Details on this package are located in Section 6.13.2, “Contents of Binutils.”
Copyright © 1999-2015 Gerard Beekmans
Copyright © 1999-2015, Gerard Beekmans
All rights reserved.
This book is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Computer instructions may be extracted from the book under the MIT License.
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
My journey to learn and better understand Linux began over a decade ago, back in 1998. I had just installed my first Linux distribution and had quickly become intrigued with the whole concept and philosophy behind Linux.
There are always many ways to accomplish a single task. The same can be said about Linux distributions. A great many have existed over the years. Some still exist, some have morphed into something else, yet others have been relegated to our memories. They all do things differently to suit the needs of their target audience. Because so many different ways to accomplish the same end goal exist, I began to realize I no longer had to be limited by any one implementation. Prior to discovering Linux, we simply put up with issues in other Operating Systems as you had no choice. It was what it was, whether you liked it or not. With Linux, the concept of choice began to emerge. If you didn't like something, you were free, even encouraged, to change it.
I tried a number of distributions and could not decide on any one. They were great systems in their own right. It wasn't a matter of right and wrong anymore. It had become a matter of personal taste. With all that choice available, it became apparent that there would not be a single system that would be perfect for me. So I set out to create my own Linux system that would fully conform to my personal preferences.
To truly make it my own system, I resolved to compile everything from source code instead of using pre-compiled binary packages. This “perfect” Linux system would have the strengths of various systems without their perceived weaknesses. At first, the idea was rather daunting. I remained committed to the idea that such a system could be built.
After sorting through issues such as circular dependencies and compile-time errors, I finally built a custom-built Linux system. It was fully operational and perfectly usable like any of the other Linux systems out there at the time. But it was my own creation. It was very satisfying to have put together such a system myself. The only thing better would have been to create each piece of software myself. This was the next best thing.
As I shared my goals and experiences with other members of the Linux community, it became apparent that there was a sustained interest in these ideas. It quickly became plain that such custom-built Linux systems serve not only to meet user specific requirements, but also serve as an ideal learning opportunity for programmers and system administrators to enhance their (existing) Linux skills. Out of this broadened interest, the Linux From Scratch Project was born.
This Linux From Scratch book is the central core around that project. It provides the background and instructions necessary for you to design and build your own system. While this book provides a template that will result in a correctly working system, you are free to alter the instructions to suit yourself, which is, in part, an important part of this project. You remain in control; we just lend a helping hand to get you started on your own journey.
I sincerely hope you will have a great time working on your own Linux From Scratch system and enjoy the numerous benefits of having a system that is truly your own.
--
Gerard Beekmans
gerard AT linuxfromscratch D0T org
There are many reasons why you would want to read this book. One of the questions many people raise is, “why go through all the hassle of manually building a Linux system from scratch when you can just download and install an existing one?”
One important reason for this project's existence is to help you learn how a Linux system works from the inside out. Building an LFS system helps demonstrate what makes Linux tick, and how things work together and depend on each other. One of the best things that this learning experience can provide is the ability to customize a Linux system to suit your own unique needs.
Another key benefit of LFS is that it allows you to have more control over the system without relying on someone else's Linux implementation. With LFS, you are in the driver's seat and dictate every aspect of the system.
LFS allows you to create very compact Linux systems. When installing regular distributions, you are often forced to install a great many programs which are probably never used or understood. These programs waste resources. You may argue that with today's hard drive and CPUs, such resources are no longer a consideration. Sometimes, however, you are still constrained by size considerations if nothing else. Think about bootable CDs, USB sticks, and embedded systems. Those are areas where LFS can be beneficial.
Another advantage of a custom built Linux system is security. By compiling the entire system from source code, you are empowered to audit everything and apply all the security patches desired. It is no longer necessary to wait for somebody else to compile binary packages that fix a security hole. Unless you examine the patch and implement it yourself, you have no guarantee that the new binary package was built correctly and adequately fixes the problem.
The goal of Linux From Scratch is to build a complete and usable foundation-level system. If you do not wish to build your own Linux system from scratch, you may not entirely benefit from the information in this book.
There are too many other good reasons to build your own LFS system to list them all here. In the end, education is by far the most powerful of reasons. As you continue in your LFS experience, you will discover the power that information and knowledge truly bring.
The primary target architectures of LFS are the AMD/Intel x86 (32-bit) and x86_64 (64-bit) CPUs. On the other hand, the instructions in this book are also known to work, with some modifications, with the Power PC and ARM CPUs. To build a system that utilizes one of these CPUs, the main prerequisite, in addition to those on the next few pages, is an existing Linux system such as an earlier LFS installation, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora, SuSE, or other distribution that targets the architecture that you have. Also note that a 32-bit distribution can be installed and used as a host system on a 64-bit AMD/Intel computer.
Some other facts about 64-bit systems need to be added here. When compared to a 32-bit system, the sizes of executable programs are slightly larger and the execution speeds are only slightly faster. For example, in a test build of LFS-6.5 on a Core2Duo CPU based system, the following statistics were measured:
Architecture Build Time Build Size
32-bit 198.5 minutes 648 MB
64-bit 190.6 minutes 709 MB
As you can see, the 64-bit build is only 4% faster and is 9% larger than the 32-bit build. The gain from going to a 64-bit system is relatively minimal. Of course, if you have more than 4GB of RAM or want to manipulate data that exceeds 4GB, the advantages of a 64-bit system are substantial.
The default 64-bit build that results from LFS is considered a "pure" 64-bit system. That is, it supports 64-bit executables only. Building a "multi-lib" system requires compiling many applications twice, once for a 32-bit system and once for a 64-bit system. This is not directly supported in LFS because it would interfere with the educational objective of providing the instructions needed for a straightforward base Linux system. You can refer to the Cross Linux From Scratch project for this advanced topic.
There is one last comment about 64-bit systems. There are some older packages that cannot currently be built in a "pure" 64-bit system or require specialized build instructions. Generally, these packages have some embedded 32-bit specific assembly language instructions that fail when building on a 64-bit system. This includes some Xorg drivers for some legacy video cards at http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/driver/. Many of these problems can be worked around, but may require some specialized procedures or patches.
The structure of LFS follows Linux standards as closely as possible. The primary standards are:
Linux Standard Base (LSB) Version 5.0
The LSB has four separate standards: Core, Desktop, Runtime Languages, and Imaging. In addition to generic requirements there are also architecture specific requirements. There are also two areas for trial use: Gtk3 and Graphics. LFS attempts to conform to the architectures discussed in the previous section.
Many people do not agree with the requirements of the LSB. The main purpose of defining it is to ensure that proprietary software will be able to be installed and run properly on a compliant system. Since LFS is source based, the user has complete control over what packages are desired and many choose not to install some packages that are specified by the LSB.
Creating a complete LFS system capable of passing the LSB certifications tests is possible, but not without many additional packages that are beyond the scope of LFS. These additional packages have installation instructions in BLFS.
