform specific-header files:

cp -HR include/asm /usr/include cp -R include/asm-generic /usr/include

Install the cross-platform kernel header files:

cp -R include/linux /usr/include

There are a few kernel header files which make use of the autoconf.h header file. Since we do not yet configure the kernel, we need to create this file ourselves in order to avoid compilation failures. Create an empty autoconf.h file:

touch /usr/include/linux/autoconf.h

Why we copy the kernel headers and don't symlink them

In the past it was common practice to symlink the /usr/include/{linux,asm} directories to /usr/src/linux/include/{linux,asm}. This was a bad practice, as the following extract from a post by Linus Torvalds to the Linux Kernel Mailing List points out:

I would suggest that people who compile new kernels should: 

 - not have a single symbolic link in sight (except the one that the 
   kernel build itself sets up, namely the "linux/include/asm" symlink 
   that is only used for the internal kernel compile itself) 

And yes, this is what I do. My /usr/src/linux still has the old 2.2.13 
header files, even though I haven't run a 2.2.13 kernel in a _loong_ 
time. But those headers were what glibc was compiled against, so those 
headers are what matches the library object files. 

And this is actually what has been the suggested environment for at 
least the last five years. I don't know why the symlink business keeps 
on living on, like a bad zombie. Pretty much every distribution still 
has that broken symlink, and people still remember that the linux 
sources should go into "/usr/src/linux" even though that hasn't been 
true in a _loong_ time.

The essential part is where Linus states that the header files should be the ones which glibc was compiled against. These are the headers that should be used when you later compile other packages, as they are the ones that match the object-code library files. By copying the headers, we ensure that they remain available if later you upgrade your kernel.

Note, by the way, that it is perfectly all right to have the kernel sources in /usr/src/linux, as long as you don't have the /usr/include/{linux,asm} symlinks.

Contents of Man-pages

(Last checked against version 1.54.)

The Man-pages package contains over 1200 manual pages. This documentation details the C and C++ functions, describes a few important device files and provides documents which would otherwise be missing from other packages.

Man-pages installs the following:

Man-pages Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.47.)

Bash: sh
Coreutils: install
Make: make

Installation of Man-pages

Install Man-pages by running:

make install

Contents of Glibc

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Glibc is the C library that provides the system calls and basic functions such as open, malloc, printf, etc. The C library is used by all dynamically linked programs.

Glibc installs the following files:

Glibc Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib, readelf
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, cut, date, expr, hostname, install, ln,
             mknod, mv, mkdir, rm, pwd, sort, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Glibc installation

The Glibc build system is very well self-contained and will install perfectly, even though our compiler specs file and linker are still pointing at /tools. We cannot adjust the specs and linker before the Glibc install, because the Glibc autoconf tests would then give bogus results and thus defeat our goal of achieving a clean build.

Before starting to build Glibc, remember to unpack the Glibc-linuxthreads again inside the glibc-2.3.2 directory, and to unset any environment variables that override the default optimization flags.

Then apply the same patch we used previously:

patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.3.2-sscanf-1.patch

The documentation that comes with Glibc recommends to build the package not in the source directory but in a separate, dedicated directory:

mkdir ../glibc-build cd ../glibc-build

Now prepare Glibc for compilation:

../glibc-2.3.2/configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-profile --enable-add-ons \ --libexecdir=/usr/bin --with-headers=/usr/include

The meaning of the configure options:

• --disable-profile: This disables the building of the libraries with profiling information. Omit this option if you plan to do profiling.

• --enable-add-ons: This enables any add-ons that we installed with Glibc, in our case Linuxthreads.

• --libexecdir=/usr/bin: This will cause the pt_chown program to be installed in the /usr/bin directory.

• --with-headers=/usr/include: This ensures that the kernel headers in /usr/include are used for this build. If you don't pass this switch then the headers from /tools/include are used which of course is not ideal (although they should be identical). Using the switch has the advantage that you will be informed immediately should you have forgotten to install the kernel headers into /usr/include.

