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lfs-discuss

The lfs-discuss mailing list discusses matters strictly related to the LFS-BOOK. If problems with the book come up, a bug or two need to be reported, or suggestions to improve the book should be made, this mailing list is the right one.

Any other mail is to be posted on the lfs-apps list.

lfs-apps

The lfs-apps list deals with everything that does not fit on the lfs-discuss list.

lfs-announce

The lfs-announce list is a moderated list. It can be subscribed to, but you can't post any messages to this list. This list is used to announce new stable releases. The lfs-discuss list will carry information about development releases as well. If a user is already on the lfs-discuss list, there's little use subscribing to this list as well because everything that is posted to the lfs-announce list will be posted to the lfs-discuss list as well.

lfs-security

The lfs-security mailing list discusses security-related matters. Security concerns or security problems with a package used by LFS, should be addressed on this list.

lfs-book

The lfs-book list is used by the LFS-BOOK editors to co-ordinate lfs-book's maintenance, like XML issues and the like. Actual discussion on what should be added and removed take place on lfs-discuss.

alfs-discuss

The alfs-discuss list discusses the development of ALFS, which stands for Automated Linux From Scratch. The goal of this project is to develop an installation tool that can install an LFS system automatically. It's main goal is to speed up compilation by taking away the need to manually enter the commands to configure, compile, and install packages.

blfs-book

The blfs-book list is used by the BLFS-BOOK (Beyond LFS) editors to co-ordinate blfs-book's maintenance. For now, actual discussions will take place on the lfs-apps list (like lfs-discuss is used instead of lfs-book).

Mail archives

All these lists are archived and can be viewed online at http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/mail-archives or downloaded from ftp://ftp.linuxfromscratch.org/mail-archives or ftp://ftp.linuxfromscratch.org/mail-archives.

How to subscribe?

Any of the above-mentioned mailinglists can be subscribed to by sending an email to listar@linuxfromscratch.org and writing subscribe listname as the subject header of the message.

Multiple lists at the same time can be subscribed to by using one email. This is done by leaving the subject blank and putting all the commands in the body of the email. The email will look like:

To: listar@linuxfromscratch.org
Subject:

subscribe lfs-discuss
subscribe lfs-apps
subscribe alfs-discuss

After the email is sent, the Listar program will reply with an email requesting a confirmation of the subscription request. After this confirmation email is sent back, Listar will send an email again with the message that the user has been subscribed to the list(s) along with an introduction message for that particular list.

How to unsubscribe?

To unsubscribe from a list, send an email to listar@linuxfromscratch.org and write unsubscribe listname as the subject header of the message.

Multiple lists can be unsubscribed at the same time using one email. This is done by leaving the subject header blank and putting all the commands in the body of the email. The email will look like:

To: listar@linuxfromscratch.org
Subject:

unsubscribe lfs-discuss
unsubscribe lfs-apps
unsubscribe alfs-discuss

After the email is sent, the Listar program will reply with an email requesting a confirmation of the unsubscription request. After this confirmation email is sent back, Listar will send an email again with the message that the user has been unsubscribed from the list(s).

Other list modes

The modes that can be set by a user require sending an email to listar@linuxfromscratch.org. The modes themselves are set by writing the appropriate commands in the subject header of the message.

As the name implies, the Set command tells what to write to set a mode. The Unset command tells what to write to unset a mode.

The listname in the example subject headers should be replaced with the listname to which the mode is going to be applied to. If more than one mode is to be set (to the same list or multiple lists) with one email, this can be done by leaving the subject header blank and writing all the commands in the body of the message instead.

Digests

Set command: set listname digest
Unset command: unset listname digest

All lists have the digest mode available which can be set after a user has subscribed to a list. Being in digest mode will cause you to stop receiving individual messages as they are posted to the list and instead receive one email a day containing all the messages posted to the list during that day.

There is a second digest mode called digest2. When a user is set to this mode he will receive the daily digests but will also continue to receive the individual messages to the lists as they are posted. To set this mode, substitute digest for digest2 in the command.

Vacation

Set command: set listname vacation
Unset command: unset listname vacation

If a user is going to be away for a while or wishes to stop receiving messages from the lists but doesn't want to unsubscribe, he can change to vacation mode. This has the same effect as unsubscribing, but without having to go through the unsubscribe process and then later through the subscribe process again.

Basic Information

First of all we need a brief explanation of the problem. Essential things to include are:

• The version of the book you are using, which is 3.0-rc2

• Which package or section you are having problems with

• What the exact error message or symptom you are recieving is

• If 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 all about choice. It'll just help us to see the possible other causes of your problem.

Configure problems

When something goes wrong during the stage where the configure script is run, look at the last lines of the config.log. This file contains possible errors encoutered during configure which aren't always 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 when make is 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

FHS compliance notes

The FHS stipulates that the /usr/local directory should contain the bin, games,include, lib, man, sbin, and share subdirectories. You can alter your /usr/local directory yourself if you want your system to be FHS-compliant.

Also, the standard says that there should exist a /usr/share/games directory, which we don't much like for a base system. But feel free to make your system FHS-compliant if you wish. The FHS isn't precise as to the structure of the /usr/local/share subdirectories, so we took the liberty of creating the directories that we felt needed.

Installation of Bash

Before you attempt to install Bash, you have to check to make sure your distribution has the /usr/lib/libcurses.a and /usr/lib/libncurses.a files. If both of the files are missing, you have to install the ncurses development package. This package is often call something like ncurses-dev.

If this package is already installed, or you just did it, check for the two files again. Often the libcurses.a file is (still) missing. If so, then create libcurses.a as a symlink by running the following commands:

cd /usr/lib &&
ln -s libncurses.a libcurses.a

Now we can continue. Install Bash by running the following commands:

./configure --enable-static-link --prefix=$LFS/usr \
   --bindir=$LFS/bin --with-curses &&
make &&
make install &&
cd $LFS/bin &&
ln -sf bash sh

If the make install phase ends with something along the lines of

install-info: unknown option `--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir' 
usage: install-info [--version] [--help] [--debug] [--maxwidth=nnn] 
	[--section regexp title] [--infodir=xxx] [--align=nnn] 
	[--calign=nnn] [--quiet] [--menuentry=xxx]
	[--info-dir=xxx] 
	[--keep-old] [--description=xxx] [--test]
	[--remove] [--] filename 
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1 
make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/lfs/usr/src/bash-2.05/doc' 
make: [install] Error 2 (ignored)

then that means that you are probably using Debian, and that you have an old version of the texinfo package. This error is not severe by any means: the info pages will be installed when we recompile bash dynamically in chapter 6, so you can ignore it. You do, however, have to run the last two commands manually (the cd $LFS/bin and ln -sf bash sh commands) because they won't be executed when the error occurs.