LSB Core: |
Bash, Bc, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, File, Findutils, Gawk, Grep, GTK+2, Gzip, M4, Man-DB, Ncurses, Procps, Psmisc, Sed, Shadow, Tar, Util-linux, Zlib |
LSB Desktop: |
None |
LSB Runtime Languages: |
Perl |
LSB Imaging: |
None |
LSB Gtk3 and LSB Graphics (Trial Use): |
None |
LSB Core: |
At, Batch (a part of At), Cpio, Ed, Fcrontab, Initd-tools, Lsb_release, NSPR, NSS, PAM, Pax, Sendmail (or Postfix or Exim), time |
LSB Desktop: |
Alsa, ATK, Cairo, Desktop-file-utils, Freetype, Fontconfig, Gdk-pixbuf, Glib2, Icon-naming-utils, Libjpeg-turbo, Libpng, Libtiff, Libxml2, MesaLib, Pango, Qt4, Xdg-utils, Xorg |
LSB Runtime Languages: |
Python, Libxml2, Libxslt |
LSB Imaging: |
CUPS, Cups-filters, Ghostscript, SANE |
LSB Gtk3 and LSB Graphics (Trial Use): |
GTK+3 |
As stated earlier, the goal of LFS is to build a complete and usable foundation-level system. This includes all packages needed to replicate itself while providing a relatively minimal base from which to customize a more complete system based on the choices of the user. This does not mean that LFS is the smallest system possible. Several important packages are included that are not strictly required. The lists below document the rationale for each package in the book.
Acl
This package contains utilities to administer Access Control Lists, which are used to define more fine-grained discretionary access rights for files and directories.
Attr
This package contains programs for administering extended attributes on filesystem objects.
Autoconf
This package contains programs for producing shell scripts that can automatically configure source code from a developer's template. It is often needed to rebuild a package after updates to the build procedures.
Automake
This package contains programs for generating Make files from a template. It is often needed to rebuild a package after updates to the build procedures.
Bash
This package satisfies an LSB core requirement to provide a Bourne Shell interface to the system. It was chosen over other shell packages because of its common usage and extensive capabilities beyond basic shell functions.
Bc
This package provides an arbitrary precision numeric processing language. It satisfies a requirement needed when building the Linux kernel.
Binutils
This package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files. The programs in this package are needed to compile most of the packages in an LFS system and beyond.
Bison
This package contains the GNU version of yacc (Yet Another Compiler Compiler) needed to build several other LFS programs.
Bzip2
This package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It is required to decompress many LFS packages.
Check
This package contains a test harness for other programs. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
Coreutils
This package contains a number of essential programs for viewing and manipulating files and directories. These programs are needed for command line file management, and are necessary for the installation procedures of every package in LFS.
D-Bus
This package contains programs to implement a message bus system, which a simple way for applications to talk to one another. It is required by systemd.
DejaGNU
This package contains a framework for testing other programs. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
Diffutils
This package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories. These programs can be used to create patches, and are also used in many packages' build procedures.
E2fsprogs
This package contains the utilities for handling the ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems. These are the most common and thoroughly tested file systems that Linux supports.
Expat
This package contains a relatively small XML parsing library. It is required by the XML::Parser Perl module.
Expect
This package contains a program for carrying out scripted dialogues with other interactive programs. It is commonly used for testing other packages. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
File
This package contains a utility for determining the type of a given file or files. A few packages need it to build.
Findutils
This package contains programs to find files in a file system. It is used in many packages' build scripts.
Flex
This package contains a utility for generating programs that recognize patterns in text. It is the GNU version of the lex (lexical analyzer) program. It is required to build several LFS packages.
Gawk
This package contains programs for manipulating text files. It is the GNU version of awk (Aho-Weinberg-Kernighan). It is used in many other packages' build scripts.
Gcc
This package is the Gnu Compiler Collection. It contains the C and C++ compilers as well as several others not built by LFS.
GDBM
This package contains the GNU Database Manager library. It is used by one other LFS package, Man-DB.
Gettext
This package contains utilities and libraries for internationalization and localization of numerous packages.
Glibc
This package contains the main C library. Linux programs would not run without it.
GMP
This package contains math libraries that provide useful functions for arbitrary precision arithmetic. It is required to build Gcc.
Gperf
This package contains a program that generates a perfect hash function from a key set. It is required for systemd.
Grep
This package contains programs for searching through files. These programs are used by most packages' build scripts.
Groff
This package contains programs for processing and formatting text. One important function of these programs is to format man pages.
GRUB
This package is the Grand Unified Boot Loader. It is one of several boot loaders available, but is the most flexible.
Gzip
This package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It is needed to decompress many packages in LFS and beyond.
Iana-etc
This package provides data for network services and protocols. It is needed to enable proper networking capabilities.
Inetutils
This package contains programs for basic network administration.
Intltool
This package contains tools for extracting translatable strings from source files.
IProute2
This package contains programs for basic and advanced IPv4 and IPv6 networking. It was chosen over the other common network tools package (net-tools) for its IPv6 capabilities.
Kbd
This package contains key-table files, keyboard utilities for non-US keyboards, and a number of console fonts.
Kmod
This package contains programs needed to administer Linux kernel modules.
Less
This package contains a very nice text file viewer that allows scrolling up or down when viewing a file. It is also used by Man-DB for viewing manpages.
Libcap
This package implements the user-space interfaces to the POSIX 1003.1e capabilities available in Linux kernels.
Libpipeline
The Libpipeline package contains a library for manipulating pipelines of subprocesses in a flexible and convenient way. It is required by the Man-DB package.
Libtool
This package contains the GNU generic library support script. It wraps the complexity of using shared libraries in a consistent, portable interface. It is needed by the test suites in other LFS packages.
Linux Kernel
This package is the Operating System. It is the Linux in the GNU/Linux environment.
M4
This package contains a general text macro processor useful as a build tool for other programs.
Make
This package contains a program for directing the building of packages. It is required by almost every package in LFS.
Man-DB
This package contains programs for finding and viewing man pages. It was chosen instead of the man package due to superior internationalization capabilities. It supplies the man program.
Man-pages
This package contains the actual contents of the basic Linux man pages.
MPC
This package contains functions for the arithmetic of complex numbers. It is required by Gcc.
MPFR
This package contains functions for multiple precision arithmetic. It is required by Gcc.
Ncurses
This package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens. It is often used to provide cursor control for a menuing system. It is needed by a number of packages in LFS.
Patch
This package contains a program for modifying or creating files by applying a patch file typically created by the diff program. It is needed by the build procedure for several LFS packages.
Perl
This package is an interpreter for the runtime language PERL. It is needed for the installation and test suites of several LFS packages.
Pkg-config
This package provides a program to return meta-data about an installed library or package.
Procps-NG
This package contains programs for monitoring processes. These programs are useful for system administration, and are also used by the LFS Bootscripts.