Compile the package:

make

Test the results:

make check

And install the package:

make install

The locales that can make your system respond in a different language weren't installed by the above command. Do it with this:

make localedata/install-locales

An alternative to running the previous command is to install only those locales which you need or want. This can be achieved using the localedef command. Information on this can be found in the INSTALL file in the glibc-2.3.2 tree. However, there are a number of locales that are essential for the tests of future packages to pass correctly. The following instructions, in place of the install-locales command above, will install the minimum set of locales necessary for the tests to run successfully:

mkdir -p /usr/lib/locale localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro 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 es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP

Finally, build the linuxthreads man pages:

make -C ../glibc-2.3.2/linuxthreads/man

And install these pages:

make -C ../glibc-2.3.2/linuxthreads/man install

Configuring Glibc

We need to create the /etc/nsswitch.conf file, because, although Glibc provides defaults when this file is missing or corrupt, the Glibc defaults don't work well with networking. Also, our timezone needs to be set up.

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 publickey: files hosts: files dns networks: files protocols: db files services: db files ethers: db files rpc: db files netgroup: db files # End /etc/nsswitch.conf EOF

To find out what timezone you're in, run the following script:

tzselect

When you've answered a few questions about your location, the script will output the name of your timezone, something like EST5EDT or Canada/Eastern. Then create the /etc/localtime file by running:

cp --remove-destination /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern /etc/localtime

Of course, instead of Canada/Eastern, fill in the name of the timezone that the tzselect script gave you.

Configuring Dynamic Loader

By default, the dynamic loader (/lib/ld-linux.so.2) searches through /lib and /usr/lib for dynamic libraries that are needed by programs when you run them. However, if there are libraries in directories other than /lib and /usr/lib, you need to add them to the /etc/ld.so.conf file 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 we 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 # End /etc/ld.so.conf EOF

Contents of Binutils

(Last checked against version 2.12.1.)

Binutils is a collection of software development tools containing a linker, assembler and other tools to work with object files and archives.

Binutils installs the following files:

Binutils Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.11.2.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib, strip
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, echo, expr, hostname, ln, ls, mkdir
             mv, rm, rmdir, sleep, sort, touch, tr, true, uname, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: ldconfig
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Binutils

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building Binutils.

It is recommended by the Binutils installation documentation to build Binutils outside of the source directory:

mkdir ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build

Now prepare Binutils for compilation:

../binutils-2.14/configure \ --prefix=/usr --enable-shared

Compile the package:

make tooldir=/usr

Normally, the tooldir (the directory where the executables end up) is set to $(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias), which expands into, for example, /usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu. Since we only build for our own system, we don't need this target specific directory in /usr. That setup 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).

Test the results:

make check

Install the package:

make tooldir=/usr install

Install the libiberty header file that is needed by some packages:

cp ../binutils-2.14/include/libiberty.h /usr/include

Contents of GCC

(Last checked against version 3.1.)

The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, including the C and C++ compilers.

GCC installs the following files:

GCC Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.95.3.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, dirname, echo, expr, hostname, ln
             ls, mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tail, touch, tr, true, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Find: find
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Tar: tar
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of GCC

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building GCC.

This time we will build both the C and the C++ compiler, so you'll have to unpack the GCC-core and the GCC-g++ tarball -- they will unfold into the same directory. You should likewise extract the GCC-testsuite package. The full GCC package contains even more compilers. Instructions for building these can be found at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/general/gcc.html.

patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-3.3.1-no_fixincludes-2.patch patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-3.3.1-suppress-libiberty.patch

The second patch here suppresses the installation of libiberty from GCC, as we will use the one provided by binutils instead.

GCC's installation documentation recommends to build the package in a dedicated directory separate from the source tree. Create this build directory and go there:

mkdir ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build

Now prepare GCC for compilation:

../gcc-3.3.1/configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix \ --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-clocale=gnu \ --enable-languages=c,c++

The meaning of the new configure options:

• --enable-threads=posix: This enables C++ exception handling for multi-threaded code.

• --enable-__cxa_atexit: This option will result in C++ shared libraries and C++ programs that are interoperable with other Linux distributions.