Command explanations

--enable-static-link: This configure option causes Bash to be linked statically

--prefix=$LFS/usr: This configure option installs all of Bash's files under the $LFS/usr directory, which becomes the /usr directory after the user chroot'ed into $LFS or when he rebooted the system into LFS.

--bindir=$LFS/bin: This installs the executable files in $LFS/bin. We do this because we want bash to be in /bin, not in /usr/bin. One reason being: the /usr partition might be on a separate partition which has to be mounted at some point. Before that partition is mounted you need and will want to have bash available (it will be hard to execute the boot scripts without a shell for instance).

--with-curses: This causes Bash to be linked against the curses library instead of the default termcap library which is becoming obsolete.

It is not strictly necessary for the static bash to be linked against libncurses (it can link against a static termap for the time being just fine because we will reinstall Bash in chapter 6 anyways, where we will use libncurses), but it's a good test to make sure that the ncurses package has been installed properly. If not, you will get in trouble later on in this chapter when you install the Texinfo package. That package requires ncurses and termcap can't reliably be used there.

ln -sf bash sh: This command creates the sh symlink that points to bash. Most scripts run themselves via 'sh' (invoked by the #!/bin/sh as the first line in the scripts) which invokes a special bash mode. Bash will then behave (as closely as possible) as the original Bourne shell.

The &&'s at the end of every line cause the next command to be executed only if the previous command exists with a return value of 0 indicating success. In case all of these commands are copy&pasted on the shell, is is important to be ensured that if ./configure fails, make isn't being executed and, likewise, if make fails, that make install isn't being executed, and so forth.

Contents

The Bash package contains the bash program

Description

Bash is the Bourne-Again SHell, which is a widely used command interpreter on Unix systems. Bash is a program that 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.

Dependencies

Bash-2.05 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
size from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package

rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Binutils

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed it's default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Binutils is best left alone, so we recommend you unsetting CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and other such variables/settings that would change the default optimization that it comes with.

Install Binutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-all-static tooldir=$LFS/usr &&
make tooldir=$LFS/usr install

Command explanations

--disable-nls: This option disabled internationalization (also known as i18n). We don't need this for our static programs and nls often causes problems when you're linking statically.

LDFLAGS=-all-static: Setting the variable LDFLAGS to the value -all-static causes binutils to be linked statically.

tooldir=$LFS/usr: Normally, the tooldir (the directory where the executables from binutils end up in) 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 $LFS/usr. That setup would be used if the system was used to cross-compile (for example compiling a package on the Intel machine that generates code that can be executed on Apple PowerPC machines).

Contents

The Binutils package contains the gasp, gprof, ld, as, ar, nm, objcopy, objdump, ranlib, readelf, size, strings, strip, c++filt and addr2line programs

Description

Dependencies

Binutils-2.11.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package
ranlib from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
rmdir from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

makeinfo from the texinfo package

cat from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tail from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
true from the sh-utils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of Bzip2

Install Bzip2 by running the following commands:

make CC="gcc -static" &&
make PREFIX=$LFS/usr install &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
mv bzcat bunzip2 bzip2 bzip2recover $LFS/bin

Although it's not strictly a part of a basic LFS system it's worth mentioning that a patch for Tar can be downloaded which enables the tar program to compress and uncompress using bzip2/bunzip2 easily. With a plain tar, you have to use constructions like bzcat file.tar.bz|tar xv or tar --use-compress-prog=bunzip2 -xvf file.tar.bz2 to use bzip2 and bunzip2 with tar. This patch provides the -j option so you can unpack a Bzip2 archive with tar xvfj file.tar.bz2. Applying this patch will be mentioned later on when the Tar package is installed.

Command explanations

make CC="gcc -static": This is the method we use to tell gcc that we want bzip2 to be linked statically.

Contents

The Bzip2 packages contains the bzip2, bunzip2, bzcat and bzip2recover programs.

Description

Dependencies

Bzip2-1.0.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

make from the make package

Installation of Diffutils

When installing Diffutils using glibc-2.1.x on your base system, it may be necessary to use a fix to prevent a variable name conflict. The following commands can be used in this case. Note that these commands can also be used for other glibc versions so if you aren't sure, then use the first version.

export CPPFLAGS=-Dre_max_failures=re_max_failures2 &&
./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr &&
unset CPPFLAGS &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

If you are using a newer glibc version (2.2.x), you can use the following commands to install Diffutils:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Command explanations

CPPFLAGS=-Dre_max_failures=re_max_failures2: The CPPFLAGS variable is a variable that's read by the cpp program (C PreProcessor). The value of this variable tells the preprocessor to replace every instance of re_max_failures it finds by re_max_failures2 before handing the source file to the compiler itself for compilation. This package has problems linking statically on systems that run an older Glibc version and this construction fixes that problem.

Contents

The Diffutils package contains the cmp, diff, diff3 and sdiff programs.

Description

Dependencies

Diffutils-2.7 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ld from the binutils package
as from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Fileutils

The programs from a statically linked fileutils package may cause segmentation faults on certain systems, if your distribution has Glibc-2.2.3 or higher installed. It also seems to happen mostly on machines powered by an AMD CPU, but there is a case or two where an Intel system is affected as well. If your system falls under this category, try the following fix.

Note that in some cases using these sed commands will result in problems not being able to compile this at package at all, even when your system has and AMD CPU and has Glibc-2.2.3 (or higher) installed. If that's the case, you'll need to remove the fileutils-4.1 directory and unpack it again from the tarball before continuing. We believe this may be the case when your distribution has altered Glibc-2.2.3 somehow, but details are unavailable at the time.

To fix this package to compile properly on AMD/Glibc-2.2.3 machines, run the following commands. Do not attempt this fix if you don't have Glibc-2.2.3 installed. It will more than likely result in all kinds of compile time problems.

cp lib/Makefile.in lib/Makefile.in.backup &&
sed -e 's/\(.*\)\(fopen-safer\.c \)\\/\1\2atexit.c \\/' \
   -e 's/\(.*\)\(idcache\$U\.\$.*\)\\/\1\2atexit$U.$(OBJEXT) \\/' \
   lib/Makefile.in > lib/Makefile.in~ &&
mv lib/Makefile.in~ lib/Makefile.in

Install fileutils by running the following commands:

./configure --disable-nls \
   --prefix=$LFS/usr --libexecdir=$LFS/bin --bindir=$LFS/bin &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
ln -sf ../../bin/install

Once you have installed fileutils, you can test whether the segmentation fault problem has been avoided by running $LFS/bin/ls. If this works, then you are OK. If not, then you need to re-do the installation using the sed commands if you didn't use them, or without the sed commands if you did use them.