Psmisc
This package contains programs for displaying information about running processes. These programs are useful for system administration.
Readline
This package is a set of libraries that offers command-line editing and history capabilities. It is used by Bash.
Sed
This package allows editing of text without opening it in a text editor. It is also needed by most LFS packages' configure scripts.
Shadow
This package contains programs for handling passwords in a secure way.
Systemd
This package provides an init program and several additional boot and system control capabilites as an alternative to Sysvinit. It is used by many Linux distributions.
Tar
This package provides archiving and extraction capabilities of virtually all packages used in LFS.
Tcl
This package contains the Tool Command Language used in many test suites in LFS packages. It is only installed in the temporary toolchain.
Texinfo
This package contains programs for reading, writing, and converting info pages. It is used in the installation procedures of many LFS packages.
Util-linux
This package contains miscellaneous utility programs. Among them are utilities for handling file systems, consoles, partitions, and messages.
Vim
This package contains an editor. It was chosen because of its compatibility with the classic vi editor and its huge number of powerful capabilities. An editor is a very personal choice for many users and any other editor could be substituted if desired.
XML::Parser
This package is a Perl module that interfaces with Expat.
XZ Utils
This package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It provides the highest compression generally available and is useful for decompressing packages in XZ or LZMA format.
Zlib
This package contains compression and decompression routines used by some programs.
Building an LFS system is not a simple task. It requires a certain level of existing knowledge of Unix system administration in order to resolve problems and correctly execute the commands listed. In particular, as an absolute minimum, you should already have the ability to use the command line (shell) to copy or move files and directories, list directory and file contents, and change the current directory. It is also expected that you have a reasonable knowledge of using and installing Linux software.
Because the LFS book assumes at least this basic level of skill, the various LFS support forums are unlikely to be able to provide you with much assistance in these areas. You will find that your questions regarding such basic knowledge will likely go unanswered or you will simply be referred to the LFS essential pre-reading list.
Before building an LFS system, we recommend reading the following HOWTOs:
Software-Building-HOWTO http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Building-HOWTO.html
This is a comprehensive guide to building and installing “generic” Unix software packages under Linux. Although it was written some time ago, it still provides a good summary of the basic techniques needed to build and install software.
The Linux Users' Guide http://tldp.org/pub/Linux/docs/ldp-archived/users-guide/
This guide covers the usage of assorted Linux software. This reference is also fairly old, but still valid.
Your host system should have the following software with the minimum versions indicated. This should not be an issue for most modern Linux distributions. Also note that many distributions will place software headers into separate packages, often in the form of “<package-name>-devel” or “<package-name>-dev”. Be sure to install those if your distribution provides them.
Earlier versions of the listed software packages may work, but has not been tested.
Bash-3.2 (/bin/sh should be a symbolic or hard link to bash)
Binutils-2.17 (Versions greater than 2.25.1 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Bison-2.3 (/usr/bin/yacc should be a link to bison or small script that executes bison)
Bzip2-1.0.4
Coreutils-6.9
Diffutils-2.8.1
Findutils-4.2.31
Gawk-4.0.1 (/usr/bin/awk should be a link to gawk)
GCC-4.1.2 including the C++ compiler, g++ (Versions greater than 5.2.0 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
On some distributions, there have been reports that some libraries used by gcc can be in an inconsistent state and that this interferes with building some LFS packages. To check this, look in /usr/lib and possibly /usr/lib64 for libgmp.la, libmpfr.la, and libmpc.la. Either all three should be present or absent, but not only one or two. If the problem exists on your system, either rename or delete the .la files or install the appropriate missing package.
Glibc-2.11 (Versions greater than 2.22 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Grep-2.5.1a
Gzip-1.3.12
Linux Kernel-2.6.32
The reason for the kernel version requirement is that we specify that version when building glibc in Chapter 6 at the recommendation of the developers. It is also required by udev.
If the host kernel is earlier than 2.6.32 you will need to replace the kernel with a more up to date version. There are two ways you can go about this. First, see if your Linux vendor provides a 2.6.32 or later kernel package. If so, you may wish to install it. If your vendor doesn't offer an acceptable kernel package, or you would prefer not to install it, you can compile a kernel yourself. Instructions for compiling the kernel and configuring the boot loader (assuming the host uses GRUB) are located in Chapter 8.
M4-1.4.10
Make-3.81
Patch-2.5.4
Perl-5.8.8
Sed-4.1.5
Tar-1.18
Texinfo-4.7
Xz-5.0.0
Note that the symlinks mentioned above are required to build an LFS system using the instructions contained within this book. Symlinks that point to other software (such as dash, mawk, etc.) may work, but are not tested or supported by the LFS development team, and may require either deviation from the instructions or additional patches to some packages.
To see whether your host system has all the appropriate versions, and the ability to compile programs, run the following:
cat > version-check.sh << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
# Simple script to list version numbers of critical development tools
export LC_ALL=C
bash --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f2-4
echo "/bin/sh -> `readlink -f /bin/sh`"
echo -n "Binutils: "; ld --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f3-
bison --version | head -n1
if [ -h /usr/bin/yacc ]; then
echo "/usr/bin/yacc -> `readlink -f /usr/bin/yacc`";
elif [ -x /usr/bin/yacc ]; then
echo yacc is `/usr/bin/yacc --version | head -n1`
else
echo "yacc not found"
fi
bzip2 --version 2>&1 < /dev/null | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1,6-
echo -n "Coreutils: "; chown --version | head -n1 | cut -d")" -f2
diff --version | head -n1
find --version | head -n1
gawk --version | head -n1
if [ -h /usr/bin/awk ]; then
echo "/usr/bin/awk -> `readlink -f /usr/bin/awk`";
elif [ -x /usr/bin/awk ]; then
echo awk is `/usr/bin/awk --version | head -n1`
else
echo "awk not found"
fi
gcc --version | head -n1
g++ --version | head -n1
ldd --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f2- # glibc version
grep --version | head -n1
gzip --version | head -n1
cat /proc/version
m4 --version | head -n1
make --version | head -n1
patch --version | head -n1
echo Perl `perl -V:version`
sed --version | head -n1
tar --version | head -n1
makeinfo --version | head -n1
xz --version | head -n1
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c && g++ -o dummy dummy.c
if [ -x dummy ]
then echo "g++ compilation OK";
else echo "g++ compilation failed"; fi
rm -f dummy.c dummy
EOF
bash version-check.sh
Also check for some library consistency:
cat > library-check.sh << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
for lib in lib{gmp,mpfr,mpc}.la; do
echo $lib: $(if find /usr/lib* -name $lib|
grep -q $lib;then :;else echo not;fi) found
done
unset lib
EOF
bash library-check.sh
The files identified by this script should be all present or all absent, but not only one or two present.
To make things easier to follow, there are a few typographical conventions used throughout this book. This section contains some examples of the typographical format found throughout Linux From Scratch.