• --enable-clocale=gnu: There is a risk that some people will build ABI incompatible C++ libraries if they didn't install all of the glibc localedata. Using --enable-clocale=gnu ensures that the "right thing" is done in all cases. If you don't wish to use this option, then at least build the de_DE locale. When GCC finds this specific locale, then the correct locale mode (gnu) is implemented.

Compile the package:

make

Test the results, but don't stop at errors (you'll remember the few known ones):

make -k check

And install the package:

make install

Some packages expect the C PreProcessor to be installed in the /lib directory. To honor those packages, create this symlink:

ln -s ../usr/bin/cpp /lib

Many packages use the name cc to call the C compiler. To satisfy those packages, create a symlink:

ln -s gcc /usr/bin/cc

Contents of Coreutils

The Coreutils package contains a whole series of basic shell utilities.

Coreutils installs the following:

Coreutils Installation Dependencies

Not yet checked but probably something like this:

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, chown, echo, expr, hostname,
             install, ls, mv, rm, sleep, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Gettext: msgfmt, xgettext
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Perl: perl
Sed: sed
Tar: tar
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Coreutils

Normally the functionality of uname is somewhat broken, in that the -p switch always returns "unknown". The following patch fixes this behaviour for Intel architectures:

patch -Np1 -i ../coreutils-5.0-uname.patch

We do not want Coreutils to install its version of the hostname program, because it is inferior to the version provided by Net-tools. Prevent its installation by applying a patch:

patch -Np1 -i ../coreutils-5.0-hostname-2.patch

Now prepare Coreutils for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following commands will do so:

make check-root make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check

Install the package:

make install

And move some programs to their proper locations:

mv /usr/bin/{basename,cat,chgrp,chmod,chown,cp,dd,df} /bin mv /usr/bin/{dir,dircolors,du,date,echo,false,head} /bin mv /usr/bin/{install,ln,ls,mkdir,mkfifo,mknod,mv,pwd} /bin mv /usr/bin/{rm,rmdir,shred,sync,sleep,stty,su,test} /bin mv /usr/bin/{touch,true,uname,vdir} /bin mv /usr/bin/chroot /usr/sbin

Finally, create a few necessary symlinks:

ln -s test /bin/[ ln -s ../../bin/install /usr/bin

Contents of Zlib

(Last checked against version 1.1.4.)

The Zlib package contains the zlib library, which is used by many programs for its compression and uncompression functions.

Zlib installs the following:

Zlib Installation Dependencies

(No dependencies checked yet.)

Installation of Zlib

Zlib has a potential buffer overflow in its gzprintf() function, that, though difficult to take advantage of, should be taken care of. Do so by applying this patch:

patch -Np1 -i ../zlib-1.1.4-vsnprintf.patch

Now prepare Zlib for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --shared

Note: Zlib is known to build its shared library incorrectly if a CFLAGS is specified in the environment. If you are using your own CFLAGS variables, ensure you add the -fPIC directive during this stage, and remove it afterwards.

Compile the package:

make

Install the shared libraries:

make install

Now also build the non-shared libraries:

make clean ./configure --prefix=/usr make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make test

And install the package:

make install

The shared Zlib library should be installed in the /lib directory. That way, in the event that you must boot without the /usr directory, vital system programs will still have access to the library:

mv /usr/lib/libz.so.* /lib

The /usr/lib/libz.so symlink is linked to a file which no longer exists, because we moved it. Create a symbolic link to the new location of the library:

ln -sf ../../lib/libz.so.1 /usr/lib/libz.so

Zlib does not install its manual page. Issue the following command to install this documentation:

cp zlib.3 /usr/share/man/man3

Contents of Lfs-Utils

(Last checked against version 0.2.2.)

The Lfs-Utils package contains some miscellaneous programs used by various packages, but are not large enough to warrant their own individual package.

Lfs-Utils installs the following:

Lfs-Utils Installation Dependencies

(No dependencies checked yet.)

Installation of Lfs-Utils

Compile the package:

make

And install it:

make install

Contents of Findutils

(Last checked against version 4.1.)