Command explanations

cp lib/Makefile.in lib/Makefile.in.backup : We run this command in order to keep a backup of the file we are about to change.

cp lib/Makefile.in lib/Makefile.in.backup &&
sed -e 's/\(.*\)\(fopen-safer\.c \)\\/\1\2atexit.c \\/' \
   -e 's/\(.*\)\(idcache\$U\.\$.*\)\\/\1\2atexit$U.$(OBJEXT) \\/' \
   lib/Makefile.in > lib/Makefile.in~ &&
mv lib/Makefile.in~ lib/Makefile.in:

--libexecdir=$LFS/bin: This configure option will set the program executable directory to $LFS/bin. This is normally set to /usr/libexec, but nothing is placed in it. Changing it just prevents that directory from being created.

Contents

The Fileutils package contains the chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, dd, df, dir, dircolors, du, install, ln, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, mknod, mv, rm, rmdir, sync, touch and vdir programs.

Description

Dependencies

Fileutils-4.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of GCC

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed it's default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). GCC is best left alone, so we recommend you unsetting CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and other such variables/settings that would change the default optimization that it comes with.

Install GCC by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-2.95.3-2.patch &&
mkdir ../gcc-build &&
cd ../gcc-build &&
../gcc-2.95.3/configure --prefix=/usr --enable-languages=c,c++ \
   --disable-nls --disable-shared &&
make BOOT_LDFLAGS=-static bootstrap &&
make prefix=$LFS/usr install &&
cd $LFS/lib &&
ln -sf ../usr/bin/cpp &&
cd $LFS/usr/lib &&
ln -sf ../bin/cpp &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
ln -sf gcc cc

Command explanations

patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-2.95.3-2.patch: This new patch deals with incorrect handling of weak symbols, the over-optimization of calls to those weak symbols, an atexit issue and the __dso_handle symbol required for atexit's proper function.

make BOOT_LDFLAGS=-static: This is the equivalent to make LDFLAGS=-static as we use with other packages to compile them statically.

--prefix=/usr: This is NOT a typo. GCC hard codes some paths while compiling and so we need to pass /usr as the prefix during ./configure. We pass the real install prefix during the make install command later.

--enable-languages=c,c++: This only builds the C and C++ compilers and not the other available compilers as they are, on the average, not often used. If those other compilers are needed, the --enable-languages parameter can be omitted.

ln -sf ../usr/bin/cpp: This creates the $LFS/lib/cpp symlink. Some packages explicitly try to find cpp in /lib.

ln -sf ../bin/cpp: This creates the $LFS/usr/lib/cpp symlink as there are packages that expect cpp to be in /usr/lib.

Contents

The GCC package contains compilers, preprocessors and the GNU C++ Library.

Description

Dependencies

GCC-2.95.3 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package
ranlib from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

find from the find package

gcc from the gcc package
cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

mawk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-util package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
true from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

tar from the tar package

makeinfo from the texinfo package

cat from the textutils package
head from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tail from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of Grep

When installing Grep using glibc-2.1.x on your base system, it may be necessary to use a fix to prevent a variable name conflict. The following commands can be used in this case. Note that these commands can also be used for other glibc versions so if you aren't sure, then use the first version.

export CPPFLAGS=-Dre_max_failures=re_max_failures2 &&
./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
unset CPPFLAGS &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

If you are using a newer glibc version (2.2.x), you can use the following commands to install Grep:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Contents

The grep package contains the egrep, fgrep and grep programs.

Description

Dependencies

Grep-2.4.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Gzip

Before Gzip is installed, the patch file may need to be applied. This patch file is necessary to avoid a conflict of variable names with Glibc-2.0 systems when compiling and linking statically and so is only required if your base system runs Glibc-2.0. It is however safe to apply the patch even if you are running a different glibc version, so if you aren't sure, it's best to apply it.

Apply the patch by running the following command:

patch -Np1 -i ../gzip-1.2.4a.patch

Install Gzip by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install &&
cp $LFS/usr/bin/gunzip $LFS/usr/bin/gzip $LFS/bin &&
rm $LFS/usr/bin/gunzip $LFS/usr/bin/gzip

Contents

The Gzip package contains the compress, gunzip, gzexe, gzip, uncompress, zcat, zcmp, zdiff, zforce, zgrep, zmore and znew programs.

Description

Dependencies

Gzip-1.2.4a needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of the Linux Kernel

We won't be compiling a new kernel image yet. We'll do that after we have finished the installation of the basic system software in this chapter. But because certain software needs the kernel header files, we're going to unpack the kernel archive now and set it up so that we can compile the packages that need the kernel.

The kernel configuration file is created by running the following command:

make mrproper &&
yes "" | make config &&
make dep &&
cd $LFS/usr/include &&
cp -a ../src/linux/include/linux . &&
chown -R root.root $LFS/usr/include/linux &&
mkdir asm &&
cp -a ../src/linux/include/asm/* asm &&
chown -R root.root $LFS/usr/include/asm

Command explanations

make mrproper: This will ensure that the kernel tree is absolutely clean.

yes "" | make config: This runs make config and answers with the default answer to every question the config script asks the user (it does this by simply doing the equivalent of hitting the Enter key, thus accepting the default Y and N answers to the questions). We're not configuring the real kernel here, we just need to have some sort of configure file created so that we can run make dep next that will create a few files in $LFS/usr/src/linux/include/linux, like version.h, among others, that we will need to compile Glibc and other packages later in chroot.

make dep: make dep checks dependencies and sets up the dependencies file. We don't really care about the dependency checks, but what we do care about is that make dep creates those aforementioned files in $LFS/usr/src/linux/include/linux we will be needing later on.

cp -a ../src/linux/include/linux . and mkdir asm && cp -a ../src/linux/include/asm/* .: These commands copy the kernel headers in the $LFS/usr/include directory.

chown -R root.root $LFS/usr/include/linux and chown -R root.root $LFS/usr/include/asm: These commands change the ownership of the $LFS/usr/include/linux and the $LFS/usr/include/asm directories, plus all the files contained therein to the user root and group root.

Contents

The Linux kernel package contains the Linux kernel.

Description

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 such as 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.

Dependencies

Linux-2.4.8 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package
objcopy from the binutils package

chown from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

find from the findutils package
xargs from the findutils package

gcc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

awk from the mawk package

depmod from the modutils package
genksyms from the modutils package

hostname from the net-tools package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
pwd from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package
whoami from the sh-utils package
yes from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
md5sum from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tail from the textutils package
touch from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Make

Install Make by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Contents

The Make package contains the make program.

Description

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

Dependencies

Make-3.79.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chgrp from the fileutils package
chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package
egrep from the grep package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Mawk

Install Mawk by running the following commands:

./configure &&
make CC="gcc -static" &&
make BINDIR=$LFS/usr/bin \
   MANDIR=$LFS/usr/share/man/man1 install

Command explanations

make CC="gcc -static" This is used to build mawk statically.