./configure --prefix=/usr
This form of text is designed to be typed exactly as seen unless otherwise noted in the surrounding text. It is also used in the explanation sections to identify which of the commands is being referenced.
In some cases, a logical line is extended to two or more physical lines with a backslash at the end of the line.
CC="gcc -B/usr/bin/" ../binutils-2.18/configure \ --prefix=/tools --disable-nls --disable-werror
Note that the backslash must be followed by an immediate return. Other whitespace characters like spaces or tab characters will create incorrect results.
install-info: unknown option '--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir'
This form of text (fixed-width text) shows screen output, usually
as the result of commands issued. This format is also used to
show filenames, such as /etc/ld.so.conf
.
Emphasis
This form of text is used for several purposes in the book. Its main purpose is to emphasize important points or items.
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
This format is used for hyperlinks both within the LFS community and to external pages. It includes HOWTOs, download locations, and websites.
cat > $LFS/etc/group << "EOF"
root:x:0:
bin:x:1:
......
EOF
This format is used when creating configuration files. The first
command tells the system to create the file $LFS/etc/group
from whatever is typed on the
following lines until the sequence End Of File (EOF) is
encountered. Therefore, this entire section is generally typed as
seen.
<REPLACED TEXT>
This format is used to encapsulate text that is not to be typed as seen or for copy-and-paste operations.
[OPTIONAL TEXT]
This format is used to encapsulate text that is optional.
passwd(5)
This format is used to refer to a specific manual (man) page. The
number inside parentheses indicates a specific section inside the
manuals. For example, passwd has two man pages. Per
LFS installation instructions, those two man pages will be
located at /usr/share/man/man1/passwd.1
and /usr/share/man/man5/passwd.5
. When the book
uses passwd(5)
it is specifically
referring to /usr/share/man/man5/passwd.5
. man passwd will print the first
man page it finds that matches “passwd”,
which will be /usr/share/man/man1/passwd.1
. For this example,
you will need to run man 5
passwd in order to read the specific page being
referred to. It should be noted that most man pages do not have
duplicate page names in different sections. Therefore,
man <program
name>
is generally sufficient.
This book is divided into the following parts.
Part I explains a few important notes on how to proceed with the LFS installation. This section also provides meta-information about the book.
Part II describes how to prepare for the building process—making a partition, downloading the packages, and compiling temporary tools.
Part III guides the reader through the building of the LFS system—compiling and installing all the packages one by one, setting up the boot scripts, and installing the kernel. The resulting Linux system is the foundation on which other software can be built to expand the system as desired. At the end of this book, there is an easy to use reference listing all of the programs, libraries, and important files that have been installed.
The software used to create an LFS system is constantly being updated and enhanced. Security warnings and bug fixes may become available after the LFS book has been released. To check whether the package versions or instructions in this release of LFS need any modifications to accommodate security vulnerabilities or other bug fixes, please visit http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/errata/systemd/ before proceeding with your build. You should note any changes shown and apply them to the relevant section of the book as you progress with building the LFS system.
The LFS system will be built by using an already installed Linux distribution (such as Debian, OpenMandriva, Fedora, or openSUSE). This existing Linux system (the host) will be used as a starting point to provide necessary programs, including a compiler, linker, and shell, to build the new system. Select the “development” option during the distribution installation to be able to access these tools.
As an alternative to installing a separate distribution onto your machine, you may wish to use a LiveCD from a commercial distribution.
Chapter 2 of this book describes how to create a new Linux native partition and file system. This is the place where the new LFS system will be compiled and installed. Chapter 3 explains which packages and patches need to be downloaded to build an LFS system and how to store them on the new file system. Chapter 4 discusses the setup of an appropriate working environment. Please read Chapter 4 carefully as it explains several important issues you need be aware of before beginning to work your way through Chapter 5 and beyond.
Chapter 5 explains the installation of a number of packages that will form the basic development suite (or toolchain) which is used to build the actual system in Chapter 6. Some of these packages are needed to resolve circular dependencies—for example, to compile a compiler, you need a compiler.
Chapter 5 also shows you how to build a first pass of the toolchain, including Binutils and GCC (first pass basically means these two core packages will be reinstalled). The next step is to build Glibc, the C library. Glibc will be compiled by the toolchain programs built in the first pass. Then, a second pass of the toolchain will be built. This time, the toolchain will be dynamically linked against the newly built Glibc. The remaining Chapter 5 packages are built using this second pass toolchain. When this is done, the LFS installation process will no longer depend on the host distribution, with the exception of the running kernel.
This effort to isolate the new system from the host distribution may seem excessive. A full technical explanation as to why this is done is provided in Section 5.2, “Toolchain Technical Notes”.
In Chapter 6, the full LFS system is built. The chroot (change root) program is used to enter a virtual environment and start a new shell whose root directory will be set to the LFS partition. This is very similar to rebooting and instructing the kernel to mount the LFS partition as the root partition. The system does not actually reboot, but instead uses chroot because creating a bootable system requires additional work which is not necessary just yet. The major advantage is that “chrooting” allows you to continue using the host system while LFS is being built. While waiting for package compilations to complete, you can continue using your computer as normal.
To finish the installation, the basic system configuration is set up in Chapter 7, and the kernel and boot loader are set up in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 contains information on continuing the LFS experience beyond this book. After the steps in this book have been implemented, the computer will be ready to reboot into the new LFS system.
This is the process in a nutshell. Detailed information on each step is discussed in the following chapters and package descriptions. Items that may seem complicated will be clarified, and everything will fall into place as you embark on the LFS adventure.
Below is a list of package updates made since the previous release of the book.
Upgraded to:
Binutils 2.25.1
Check 0.10.0
Coreutils 8.24
D-Bus-1.8.20
DejaGNU 1.5.3
E2fsprogs 1.42.13
File 5.24
Gawk 4.1.3
GCC 5.2.0
Gettext 0.19.5.1
Glibc 2.22
Inetutils 1.9.4
Intltool-0.51.0
IPRoute2 4.2.0
Kbd 2.0.3
Kmod 21
Libpipeline 1.4.1
Linux 4.2
Man-DB 2.7.2
Man-pages 4.02
MPC 1.0.3
MPFR 3.1.3
Ncurses 6.0
Patch 2.7.5
Perl 5.22.0
Procps-ng 3.3.11
Systemd 224
Texinfo 6.0
Tzdata 2015f
Util-Linux 2.27
XZ-Utils 5.2.1
Added:
bash-4.3.30-upstream_fixes-2.patch
glibc-2.22-upstream_i386_fix-1.patch
mpfr-3.1.3-upstream_fixes-1.patch
systemd-224-compat-3.patch
Tcl-core-8.6.4
Removed:
bash-4.3.30-upstream_fixes-1.patch
mpfr-3.1.2-upstream_fixes-3.patch
systemd-219-compat-1.patch
Tcl-8.6.3
This is version 7.8-systemd of the Linux From Scratch book, dated September 28th, 2015. If this book is more than six months old, a newer and better version is probably already available. To find out, please check one of the mirrors via http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html.