The Findutils package contains programs to find files, either on-the-fly (by doing a live recursive search through directories and only showing files that match the specifications) or by searching through a database.

Findutils installs the following:

Findutils Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 4.1.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, hostname, install, mv, rm, tr
Diffutils: cmp
Grep: egrep, grep
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Make: make
Patch: patch
Sed: sed

Installing Findutils

Prepare Findutils for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/bin

By default, the location of the updatedb database is in /usr/var. To make the location of /var/lib/misc/locatedb file FHS compliant, pass the --localstatedir=/var/lib/misc option to configure.

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Gawk

(Last checked against version 3.1.1.)

Gawk is an awk implementation that is used to manipulate text files.

Gawk installs the following:

Gawk Installation Dependencies

(No dependencies checked yet.)

Installation of Gawk

Before installing the Gawk package you have to apply a patch, which fixes the following issues:

• Gawk's default location for libexecdir is $prefix/libexecdir/awk. This location doesn't comply with FHS (which never mentions a directory called libexecdir).

• The patch allows us to pass --libexecdir to the configure script (without gawk tacking on /awk to the end), so that we can use a more appropriate location for gawk's libexecdir (/usr/bin in the book).

• The default data directory for gawk is $prefix/share/awk. A package specific directory should be named using the package and version (like gawk-3.1.3 instead of awk) because there may be more than one awk interpreter on a system (and more than one version of gawk). The patch changes this to $prefix/share/gawk-3.1.3 to be more correct.

• The patch ensures that this directory ($prefix/share/gawk-3.1.3) is removed along with its contents on a make uninstall.

patch -Np1 -i ../gawk-3.1.3.patch

Now prepare Gawk for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/bin

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Ncurses

(Last checked against version 5.2.)

The Ncurses package provides character and terminal handling libraries, including panels and menus.

Ncurses installs the following:

Ncurses Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 5.2.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, expr, hostname, install,
             ln, mkdir, mv, rm, sort, tr, uname, wc
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: c++, cc1, cc1plus, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: ldconfig
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Ncurses

First fix two tiny bugs:

patch -Np1 -i ../ncurses-5.3-etip-2.patch patch -Np1 -i ../ncurses-5.3-vsscanf.patch

The first patch corrects the etip.h header file, and the second patch prevents some compiler warnings on the use of deprecated headers.

Now prepare Ncurses for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-shared \ --without-debug

Compile the package:

make

Install the package:

make install

Give the Ncurses libraries execute permissions:

chmod 755 /usr/lib/*.5.3

And fix a library that shouldn't be executable:

chmod 644 /usr/lib/libncurses++.a

Move the libraries to the /lib directory, where they're expected to reside:

mv /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5* /lib

Since the libraries have been moved to /lib, a few symlinks are currently pointing towards non-existing files. Recreate those symlinks:

ln -sf ../../lib/libncurses.so.5 /usr/lib/libncurses.so ln -sf libncurses.so /usr/lib/libcurses.so

Contents of Vim

(Last checked against version 6.1.)

The Vim package contains a configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing.

Vim installs the following:

Alternatives to Vim

• emacs, joe and nano

  http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/cvs/postlfs/editors.html

Vim Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 6.0.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld, strip
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, echo, expr, ln, mkdir, mv, rm, touch, tr,
             uname, wc, whoami
Diffutils: cmp, diff
Find: find
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Net-tools: hostname
Sed: sed

Installation of Vim

Change the default locations of the vimrc and gvimrc files to /etc.

echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h echo '#define SYS_GVIMRC_FILE "/etc/gvimrc"' >> src/feature.h

Now prepare Vim for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

And install the package:

make install

Vim can run in old-fashioned vi mode by creating a symlink, which may be created with the following command:

ln -s vim /usr/bin/vi

If you plan to install the X Window system on your LFS system, you might want to re-compile Vim after you have installed X. Vim comes with a nice GUI version of the editor which requires X and a few other libraries to be installed. For more information read the Vim documentation.