Contents

The Mawk package contains the mawk program.

Description

Dependencies

Mawk-1.3.3 needs the following to be installed:

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

tee from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Patch

Install Patch by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Contents

The Patch package contains the patch program.

Description

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 is used a lot for source code patches since it saves time and space. Imagine a package that is 1MB in size. The next version of that package only has changes in two files of the first version. It can be shipped as an entirely new package of 1MB or just as a patch file of 1KB which will update the first version to make it identical to the second version. So if the first version was downloaded already, a patch file avoids a second large download.

Dependencies

Patch-2.5.4 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Sed

When installing Sed using glibc-2.1.x on your base system, it may be necessary to use a fix to prevent a variable name conflict. The following commands can be used in this case. Note that these commands can also be used for other glibc versions so if you aren't sure, then use the first version.

export CPPFLAGS=-Dre_max_failures=re_max_failures2 &&
./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --bindir=$LFS/bin &&
unset CPPFLAGS &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

If you are using a newer glibc version (2.2.x), you can use the following commands to install Sed:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --bindir=$LFS/bin &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Contents

The Sed package contains the sed program.

Description

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).

Dependencies

Sed-3.02 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Sh-utils

Before Sh-utils is installed, the sh-utils patch file may need to be applied. This patch is needed to avoid a conflict of variable names with certain Glibc verions (usually glibc-2.1.x) when compiling sh-utils statically. It is however safe to apply the patch even if you are running a different glibc version, so if you aren't sure, it's best to apply it.

Apply the patch by running the following command:

patch -Np1 -i ../sh-utils-2.0.patch

Install Sh-utils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
mv date echo false pwd stty $LFS/bin &&
mv su true uname hostname $LFS/bin

Contents

The Sh-utils package contains the basename, chroot, date, dirname, echo, env, expr, factor, false, groups, hostid, hostname, id, logname, nice, nohup, pathchk, pinky, printenv, printf, pwd, seq, sleep, stty, su, tee, test, true, tty, uname, uptime, users, who, whoami and yes programs.

Description

Dependencies

Sh-utils-2.0 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
chown from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Tar

To be able to directly use bzip2 files with tar, use the tar patch available from the LFS FTP site. This patch will add the -j option to tar which works the same as the -z option to tar (which can be used for gzip files).

Apply the patch by running the following command:

patch -Np1 -i ../tar-1.13.patch

Install Tar by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls \
   --libexecdir=$LFS/usr/bin --bindir=$LFS/bin && 
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Contents

The tar package contains the tar and rmt programs.

Description

Dependencies

Tar-1.13 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

patch from the patch package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Texinfo

Install Texinfo by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install

Contents

The Texinfo package contains the info, install-info, makeinfo, texi2dvi and texindex programs

Description

Dependencies

Texinfo-4.0 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Textutils

Install Textutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install &&
mv $LFS/usr/bin/cat $LFS/bin

Contents

The Textutils package contains the cat, cksum, comm, csplit, cut, expand, fmt, fold, head, join, md5sum, nl, od, paste, pr, ptx, sort, split, sum, tac, tail, tr, tsort, unexpand, uniq and wc programs.

Description

Dependencies

Textutils-2.0 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Dependencies

Chroot needs the following to be installed:

bash from the bash package

env from the sh-utils package

Installation of Glibc

Before starting to install glibc, you must cd into the glibc-2.2.4 directory and unpack glibc-linuxthreads inside the glibc-2.2.4 directory, not in /usr/src as you normally would do.

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed it's default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Glibc is best left alone, so we recommend you unsetting CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and other such variables/settings that would change the default optimization that it comes with.

Install Glibc by running the following commands:

mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3 &&
touch /etc/ld.so.conf &&
cp malloc/Makefile malloc/Makefile.backup &&
sed 's%\$(PERL)%/usr/bin/perl%' malloc/Makefile > tmp~ &&
mv tmp~ malloc/Makefile &&
cp login/Makefile login/Makefile.backup &&
sed 's/root/0/' login/Makefile > tmp~ &&
mv tmp~ login/Makefile &&
mkdir ../glibc-build &&
cd ../glibc-build &&
../glibc-2.2.4/configure --prefix=/usr \
   --enable-add-ons --libexecdir=/usr/bin &&
cp config.make config.make.backup &&
sed 's/cross-compiling = yes/cross-compiling = no/' \
   config.make > tmp~ &&
mv tmp~ config.make &&
make &&
make install &&
make localedata/install-locales &&
exec /bin/bash --login

An alternative to running make localedata/install-locales is to only install 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-2.2.4 tree.

During the configure 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 (from the gettext package which we will install later in this chapter) is not fatal. The files msgfmt would create are already pre-built, so you won't be missing out on anything. You would only need it if you make changes to the Glibc manual files. Since we don't do this by default, we can safely ignore it.

Command explanations

mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3: Glibc needs a null device to compile properly. All other devices will be created in the next section.

touch /etc/ld.so.conf One of the final steps of the Glibc installation is running ldconfig to update the dynamic loader cache. If this file doesn't exist, the installation will abort with an error that it can't read the file, so we simply create an empty file (the empty file will have Glibc default to using /lib and /usr/lib which is fine).

sed 's%\$(PERL)%/usr/bin/perl%' malloc/Makefile > tmp~: This sed command searches through malloc/Makefile and converts all occurances of $(PERL) to /usr/bin/perl. The output is then written to the file tmp~. This is done because Glibc can't autodetect perl since it hasn't been installed yet.

mv tmp~ malloc/Makefile: The file tmp~ is now moved back to malloc/Makefile. We do this because when using sed, we can't write straight back to this file so we need to use a temporary file in between.

sed 's/root/0' login/Makefile > tmp~: This sed command replaces all occurances of root in login/Makefile with 0. This is because as we don't have glibc on the LFS system yet, usernames can't be resolved to their user id's. Therefore, we replace the username root with the id 0.

mv tmp~ login/Makefile: As above, we are using a temporary file (tmp~) to store the edited Makefile and then copying it back over the original.

--enable-add-ons: This enables the add-on that we install with Glibc: linuxthreads

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

sed 's/cross-compiling = yes/cross-compiling = no/' config.make > config.make~: This time, we're replacing cross-compiling = yes with cross-compiling = no. We do this because we are only building for our own system. Cross-compiling is used, for instance, to build a package for an Apple Power PC on an Intel system. The reason Glibc thinks we're cross-compiling is that it can't compile a test program to determine this, so it automatically defaults to a cross-compiler. The reason for the failed program is because Glibc hasn't been installed yet.

mv config.make~ config.make: Again, we are moving the temporary file over the original.

exec /bin/bash:This command will start a new bash shell which will replace the current shell. This is done to get rid of the "I have no name!" message in the command prompt, which was caused by bash's inability to resolve a userid to a username (which in turn was caused by the missing Glibc installation).