Below is a list of changes made since the previous release of the book.
Changelog Entries:
2015-09-28
[renodr] - LFS 7.8-systemd released.
[renodr] - Fix a warning when doing the GCC compile tests.
[renodr] - Add additional discussion about copying LFS systems from one machine to another machine.
[renodr] - Provide ncurses non-wide-character libraries that are compliant with version 5 of ncurses.
[renodr] - Remove unnecessary sed in e2fsprogs.
[renodr] - Update to util-linux-2.27.
[renodr] - Update to linux-4.2.
[renodr] - Update to iproute2-4.2.0.
[renodr] - Refresh build sizes and SBU values.
2015-08-25
[renodr] - Add an upstream patch for MPFR.
[renodr] - Update to libpipeline-1.4.1.
[renodr] - Update to linux-4.1.6.
[renodr] - Update to man-db-2.7.2.
[renodr] - Add a patch to allow glibc to build properly on i386 systems.
[renodr] - Remove obsolete r* programs from inetutils.
2015-08-19
[bdubbs] - Add a workaround to ncurses in Chapter 5 for hosts that have mawk installed.
[renodr] - Update to binutils-2.25.1.
[renodr] - Update to check-0.10.0.
[renodr] - Update to procps-ng-3.3.11.
[renodr] - Update to man-pages-4.02.
[renodr] - Update to glibc-2.22.
[renodr] - Update to linux-4.1.5.
[renodr] - Update to tzdata2015f.
2015-07-23
[krejzi] - Fixed a warning in the intltool-update perl script caused by perl-5.22.
[krejzi] - Updated to dbus-1.8.20.
[krejzi] - Updated to systemd-222.
2015-07-16
2015-07-12
2015-07-04
2015-06-28
[krejzi] - Updated to systemd-221.
2015-06-23
2015-06-13
[bdubbs] - Simplify gcc-pass1 instructions. Thanks to Pierre Labastie for the patch. Fixes #3797.
2015-06-10
2015-06-07
[bdubbs] - Update to linux-4.0.5. Fixes #3793.
2015-06-05
[bdubbs] - Update to perl-5.22.0. Fixes #3791.
2015-05-25
[bdubbs] - Update to bash-4.3.30-upstream_fixes-2.patch. Fixes #3789.
2015-05-23
2015-05-15
[bdubbs] - Add a patch from upstream to fix some libgomp (gcc) problems.
2015-05-14
2015-04-26
[bdubbs] - Updated to tzdata-2015d. Fixes #3780.
2015-04-24
[krejzi] - Added a fix for security issue in Glibc (CVE-2015-1781). Thanks to Ken Moffat for identifying the problem and the fix.
[krejzi] - Fixed Ncurses and Perl build with GCC 5. Thanks to Ken Moffat and Douglas R. Reno for providing the patches.
[krejzi] - Updated to GCC-5.1.0. Fixes #3779.
2015-04-21
[bdubbs] - Update to man-pages-3.8.3. Fixes #3778.
2015-04-16
2015-03-31
[bdubbs] - Adjust discussion of LFS envronment variable to be before first use.
[bdubbs] - Use --with-glibc-version=2.11 in gcc-pass1.
[bdubbs] - Update to dejagnu-1.5.3. Fixes #3773.
2015-03-28
2015-03-20
[bdubbs] - Update to linux-3.19.2. Fixes #3768.
2015-03-15
[bdubbs] - Update to tcl-core-8.6.4. Fixes #3766.
[bdubbs] - Update to util-linux-2.26.1. Fixes #3767.
[bdubbs] - Remove non-essential static libraries from the installation. Added a new section in Chapter 6 Introduction, suppressed many static libraries in different packages, and removed the remaining in the Cleaning Up section. Fixes #3751.
2015-03-11
[bdubbs] - Update to intltool-0.51.0. Fixes #3764.
2015-03-08
2015-03-07
2015-03-06
[krejzi] - LFS-7.7-systemd released.
If during the building of the LFS system you encounter any errors, have any questions, or think there is a typo in the book, please start by consulting the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that is located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/.
The linuxfromscratch.org
server
hosts a number of mailing lists used for the development of
the LFS project. These lists include the main development and
support lists, among others. If the FAQ does not solve the
problem you are having, the next step would be to search the
mailing lists at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/search.html.
For information on the different lists, how to subscribe, archive locations, and additional information, visit http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mail.html.
Several members of the LFS community offer assistance on
Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Before using this support, please
make sure that your question is not already answered in the
LFS FAQ or the mailing list archives. You can find the IRC
network at irc.freenode.net
. The
support channel is named #LFS-support.
The LFS project has a number of world-wide mirrors to make accessing the website and downloading the required packages more convenient. Please visit the LFS website at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html for a list of current mirrors.
If an issue or a question is encountered while working through this book, please check the FAQ page at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/#generalfaq. Questions are often already answered there. If your question is not answered on this page, try to find the source of the problem. The following hint will give you some guidance for troubleshooting: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/errors.txt.
If you cannot find your problem listed in the FAQ, search the mailing lists at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/search.html.
We also have a wonderful LFS community that is willing to offer assistance through the mailing lists and IRC (see the Section 1.4, “Resources” section of this book). However, we get several support questions every day and many of them can be easily answered by going to the FAQ and by searching the mailing lists first. So, for us to offer the best assistance possible, you need to do some research on your own first. That allows us to focus on the more unusual support needs. If your searches do not produce a solution, please include all relevant information (mentioned below) in your request for help.
Apart from a brief explanation of the problem being experienced, the essential things to include in any request for help are:
The version of the book being used (in this case 7.8-systemd)
The host distribution and version being used to create LFS
The output from the Section vii, Host System Requirements script
The package or section the problem was encountered in
The exact error message or symptom being received
Note whether you have deviated from the book at all
Deviating from this book does not mean that we will not help you. After all, LFS is about personal preference. Being upfront about any changes to the established procedure helps us evaluate and determine possible causes of your problem.
If something goes wrong while running the configure script, review
the config.log
file. This file
may contain errors encountered during configure which were not
printed to the screen. Include the relevant lines if you need to ask
for help.
Both the screen output and the contents of various files are useful in determining the cause of compilation problems. The screen output from the configure script and the make run can be helpful. It is not necessary to include the entire output, but do include enough of the relevant information. Below is an example of the type of information to include from the screen output from make:
gcc -DALIASPATH=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/share/locale:.\"
-DLOCALEDIR=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/share/locale\"
-DLIBDIR=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/lib\"
-DINCLUDEDIR=\"/mnt/lfs/usr/include\" -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I.