Configuring Vim

By default, vim runs in vi compatible mode. Some people might like this, but we have a high preference to run vim in vim mode (else we wouldn't have included vim in this book, but the original vi). Create the /root/.vimrc by running the following:

cat > /root/.vimrc << "EOF" " Begin /root/.vimrc set nocompatible set bs=2 " End /root/.vimrc EOF

Contents of M4

(Last checked against version 1.4.)

M4 is a macro processor. It copies input to output, expanding macros as it goes. Macros are either built-in or user-defined and can take any number of arguments. Besides just doing macro expansion, m4 has built-in functions for including named files, running Unix commands, doing integer arithmetic, manipulating text in various ways, 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.

M4 installs the following:

M4 Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.4.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, hostname, install, mv, rm, tr
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of M4

Prepare M4 for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Bison

(Last checked against version 1.35.)

Bison is a parser generator, a replacement for yacc. Bison generates a program that analyzes the structure of a text file.

Bison installs the following:

Bison Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.31.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, dirname, echo, expr, head, hostname,
             install, ln, ls, mkdir, mv, rm, rmdir, sleep, tr, uname, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info

Installation of Bison

First we use a patch to bison, backported from CVS, which fixes a minor compilation problem with some packages:

patch -Np1 -i ../bison-1.875-attribute.patch

Prepare Bison for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Less

(Last checked against version 374.)

Less is a file pager, or text viewer. It displays the contents of a file, or stream, and has the ability to scroll. Less has a few features not included in the more pager, such as the ability to scroll backwards.

Less installs the following:

Less Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 358.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: cat, chmod, expr, hostname, install, mv, rm, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Grep: egrep, grep
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Ncurses: (libraries)
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Less

Prepare Less for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin --sysconfdir=/etc

Compile the package:

make

And install it:

make install

Contents of Groff

(Last checked against version 1.17.2.)

The Groff package includes several text processing programs for text formatting. Groff translates standard text and special commands into formatted output, such as what you see in a manual page.

Groff installs the following:

Groff Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.17.2.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Bison: bison
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, expr, hostname, install,
             ln, ls, mkdir, mv, rm, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: awk
GCC: cc1, cc1plus, collect2, cpp0, g++, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Groff

Groff expects the environment variable PAGE to contain the default paper size. For those in the United States, the command below is appropriate. If you live elsewhere, you may want to change PAGE=letter to PAGE=A4.

Prepare Groff for compilation:

PAGE=letter ./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

And install it:

make install

Some documentation programs, such as xman, will not work work properly without the following symlinks:

ln -s soelim /usr/bin/zsoelim ln -s eqn /usr/bin/geqn ln -s tbl /usr/bin/gtbl

Contents of Sed

(Last checked against version 3.02.)

sed is a stream editor. A stream editor is used to perform basic text transformations on an input stream (a file or input from a pipeline).

Sed installs the following:

Sed Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 3.02.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: cat, chmod, expr, hostname, install, ls, mv, rm, echo, sleep, tr
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Sed

Prepare Sed for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Flex

(Last checked against version 2.5.4a.)

The Flex package is used to generate programs which recognize patterns in text.

Flex installs the following:

Flex Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.5.4a.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Bison: bison
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, echo, hostname, install, ln, mv, rm, touch, tr
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Flex

Prepare Flex for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make bigcheck

And install the package:

make install

There are some packages that expect to find the Lex library in /usr/lib. Create a symlink to account for this:

ln -s libfl.a /usr/lib/libl.a

A few programs don't know about flex yet and try to run its predecessor lex. To support those programs, create a shell script named lex that calls flex in Lex emulation mode:

cat > /usr/bin/lex << "EOF" #!/bin/sh # Begin /usr/bin/lex exec /usr/bin/flex -l "$@" # End /usr/bin/lex EOF chmod 755 /usr/bin/lex

Contents of Gettext

(Last checked against version 0.11.2.)

The Gettext package is used for internationalization and localization. Programs can be compiled with Native Language Support (NLS) which enable them to output messages in the user's native language.