Contents

The Glibc package contains the GNU C Library.

Description

The C Library is a collection of commonly used functions in programs. This way a programmer doesn't need to create his own functions for every single task. The most common things like writing a string to the screen are already present and at the disposal of the programmer.

The C library (actually almost every library) come in two flavors: dynamic ones and static ones. In short when a program uses a static C library, the code from the C library will be copied into the executable file. When a program uses a dynamic library, that executable will not contain the code from the C library, but instead a routine that loads the functions from the library at the time the program is run. This means a significant decrease in the file size of a program. The documentation that comes with the C Library describes this in more detail, as it is too complicated to explain here in one or two lines.

Dependencies

Glibc-2.2.4 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
ranlib from the binutils  package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mknod from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

cpp from the gcc package
gcc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

gzip from the gzip package

make from the make package

mawk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
pwd from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Creating devices

Note: the MAKEDEV-1.3.bz2 file you have unpacked is not an archive, so it won't create a directory for you to cd into.

Create the device files by running the following commands:

cp MAKEDEV-1.3 /dev/MAKEDEV &&
cd /dev &&
chmod 754 MAKEDEV

Now, depending on whether you are going to use devpts or not, you can run one of two commands:

If you do not intend to use devpts, run:

./MAKEDEV -v generic

If you do intend to use devpts, then run:

./MAKEDEV -v generic-nopty

Note that if you aren't sure, it's best to use the ./MAKEDEV -v generic command as this will ensure you have the devices you need. If you are sure you are going to use devpts however, the other command makes sure that you don't create a set of devices which you don't require.

MAKEDEV will create hda[1-20] to hdh[1-20] and such but keep in mind that you may not be able to use all of those devices due to kernel limitations regarding the max. number of partitions.

Command explanations

./MAKEDEV -v generic: This creates generic devices. Normally, these devices are all the devices you need. It's possible that you are missing some special devices that are needed for your hardware configuration. Create them with ./MAKEDEV -v <device>. The generic-nopty option does a similar job but skips some devices which are not needed if you are using devpts.

Contents

The MAKEDEV package contains the MAKEDEV script.

Description

MAKEDEV is a script that can help in creating the necessary static device files that usually reside in the /dev directory.

Dependencies

MAKEDEV-1.3 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

chmod from the fileutils package
chown from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mknod from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

grep from the grep package

expr from the sh-utils package

Installation of Man-pages

Before man-pages is installed, the patch file has to be unpacked. Install Man-pages by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../man-pages-1.39.patch &&
make install

Command explanations

patch -Np1 -i ../man-pages-1.39.patch: We patch the man-pages package to include pages for ldd and ld.so.

Contents

The Man-pages package contains various manual pages that don't come with the packages.

Description

Examples of provided manual pages are the manual pages describing all the C and C++ functions, few important /dev/ files and more.

Dependencies

Man-pages-1.39 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

install from the fileutils package

make from the make package

patch from the patch package

Installing Findutils

Before Findutils is installed the findutils patch file has to be unpacked.

Install Findutils by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../findutils-4.1.patch &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make libexecdir=/usr/bin install

Command explanations

patch -Np1 -i ../findutils-4.1.patch: This patch is to fix some compliation errors by avoiding a variable conflict and changing some bad syntax.

Contents

The Findutils package contains the find, locate, updatedb, xargs, frcode, code and bigram programs.

Description

Dependencies

Findutils-4.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

grep from the grep package

cc from the gcc package

make from the make package

patch from the patch package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Mawk

Install Mawk by running the following commands:

./configure &&
make &&
make BINDIR=/usr/bin \
   MANDIR=/usr/share/man/man1 install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -sf mawk awk

Contents

The Mawk package contains the mawk program.

Description

Dependencies

Mawk-1.3.3 needs the following to be installed:

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

tee from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Ncurses

Install Ncurses by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/lib \
   --with-shared --disable-termcap &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /lib &&
mv *.a /usr/lib &&
chmod 755 *.5.2 &&
cd /usr/lib &&
ln -sf libncurses.a libcurses.a &&
ln -sf ../../lib/libncurses.so &&
ln -sf ../../lib/libcurses.so &&
ln -sf ../../lib/libform.so &&
ln -sf ../../lib/libpanel.so &&
ln -sf ../../lib/libmenu.so

Command explanations

--with-shared: This enables the build of the shared ncurses library files.

--disable-termcap: Disabled the compilation of termcap fall back support.

cd /lib && mv *.a /usr/lib : This moves all of the static ncurses library files from /lib to /usr/lib. /lib should only contain the shared files which are essential to the system when /usr may not be mounted.

chmod 755 *.5.2: Shared libraries should be executable. Ncurses install routine doesn't set the permissions properly so we do it manaully instead.

ln -sf libncurses.a libcurses.a: Some programs try to link using -lcurses instead of -lncurses. This symlink ensures that such programs will link without errors.

ln -sf ../../lib/libncurses.so etc: These links are created because if they aren't, the linker will not find the dynamic libraries when linking and so link all programs with the static versions.

Contents

The Ncurses package contains the ncurses, panel, menu and form libraries. It also contains the tic, infocmp, clear, tput, toe and tset programs.

Description

Dependencies

Ncurses-5.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

c++ from the gcc package
gcc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
fgrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

mawk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
test from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
wc from the textutils package

Installation of Vim

If you don't like vim to be installed as an editor on the LFS system, you may want to download an alternative and install an editor you prefer. There are a few hints how to install different editors available at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/. The hints which are currently available are for Emacs, Joe and nano.

Both the vim-rt and vim-src packages need to be unpacked to install Vim. Both packages will unpack their files into the vim-5.8 directory. This won't overwrite any files from the other package. So it doesn't matter in which order it is done. Install Vim by running the following commands:

echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> \
   src/feature.h &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -sf vim vi

If you plan on installing 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.

FHS compliance notes

The FHS says that editors like vim should use /var/lib/<editor> for their temporary state files, like temporary save files for example. If you wish vim to conform to the FHS, you should use this command set instead of the one presented above:

echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> \
   src/feature.h &&
./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/vim &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -sf vim vi &&
mkdir /var/lib/vim

Command explanations

echo '#define SYS_VIMRC_FILE "/etc/vimrc"' >> src/feature.h: This will change the location of the global vim configuration file vimrc to /etc rather than /usr/share/vim

Contents

The Vim package contains the ex, gview, gvim, rgview, rgvim, rview, rvim, view, vim, vimtutor and xxd programs.