-g -O2 -c getopt1.c
gcc -g -O2 -static -o make ar.o arscan.o commands.o dir.o
expand.o file.o function.o getopt.o implicit.o job.o main.o
misc.o read.o remake.o rule.o signame.o variable.o vpath.o
default.o remote-stub.o version.o opt1.o
-lutil job.o: In function `load_too_high':
/lfs/tmp/make-3.79.1/job.c:1565: undefined reference
to `getloadavg'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [make] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/lfs/tmp/make-3.79.1'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/lfs/tmp/make-3.79.1'
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2
In this case, many people would just include the bottom section:
make [2]: *** [make] Error 1
This is not enough information to properly diagnose the problem because it only notes that something went wrong, not what went wrong. The entire section, as in the example above, is what should be saved because it includes the command that was executed and the associated error message(s).
An excellent article about asking for help on the Internet is available online at http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. Read and follow the hints in this document to increase the likelihood of getting the help you need.
In this chapter, the partition which will host the LFS system is prepared. We will create the partition itself, create a file system on it, and mount it.
Like most other operating systems, LFS is usually installed on a dedicated partition. The recommended approach to building an LFS system is to use an available empty partition or, if you have enough unpartitioned space, to create one.
A minimal system requires a partition of around 4 gigabytes (GB). This is enough to store all the source tarballs and compile the packages. However, if the LFS system is intended to be the primary Linux system, additional software will probably be installed which will require additional space. A 10 GB partition is a reasonable size to provide for growth. The LFS system itself will not take up this much room. A large portion of this requirement is to provide sufficient free temporary storage. Compiling packages can require a lot of disk space which will be reclaimed after the package is installed.
Because there is not always enough Random Access Memory (RAM)
available for compilation processes, it is a good idea to use a
small disk partition as swap
space. This is used by the kernel to store seldom-used data and
leave more memory available for active processes. The
swap
partition for an LFS
system can be the same as the one used by the host system, in
which case it is not necessary to create another one.
Start a disk partitioning program such as cfdisk or fdisk with a command line
option naming the hard disk on which the new partition will be
created—for example /dev/sda
for the primary Integrated Drive
Electronics (IDE) disk. Create a Linux native partition and a
swap
partition, if needed.
Please refer to cfdisk(8)
or
fdisk(8)
if you do not yet know
how to use the programs.
For experienced users, other partitioning schemes are possible. The new LFS system can be on a software RAID array or an LVM logical volume. However, some of these options require an initramfs, which is an advanced topic. These partitioning methodologies are not recommended for first time LFS users.
Remember the designation of the new partition (e.g.,
sda5
). This book will refer to
this as the LFS partition. Also remember the designation of the
swap
partition. These names
will be needed later for the /etc/fstab
file.
Requests for advice on system partitioning are often posted on the LFS mailing lists. This is a highly subjective topic. The default for most distributions is to use the entire drive with the exception of one small swap partition. This is not optimal for LFS for several reasons. It reduces flexibility, makes sharing of data across multiple distributions or LFS builds more difficult, makes backups more time consuming, and can waste disk space through inefficient allocation of file system structures.
A root LFS partition (not to be confused with the
/root
directory) of ten
gigabytes is a good compromise for most systems. It
provides enough space to build LFS and most of BLFS, but is
small enough so that multiple partitions can be easily
created for experimentation.
Most distributions automatically create a swap partition. Generally the recommended size of the swap partition is about twice the amount of physical RAM, however this is rarely needed. If disk space is limited, hold the swap partition to two gigabytes and monitor the amount of disk swapping.
Swapping is never good. Generally you can tell if a system is swapping by just listening to disk activity and observing how the system reacts to commands. The first reaction to swapping should be to check for an unreasonable command such as trying to edit a five gigabyte file. If swapping becomes a normal occurrence, the best solution is to purchase more RAM for your system.
There are several other partitions that are not required, but should be considered when designing a disk layout. The following list is not comprehensive, but is meant as a guide.
/boot – Highly recommended. Use this partition to store kernels and other booting information. To minimize potential boot problems with larger disks, make this the first physical partition on your first disk drive. A partition size of 100 megabytes is quite adequate.
/home – Highly recommended. Share your home directory and user customization across multiple distributions or LFS builds. The size is generally fairly large and depends on available disk space.
/usr – A separate /usr partition is generally used if providing a server for a thin client or diskless workstation. It is normally not needed for LFS. A size of five gigabytes will handle most installations.
/opt – This directory is most useful for BLFS where multiple installations of large packages like Gnome or KDE can be installed without embedding the files in the /usr hierarchy. If used, 5 to 10 gigabytes is generally adequate.
/tmp – A separate /tmp directory is rare, but useful if configuring a thin client. This partition, if used, will usually not need to exceed a couple of gigabytes.
/usr/src – This partition is very useful for providing a location to store BLFS source files and share them across LFS builds. It can also be used as a location for building BLFS packages. A reasonably large partition of 30-50 gigabytes allows plenty of room.
Any separate partition that you want automatically mounted
upon boot needs to be specified in the /etc/fstab
. Details about how to specify
partitions will be discussed in Section 8.2,
“Creating the /etc/fstab File”.
Now that a blank partition has been set up, the file system can be created. LFS can use any file system recognized by the Linux kernel, but the most common types are ext3 and ext4. The choice of file system can be complex and depends on the characteristics of the files and the size of the partition. For example:
is suitable for small partitions that are updated infrequently such as /boot.
is an upgrade to ext2 that includes a journal to help recover the partition's status in the case of an unclean shutdown. It is commonly used as a general purpose file system.
is the latest version of the ext file system family of partition types. It provides several new capabilities including nano-second timestamps, creation and use of very large files (16 TB), and speed improvements.
Other file sytems, including FAT32, NTFS, ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS are useful for specialized purposes. More information about these file systems can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems.
LFS assumes that the root file system (/) is of type ext4. To
create an ext4
file system on
the LFS partition, run the following:
mkfs -v -t ext4 /dev/<xxx>
If you are using an existing swap
partition, there is no need to format
it. If a new swap
partition was
created, it will need to be initialized with this command:
mkswap /dev/<yyy>
Replace <yyy>
with the name of the swap
partition.
Throughout this book, the environment variable LFS
will be used several times. You should
ensure that this variable is always defined throughout the LFS
build process. It should be set to the name of the directory
where you will be building your LFS system - we will use
/mnt/lfs
as an example, but the
directory choice is up to you. If you are building LFS on a
separate partition, this directory will be the mount point for
the partition. Choose a directory location and set the variable
with the following command:
export LFS=/mnt/lfs
Having this variable set is beneficial in that commands such as mkdir -v $LFS/tools can be typed literally. The shell will automatically replace “$LFS” with “/mnt/lfs” (or whatever the variable was set to) when it processes the command line.
Do not forget to check that LFS
is
set whenever you leave and reenter the current working
environment (such as when doing a su to root
or another user). Check that the
LFS
variable is set up properly
with:
echo $LFS
Make sure the output shows the path to your LFS system's build
location, which is /mnt/lfs
if
the provided example was followed. If the output is incorrect,
use the command given earlier on this page to set $LFS
to the correct directory name.