Gettext installs the following:

Gettext Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 0.10.40.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm, ranlib, strip
Bison: bison
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install, ln,
             ls, mkdir, mv, rm, rmdir, sleep, sort, tr, uname, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

Installation of Gettext

Prepare Gettext for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Net-tools

(Last checked against version 1.60.)

The Net-tools package contains a collection of programs which form the base of Linux networking.

Net-tools installs the following:

Net-tools Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.60.)

Bash: bash, sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld
Coreutils: echo, install, ln, ls, mv, rm
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0
Make: make

Installation of Net-tools

If you don't know what to answer to all the questions asked during the make config phase below, then just accept the defaults. This will be just fine in the majority of cases. What you're asked here is a bunch of questions about which network protocols you've enabled in your kernel. The default answers will enable the tools from this package to work with the most common protocols: TCP, PPP, and several others. You still need to actually enable these protocols in the kernel -- what you do here is merely telling the package to include support for those protocols in its programs, but it's up to the kernel to make the protocols available.

Prepare Net-tools for compilation with:

make config

If you intend to accept the default settings, you may skip the questions generated by make config by running yes "" | make config instead.

Compile the package:

make

And install it:

make update

Contents of Inetutils

(Last checked against version 1.4.2.)

The Inetutils package contains network clients and servers.

Inetutils installs the following:

Inetutils Installation Dependencies

(No dependencies checked yet.)

Installation of Inetutils

Prepare Inetutils for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-syslogd \ --libexecdir=/usr/sbin --disable-logger \ --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var \ --disable-whois --disable-servers

The meaning of the configure options:

• --disable-syslogd: This option prevents inetutils from installing the System Log Daemon, which is installed with the Sysklogd package.

• --disable-logger: This option prevents inetutils from installing the logger program, which is used by scripts to pass messages to the System Log Daemon. We do not install it because Util-linux installs a better version later.

• --sysconfdir=/etc: This option tells the binaries created by the package to look in /etc for their configuration files

• --disable-whois: This option disables the building of the inetutils whois client, which is woefully out of date. Instructions for a better whois client are in the BLFS book.

• --disable-servers: This disables the compilation of the various server utilities included as part of the Inetutils package. Many of these have known security vulnerabilities, and for most there are better replacements.

Compile the package:

make

Install it:

make install

And move the ping program to its proper place:

mv /usr/bin/ping /bin

Contents of Perl

(Last checked against version 5.6.1.)

The Perl package contains perl, the Practical Extraction and Report Language. Perl combines some of the best features of C, sed, awk and sh into one powerful language.

Perl installs the following:

Perl Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 5.6.1.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, nm
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, comm, cp, date, echo, expr, hostname, ln,
             ls, mkdir, mv, pwd, rm, sort, split, touch, tr, uname, wc,
             whoami, uniq
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: awk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

Installation of Perl

Prepare Perl for compilation:

./configure.gnu --prefix=/usr

If you want more control over the way Perl sets itself up to be built, you can run the interactive Configure script instead and modify the way Perl is built. If you think you can live with the (sensible) defaults Perl auto-detects, then just use the command listed above.

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make test

And install the package:

make install

Contents of Texinfo

(Last checked against version 4.2.)

The Texinfo package contains programs used for reading, writing and converting Info documents, which provide system documentation.

Texinfo installs the following:

Texinfo Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 4.0.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib
Coreutils: basename, cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install, ln, ls,
             mkdir, mv, rm, sleep, tr
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: egrep, fgrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: makeinfo

Installation of Texinfo

Prepare Texinfo for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make

This package has a testsuite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. Should you choose to run it, the following command will do so:

make check

Install the package:

make install

And install the components belonging in a TeX installation:

make TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf install-tex

Contents of Autoconf

(Last checked against version 2.53.)

Autoconf produces shell scripts which automatically configure source code.

Autoconf installs the following:

Autoconf Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.52.)

Bash: sh
Coreutils: cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install,
             sleep, uname, ln, ls, mkdir, mv, rm, tr
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
Grep: fgrep, grep
M4: m4
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info

Installation of Autoconf

Prepare Autoconf for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Compile the package:

make