Description

Dependencies

Vim-5.8 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ld from the binutils package
as from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package
diff from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

find from the find package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

hostname from the net-tools package

sed from the sed package

echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package
whoami from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
wc from the textutils package

Installation of GCC

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed it's default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). GCC is best left alone, so we recommend you unsetting CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and other such variables/settings that would change the default optimization that it comes with.

Install GCC by running the following commands. These commands will build the C and C++ compiler. Other compilers are available within the gcc package. If you want to build all the other availble compilers too, leave out the --enable-languages=c,c++ option in the configure command. See the GCC documentation for more details on which additional compilers are available.

Note: the build of other compilers is not tested by the people who actively work on LFS.

patch -Np1 -i ../gcc-2.95.3-2.patch &&
mkdir ../gcc-build &&
cd ../gcc-build &&
../gcc-2.95.3/configure --prefix=/usr --enable-shared \
   --enable-languages=c,c++ --enable-threads &&
make bootstrap &&
make install

Command explanations

--enable-threads: C++ exception handling for multithreaded code will not work if gcc is compiled without --enable-threads.

Contents

The GCC package contains compilers, preprocessors and the GNU C++ Library.

Description

Dependencies

GCC-2.95.3 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package
ranlib from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

find from the find package

gcc from the gcc package
cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

mawk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-util package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
true from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

tar from the tar package

makeinfo from the texinfo package

cat from the textutils package
head from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tail from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of Bison

Install Bison by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr \
   --datadir=/usr/share/bison &&
make &&
make install

Some programs don't know about bison and try to find the yacc program (bison is a (better) alternative for yacc). So to please those few programs out there we'll create a yacc script that calls bison and have it emulate yacc's output file name conventions).

Create a new file /usr/bin/yacc by running the following:

cat > /usr/bin/yacc << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
# Begin /usr/bin/yacc

exec /usr/bin/bison -y "$@"

# End /usr/bin/yacc
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/bin/yacc

Command explanations

--datadir=/usr/share/bison: This installs the bison grammar files in /usr/share/bison rather than /usr/share.

Contents

The Bison package contains the bison program.

Description

Bison is a parser generator, a replacement for YACC. YACC stands for Yet Another Compiler Compiler. What is Bison then? It is a program that generates a program that analyzes the structure of a text file. Instead of writing the actual program a user specifies how things should be connected and with those rules a program is constructed that analyzes the text file.

There are a lot of examples where structure is needed and one of them is the calculator.

Given the string :

        1 + 2 * 3

A human can easily come to the result 7. Why? Because of the structure. Our brain knows how to interpret the string. The computer doesn't know that and Bison is a tool to help it understand by presenting the string in the following way to the compiler:

            +
           / \
          *   1
         / \
        2   3

Starting at the bottom of a tree and coming across the numbers 2 and 3 which are joined by the multiplication symbol, the computer multiplies 2 and 3. The result of that multiplication is remembered and the next thing that the computer sees is the result of 2*3 and the number 1 which are joined by the add symbol. Adding 1 to the previous result makes 7. In calculating the most complex calculations can be broken down in this tree format and the computer just starts at the bottom and works it's way up to the top and comes with the correct answer. Of course, Bison isn't only used for calculators alone.

Dependencies

Bison-1.28 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

rm from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
chmod from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package

tr from the textutils package
cat from the textutils package

Installation of Less

Install Less by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Less package contains the less program

Description

The less program is a file pager (or text viewer). It displays the contents of a file with the ability to scroll. Less is an improvement on the common pager called "more". Less has the ability to scroll backwards through files as well and it doesn't need to read the entire file when it starts, which makes it faster when reading large files.

Dependencies

Less-358 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

grep from the grep package

cc from the gcc package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

dirname from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Groff

Install Groff by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Groff packages contains the addftinfo, afmtodit, eqn, grodvi, groff, grog, grohtml, grolj4, grops, grotty, hpftodit, indxbib, lkbib, lookbib, neqn, nroff, pfbtops, pic, psbb, refer, soelim, tbl, tfmtodit and troff programs.

Description

Dependencies

Groff-1.17.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

bison from the bison package
yacc from the bison package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package
c++ from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

awk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
touch from the fileutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Man

Run the following commands to install man:

for i in configure src/Makefile.in src/makewhatis.sh
do
   cp $i $i.backup &&
   sed 's/gawk/awk/g' $i > tmp~ &&
   mv tmp~ $i
done
chmod 700 configure &&
./configure -default &&
make &&
make install

You may want to take a look at the man hint at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/man.txt which deals with formatting and compression issues for man pages.

Command explanations

for ... sed ... done: This construct changes man so that it uses awk instead of gawk which is the default. We use this as LFS uses awk instead of gawk.

Contents

The Man package contains the man, apropos whatis and makewhatis programs.

Description

Dependencies

Man-1.5i2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

bzip2 from the bzip2 package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

gunzip from the gzip package
zcat from the gzip package

make from the make package

awk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

echo from the sh-utils package
cat from the textutils package

Installation of Perl

Install Perl by running the following commands:

./Configure -Dprefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

If you don't want to answer all those questions Perl asks, you can add the -d option to the configure script and Perl will use all the default settings. To avoid the Configure script asking questions after the config.sh file has been created you can pass the -e parameter to perl as well. The commands with these parameters included will be:

./Configure -Dprefix=/usr -d -e &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Perl package contains Perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

Description

Perl combines the features and capabilities of C, awk, sed and sh into one powerful programming language.

Dependencies

Perl-5.6.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package

bison from the bison package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

nroff from the groff package

gzip from the gzip package

less from the less package

make from the make package

awk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
tee from the sh-utils package
test from the sh-utils package
true from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
comm from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
split from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
uniq from the textutils package
wc from the textutils package

Installation of M4

Install M4 by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The M4 package contains the M4 processor

Description

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. M4 can be used either as a front-end to a compiler or as a macro processor in its own right.

Dependencies

M4-1.4 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

make from the make package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Texinfo

Install Texinfo by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
make TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf install-tex

Command explanations

make TEXMF=/usr/share/texmf install-tex: This installs the texinfo components that belong in a TeX installation. Although TeX isn't installed on LFS, it's installed here in case you are going to use TeX. As it's completely optional, feel free to skip it.