One way to ensure that the LFS
variable is always set is to edit the .bash_profile
file in both your personal
home directory and in /root/.bash_profile
and enter the export
command above.
Now that a file system has been created, the partition needs to
be made accessible. In order to do this, the partition needs to
be mounted at a chosen mount point. For the purposes of this
book, it is assumed that the file system is mounted under the
directory specified by the LFS
envronment varibale as described in the previous section.
Create the mount point and mount the LFS file system by running:
mkdir -pv $LFS
mount -v -t ext4 /dev/<xxx>
$LFS
Replace <xxx>
with the designation of the LFS partition.
If using multiple partitions for LFS (e.g., one for
/
and another for /usr
), mount them using:
mkdir -pv $LFS mount -v -t ext4 /dev/<xxx>
$LFS mkdir -v $LFS/usr mount -v -t ext4 /dev/<yyy>
$LFS/usr
Replace <xxx>
and <yyy>
with
the appropriate partition names.
Ensure that this new partition is not mounted with permissions
that are too restrictive (such as the nosuid
or nodev
options). Run the mount command without any
parameters to see what options are set for the mounted LFS
partition. If nosuid
and/or
nodev
are set, the partition will
need to be remounted.
If you are using a swap
partition, ensure that it is enabled using the swapon command:
/sbin/swapon -v /dev/<zzz>
Replace <zzz>
with the name of the swap
partition.
Now that there is an established place to work, it is time to download the packages.
This chapter includes a list of packages that need to be downloaded in order to build a basic Linux system. The listed version numbers correspond to versions of the software that are known to work, and this book is based on their use. We highly recommend against using newer versions because the build commands for one version may not work with a newer version. The newest package versions may also have problems that require work-arounds. These work-arounds will be developed and stabilized in the development version of the book.
Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download location has changed since this book was published, Google (http://www.google.com/) provides a useful search engine for most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the alternative means of downloading discussed at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/packages.html#packages.
Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stored
somewhere that is conveniently available throughout the entire
build. A working directory is also required to unpack the
sources and build them. $LFS/sources
can be used both as the place to
store the tarballs and patches and as a working directory. By
using this directory, the required elements will be located on
the LFS partition and will be available during all stages of
the building process.
To create this directory, execute the following command, as
user root
, before starting the
download session:
mkdir -v $LFS/sources
Make this directory writable and sticky. “Sticky” means that even if multiple users have write permission on a directory, only the owner of a file can delete the file within a sticky directory. The following command will enable the write and sticky modes:
chmod -v a+wt $LFS/sources
An easy way to download all of the packages and patches is by using wget-list as an input to wget. For example:
wget --input-file=wget-list --continue --directory-prefix=$LFS/sources
Additionally, starting with LFS-7.0, there is a separate file,
md5sums, which can be
used to verify that all the correct packages are available
before proceeding. Place that file in $LFS/sources
and run:
pushd $LFS/sources md5sum -c md5sums popd
Download or otherwise obtain the following packages:
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/acl/acl-2.2.52.src.tar.gz
MD5 sum: a61415312426e9c2212bd7dc7929abda
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/attr/
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/attr/attr-2.4.47.src.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 84f58dec00b60f2dc8fd1c9709291cc7
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.69.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 50f97f4159805e374639a73e2636f22e
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.15.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 9a1ddb0e053474d9d1105cfe39b0c48d
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-4.3.30.tar.gz
MD5 sum: a27b3ee9be83bd3ba448c0ff52b28447
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/bc/
Download: http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/bc/bc-1.06.95.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: 5126a721b73f97d715bb72c13c889035
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.25.1.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: ac493a78de4fee895961d025b7905be4
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.0.4.tar.xz
MD5 sum: c342201de104cc9ce0a21e0ad10d4021
Home page: http://www.bzip.org/
Download: http://www.bzip.org/1.0.6/bzip2-1.0.6.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 00b516f4704d4a7cb50a1d97e6e8e15b
Home page: http://check.sourceforge.net/
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/check/files/check/0.10.0/check-0.10.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 53c5e5c77d090e103a17f3ed7fd7d8b8
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.24.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 40efdbce865d2458d8da0a9dcee7c16c
Home page: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus
Download: http://dbus.freedesktop.org/releases/dbus/dbus-1.8.20.tar.gz
MD5 sum: b49890bbabedab3a1c3f4f73c7ff8b2b
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/dejagnu/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/dejagnu/dejagnu-1.5.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 5bda2cdb1af51a80aecce58d6e42bd2f
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.3.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 99180208ec2a82ce71f55b0d7389f1b3
Home page: http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/
Download: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs/v1.42.13/e2fsprogs-1.42.13.tar.gz
MD5 sum: bc759fc62666786f5436e2075beb3265
Home page: http://expat.sourceforge.net/
Download: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/expat/expat-2.1.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: dd7dab7a5fea97d2a6a43f511449b7cd
Home page: http://expect.sourceforge.net/
Download: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/expect/expect5.45.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 44e1a4f4c877e9ddc5a542dfa7ecc92b
Home page: http://www.darwinsys.com/file/
Download: ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file/file-5.24.tar.gz
MD5 sum: ec161b5a0d2aef147fb046e5630b1408
File (5.24) may no longer be available at the listed location. The site administrators of the master download location occasionally remove older versions when new ones are released. An alternative download location that may have the correct version available can also be found at: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/download.html#ftp.