Contents

The Texinfo package contains the info, install-info, makeinfo, texi2dvi and texindex programs

Description

Dependencies

Texinfo-4.0 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Autoconf

Install Autoconf by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Autoconf package contains the autoconf, autoheader, autoreconf, autoscan, autoupdate and ifnames programs

Description

Dependencies

Autoconf-2.52 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

m4 from the m4 package

make from the make package

perl from the perl package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Automake

Install Automake by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make install

Contents

The Automake package contains the aclocal and automake programs

Description

Dependencies

Automake-1.5 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

perl from the perl package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Bash

Install Bash by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-curses \
   --bindir=/bin &&
make &&
make install &&
exec /bin/bash --login

Contents

The Bash package contains the bash program

Description

Bash is the Bourne-Again SHell, which is a widely used command interpreter on Unix systems. Bash is a program that 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.

Dependencies

Bash-2.05 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
size from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package

rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Flex

Install Flex by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -sf flex lex

Contents

The Flex package contains the flex program

Description

Flex is a tool for generating programs which recognize patterns in text. Pattern recognition is very useful in many applications. A user sets up rules what to look for and flex will make a program that looks for those patterns. The reason people use flex is that it is much easier to sets up rules for what to look for than to write the actual program that finds the text.

Dependencies

Flex-2.5.4a needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

bison from the bison package
yacc from the bison package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

dirname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of File

Install File by running the following commands:

cp readelf.h readelf.h.backup &&
sed $'/#define __/a \\\n#include <stdint.h>' readelf.h.backup > readelf.h &&
./configure --prefix=/usr --datadir=/usr/share/misc &&
make &&
make install

File uses magic numbers to determine a file type. These magic numbers come with File in a plain text file. File internally compiles this database each time it is run. This is not the normal type of operation for File since compiling a plain text file each time is not the fastest way to do it. File offers an option "-C" to compile this magic number file. The reason this isn't done automatically is that some people like to work on the magic numbers. On the other hand many people didn't get it that they should compile the magic numbers, so the author of File added a warning when the plain text magic file is used. As we usually won't work on the plain text magic file, we compile this file, because it's faster, fixes that annoying warning and is how it was meant to be:

file -C

Command explanations

sed $'/#define __/a \\\n#include <stdint.h>' readelf.h.backup > readelf.h : This sed fixes an error which occurs when compiling file-3.36 with automake-1.5 installed.

Contents

The File package contains the file program.

Description

File tests each specified file in an attempt to classify it. There are three sets of tests, performed in this order: filesystem tests, magic number tests, and language tests. The first test that succeeds causes the file type to be printed.

Dependencies

File-3.36 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Libtool

Install Libtool by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Libtool package contains the libtool and libtoolize programs. It also contains the ltdl library.

Description

Dependencies

Libtool-1.4 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
rmdir from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Bin86

This package is only needed if you decide to use Lilo on your LFS system. If you're going to use something else like Grub you won't need bin86. Check the documentation for your favorite boot loader to see if you need the bin86 package (usually only ld86 and/or as86 from this package are required).

Keep in mind, though, that it's not just boot loaders that use the bin86 package. There is always the chance that some other package needs programs from this package, so keep that in mind if you decide to skip this.

Install Bin86 by running the following commands:

make &&
make PREFIX=/usr install

Contents

The Bin86 contains the as86, as86_encap, ld86, objdump86, nm86 and size86 programs.

Description

Dependencies

Bin86-0.16.0 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
strip from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

Installation of Binutils

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed it's default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Binutils is best left alone, so we recommend you unsetting CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and other such variables/settings that would change the default optimization that it comes with.

Install Binutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-shared &&
make tooldir=/usr &&
make tooldir=/usr install &&
make tooldir=/usr install-info

Command explanations

make tooldir=/usr install-info: This will install binutil's info pages.

Contents

The Binutils package contains the gasp, gprof, ld, as, ar, nm, objcopy, objdump, ranlib, readelf, size, strings, strip, c++filt and addr2line programs

Description

Dependencies

Binutils-2.11.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package
ranlib from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
rmdir from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

makeinfo from the texinfo package

cat from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tail from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
true from the sh-utils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of Bzip2

Install Bzip2 by running the following commands:

make -f Makefile-libbz2_so &&
make bzip2recover libbz2.a &&
ln -s libbz2.so.1.0.1 libbz2.so &&
cp bzip2-shared /bin/bzip2 &&
cp bzip2recover /bin &&
cp bzip2.1 /usr/share/man/man1 &&
cp bzlib.h /usr/include &&
cp -a libbz2.so* /lib &&
rm /usr/lib/libbz2.a &&
cp libbz2.a /usr/lib &&
cd /usr/lib &&
ln -sf ../../lib/libbz2.so &&
cd /bin &&
ln -sf bzip2 bunzip2 &&
ln -sf bzip2 bzcat &&
cd /usr/share/man/man1 &&
ln -sf bzip2.1 bunzip2.1 &&
ln -sf bzip2.1 bzcat.1 &&
ln -sf bzip2.1 bzip2recover.1

Although it's not strictly a part of a basic LFS system it's worth mentioning that a patch for Tar can be downloaded which enables the tar program to compress and uncompress using bzip2/bunzip2 easily. With a plain tar, you have to use constructions like bzcat file.tar.bz|tar xv or tar --use-compress-prog=bunzip2 -xvf file.tar.bz2 to use bzip2 and bunzip2 with tar. This patch provides the -j option so you can unpack a Bzip2 archive with tar xvfj file.tar.bz2. Applying this patch will be mentioned later on when the Tar package is re-installed.

Command explanations

make -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.

The reason we don't use make install is that bzip2's make install doesn't install the shared libbz2.so, nor the bzip2 binary that's linked against that library. So we have no choice but to manually install the files.

Contents

The Bzip2 packages contains the bzip2, bunzip2, bzcat and bzip2recover programs.

Description

Dependencies

Bzip2-1.0.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

gcc from the gcc package

make from the make package

Installation of Ed

Ed is an optional package. The only program on a normal LFS system that uses ed is patch. But these days, ed patch files are quite rare in favour of the diff format patch files. So, if you personally have no need to use ed, you can skip it.

Install Ed by running the following commands:

cp buf.c buf.c.backup &&
sed 's/int u/int u, sfd/' buf.c.backup | \
   sed '/.*\*mktemp.*/d' | \
   sed 's/.*if (mktemp.*/  sfd = mkstemp(sfn);\
   if ((sfd == -1) || (sfp = fopen (sfn, "w+")) == NULL)/' > buf.c &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
mv /usr/bin/ed /usr/bin/red /bin

Command explanations

The sed commands fix a symlink vulnerability in ed. The ed executable creates files in /tmp with predictable names. By using various symlink attacks, it is possible to have ed write to files it should not, change the permissions of various files, etc.

Contents

The Ed package contains the ed program.

Description

Ed is a line-oriented text editor. It is used to create, display, modify and otherwise manipulate text files.

Dependencies

Ed-0.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
touch from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package
egrep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Gettext

Install Gettext by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The gettext package contains the gettext, gettextize, msgcmp, msgcomm, msgfmt, msgmerge, msgunfmt and xgettext programs.

Description

Dependencies

Gettext-0.10.39 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
rmdir from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
echo from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
sort from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of Kbd

Install Kbd by running the following commands:

./configure --datadir=/usr/share/kbd &&
make &&
make install

When using the loadkeys program from this package, don't use the -d option to load a default keymap file. It won't work properly with keymaps that include other keymaps.

Command explanations

--datadir=/usr/share/kbd: This puts the kbd data files (fonts, keymaps, and such) in the /usr/share/kbd directory, as the FHS suggests.

Contents

The Kbd package contains the chvt, deallocvt, dumpkeys, fgconsole, getkeycodes, kbd_mode, kbdrate, loadkeys, loadunimap, mapscrn, psfxtable, resizecons, screendump, setfont, setkeycodes, setleds, setmetamode, setvesablank, showfont, showkey, unicode_start, and unicode_stop programs. There are some other programs that don't get installed by default, as they are very optional. Take a look at the Kbd package contents if you have trouble with your console.

Description

Dependencies

Kbd-1.06 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils packag
strip from the binutils package

bison from the bison package

cp from the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

flex from the flex package

cpp from the gcc package
gcc from the gcc package

gunzip from the gzip package
gzip from the gzip package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

uname from the sh-utils package

Installation of Diffutils

Install Diffutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Diffutils package contains the cmp, diff, diff3 and sdiff programs.

Description

Dependencies

Diffutils-2.7 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ld from the binutils package
as from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
date from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of E2fsprogs

Install E2fsprogs by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-root-prefix=/ \
   --enable-elf-shlibs &&
make &&
make install &&
make install-libs

Command explanations

--with-root-prefix=/: The reason for supplying this option is because of the setup of the e2fsprogs Makefile. Some programs are essential for system use when, for example, /usr isn't mounted (like the e2fsck program). These programs and libraries therefore belong in directories like /lib and /sbin. If this option isn't passed to e2fsprogs' configure, it places these programs in /usr which is not what we want.

--enable-elf-shlibs: This creates shared libraries that some programs in this package can make use of.

make install-libs: This installs the shared libraries that are built.

Contents

The e2fsprogs package contains the chattr, lsattr, uuidgen, badblocks, debugfs, dumpe2fs, e2fsck, e2label, fsck, fsck.ext2, mke2fs, mkfs.ext2, mklost+found and tune2fs programs.

Description

Dependencies

E2fsprogs-1.22 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package
sync from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

gzip from the gzip package

make from the make package

awk from the mawk package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

makeinfo from the texinfo package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Fileutils

Install Fileutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin \
   --libexecdir=/bin &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Fileutils package contains the chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, dd, df, dir, dircolors, du, install, ln, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, mknod, mv, rm, rmdir, sync, touch and vdir programs.

Description

Dependencies

Fileutils-4.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package
uniq from the textutils package

Installation of Grep

Install Grep by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The grep package contains the egrep, fgrep and grep programs.

Description

Dependencies

Grep-2.4.2 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Gzip

Install Gzip by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
mv gzip /bin &&
rm gunzip zcat &&
cd /bin &&
ln -sf gzip gunzip &&
ln -sf gzip zcat &&
ln -sf gzip compress &&
ln -sf gunzip uncompress

Contents

The Gzip package contains the compress, gunzip, gzexe, gzip, uncompress, zcat, zcmp, zdiff, zforce, zgrep, zmore and znew programs.

Description

Dependencies

Gzip-1.2.4a needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
nm from the binutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Lilo

We have chosen Lilo because we feel confortable with it, but you may wish to take a look elsewhere. Someone has written a hint on GRUB at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/grub-howto.txt, an alternative boot loader.

Install Lilo by running the following commands:

make &&
make install

It appears that compilation of this package fails on certain machines when the -g compiler flag is being used. If you can't compile Lilo at all, you should try to remove the -g value from the CFLAGS variable in the Makefile file.

At the end of the installation the make install process will print a message stating that /sbin/lilo has to be executed to complete the update. Don't do this as it has no use. The /etc/lilo.conf isn't present yet. We will complete the installation of lilo in chapter 8.

Maybe you'll be interested to know that someone wrote a hint on how to get a logo instead the the standard LILO prompt or menu. Take a look at it at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/bootlogo.txt .

Contents

The Lilo package contains the lilo program.

Description

lilo installs the Linux boot loader which is used to start a Linux system.

Dependencies

Lilo-21.7.5 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as86 from the bin86 package
ld86 from the bin86 package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
strip from the binutils package

cp from the fileutils package
dd from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

cat from the textutils package

Installation of Make

Install Make by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Make package contains the make program.

Description

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

Dependencies

Make-3.79.1 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chgrp from the fileutils package
chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
ls from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package
egrep from the grep package

grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
sleep from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Modutils

Install Modutils by running the following commands:

./configure &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Modutils package contains the depmod, genksyms, insmod, insmod_ksymoops_clean, kerneld, kernelversion, ksyms, lsmod, modinfo, modprobe and rmmod programs.

Description

Dependencies

Modutils-2.4.7 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

ar from the binutils package
as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package
strip from the binutils package

bison from the bison package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
ln from the fileutils package
mkdir from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

flex from the flex package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package

Installation of Netkit-base

Install Netkit-base by running the following commands:

./configure &&
make &&
make install &&
cd etc.sample &&
cp services protocols /etc

There are other files in the etc.sample directory which might be of interest to you.

Contents

The Netkit-base package contains the inetd and ping programs.

Description

Dependencies

Netkit-base-0.17 needs the following to be installed:

sh rom the bash package

as rom the binutils package
ld rom the binutils package
strip rom the binutils package

cp rom the fileutils package
install from the fileutils package
rm rom the fileutils package

make rom the make package

cc rom the gcc package

sed rom the sed package

date from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package

Installation of Patch

Install Patch by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install

Contents

The Patch package contains the patch program.

Description

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 is used a lot for source code patches since it saves time and space. Imagine a package that is 1MB in size. The next version of that package only has changes in two files of the first version. It can be shipped as an entirely new package of 1MB or just as a patch file of 1KB which will update the first version to make it identical to the second version. So if the first version was downloaded already, a patch file avoids a second large download.

Dependencies

Patch-2.5.4 needs the following to be installed:

sh from the bash package

as from the binutils package
ld from the binutils package

cmp from the diffutils package

chmod from the fileutils package
cp from the fileutils package
mv from the fileutils package
rm from the fileutils package

cc from the gcc package

egrep from the grep package
grep from the grep package

make from the make package

sed from the sed package

basename from the sh-utils package
expr from the sh-utils package
uname from the sh-utils package

cat from the textutils package
tr from the textutils package