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/findutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/findutils/findutils-4.4.2.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 351cc4adb07d54877fa15f75fb77d39f
Home page: http://flex.sourceforge.net
Download: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/flex/flex-2.5.39.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 477679c37ff8b28248a9b05f1da29a82
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gawk/gawk-4.1.3.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 97f8f44149ea9b9e94be97f68988be87
Home page: http://gcc.gnu.org/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-5.2.0/gcc-5.2.0.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: a51bcfeb3da7dd4c623e27207ed43467
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gdbm/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gdbm/gdbm-1.11.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 72c832680cf0999caedbe5b265c8c1bd
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.19.5.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 9b7c37e410df4bd1bf854e8c897cf937
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glibc/glibc-2.22.tar.xz
MD5 sum: e51e02bf552a0a1fbbdc948fb2f5e83c
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gmp/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu//gmp/gmp-6.0.0a.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 1e6da4e434553d2811437aa42c7f7c76
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gperf/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gperf/gperf-3.0.4.tar.gz
MD5 sum: c1f1db32fb6598d6a93e6e88796a8632
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-2.21.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 43c48064d6409862b8a850db83c8038a
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/groff-1.22.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: cc825fa64bc7306a885f2fb2268d3ec5
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
Download: http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-2.02~beta2.tar.xz
MD5 sum: be62932eade308a364ea4bbc91295930
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.6.tar.xz
MD5 sum: da981f86677d58a106496e68de6f8995
Home page: http://freecode.com/projects/iana-etc
MD5 sum: 3ba3afb1d1b261383d247f46cb135ee8
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/inetutils/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/inetutils/inetutils-1.9.4.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 87fef1fa3f603aef11c41dcc097af75e
Home page: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/intltool
Download: http://launchpad.net/intltool/trunk/0.51.0/+download/intltool-0.51.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 12e517cac2b57a0121cda351570f1e63
Home page: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/net/iproute2/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/net/iproute2/iproute2-4.2.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 51c54cc3245eff451154938fbc0f64f5
Home page: http://ftp.altlinux.org/pub/people/legion/kbd
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kbd/kbd-2.0.3.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 231b46e7142eb41ea3ae06d2ded3c208
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/kmod/kmod-21.tar.xz
MD5 sum: ee246fab2e1cba9fbdcad6a86ec31531
Home page: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/
Download: http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less/less-458.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 935b38aa2e73c888c210dedf8fd94f49
Home page: https://sites.google.com/site/fullycapable/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/security/linux-privs/libcap2/libcap-2.24.tar.xz
MD5 sum: d43ab9f680435a7fff35b4ace8d45b80
Home page: http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/libpipeline/libpipeline-1.4.1.tar.gz
MD5 sum: e54590ec68d6c1239f67b5b44e92022c
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-2.4.6.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 1bfb9b923f2c1339b4d2ce1807064aa5
Home page: http://www.kernel.org/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.2.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 3d5ea06d767e2f35c999eeadafc76523
The Linux kernel is updated relatively often, many times due to discoveries of security vulnerabilities. The latest available 4.2.x kernel version should be used, unless the errata page says otherwise.
For users with limited speed or expensive bandwidth who wish to update the Linux kernel, a baseline version of the package and patches can be downloaded separately. This may save some time or cost for a subsequent patch level upgrade within a minor release.
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.17.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 12a3c829301a4fd6586a57d3fcf196dc
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/make/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-4.1.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: 57a7a224a822f94789a587ccbcedff69
Home page: http://www.nongnu.org/man-db/
Download: http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/man-db/man-db-2.7.2.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 4b9480e4f1da04abb22ae7a9345ace6b
Home page: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/man-pages-4.02.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 6c5692af39eb5fe468a8bd1f110b0edd
Home page: http://www.multiprecision.org/
Download: http://www.multiprecision.org/mpc/download/mpc-1.0.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: d6a1d5f8ddea3abd2cc3e98f58352d26
Home page: http://www.mpfr.org/
Download: http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-3.1.3/mpfr-3.1.3.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 6969398cd2fbc56a6af570b5273c56a9
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu//ncurses/ncurses-6.0.tar.gz
MD5 sum: ee13d052e1ead260d7c28071f46eefb1
Home page: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/patch/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.7.5.tar.xz
MD5 sum: e3da7940431633fb65a01b91d3b7a27a
Home page: http://www.perl.org/
Download: http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.22.0.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: f67b152160431b3180fb766bdc2d02e2
Home page: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config
Download: http://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/releases/pkg-config-0.28.tar.gz
MD5 sum: aa3c86e67551adc3ac865160e34a2a0d
Home page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/procps-ng
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/procps-ng/files/Production/procps-ng-3.3.11.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 6cc5b94c1c5b8cbc89ad345a7b522f74
Home page: http://psmisc.sourceforge.net/
Download: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/psmisc/psmisc/psmisc-22.21.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 935c0fd6eb208288262b385fa656f1bf
Home page: http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/readline-6.3.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 33c8fb279e981274f485fd91da77e94a
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sed/sed-4.2.2.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: 7ffe1c7cdc3233e1e0c4b502df253974
Download: http://pkg-shadow.alioth.debian.org/releases/shadow-4.2.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 2bfafe7d4962682d31b5eba65dba4fc8
Home page: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/
Download: http://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/sources/other/systemd/systemd-224.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 814d12807f2449fb12dbb6d33a51cce8
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.28.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 49b6306167724fe48f419a33a5beb857
Home page: http://tcl.sourceforge.net/
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tcl/files/Tcl/8.6.4/tcl-core8.6.4-src.tar.gz
MD5 sum: 8b8c9d85469d8dbe32e51117b8ef11e3
Home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
Download: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-6.0.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 02818e62a5b8ae0213a7ff572991bb50
Home page: http://www.iana.org/time-zones
Download: http://www.iana.org/time-zones/repository/releases/tzdata2015f.tar.gz
MD5 sum: e3b82732d20e973e48af1c6f13df9a1d
Home page: http://freecode.com/projects/util-linux
Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/v2.27/util-linux-2.27.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 5b06bbda9309624ee7add15bc8d8ca22
Home page: http://www.vim.org
Download: ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.4.tar.bz2
MD5 sum: 607e135c559be642f210094ad023dc65
Home page: https://github.com/chorny/XML-Parser
Download: http://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/T/TO/TODDR/XML-Parser-2.44.tar.gz
MD5 sum: af4813fe3952362451201ced6fbce379
Home page: http://tukaani.org/xz
Download: http://tukaani.org/xz/xz-5.2.1.tar.xz
MD5 sum: b5e2dd95dc8498cea5354377ed89aa65
Home page: http://www.zlib.net/
Download: http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.8.tar.xz
MD5 sum: 28f1205d8dd2001f26fec1e8c2cebe37
Total size of these packages: about 399 MB
In addition to the packages, several patches are also required. These patches correct any mistakes in the packages that should be fixed by the maintainer. The patches also make small modifications to make the packages easier to work with. The following patches will be needed to build an LFS system:
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/bash-4.3.30-upstream_fixes-2.patch
MD5 sum: fd2d7ca532f9ea53d678a6bc79354681
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/bc-1.06.95-memory_leak-1.patch
MD5 sum: 877e81fba316fe487ec23501059d54b8
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/bzip2-1.0.6-install_docs-1.patch
MD5 sum: 6a5ac7e89b791aae556de0f745916f7f
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/coreutils-8.24-i18n-1.patch
MD5 sum: c6a5ccda1ca61de7c93b09d27a9a26d5
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/glibc-2.22-fhs-1.patch
MD5 sum: 9a5997c3452909b1769918c759eff8a2
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/glibc-2.22-upstream_i386_fix-1.patch
MD5 sum: cfb3cb46074a833ac5729be79e4f2592
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/kbd-2.0.3-backspace-1.patch
MD5 sum: f75cca16a38da6caa7d52151f7136895
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/mpfr-3.1.3-upstream_fixes-1.patch
MD5 sum: 2044abd90351861311c9aafcfb0ce864
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/readline-6.3-upstream_fixes-3.patch
MD5 sum: 6b0d9f4e79319d56a7fee9b35e5cfd1b
Download: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/systemd/systemd-224-compat-3.patch
MD5 sum: 5ef7a63335bd572dac54ac460caaebeb
Total size of these patches: about 274.7 KB
In addition to the above required patches, there exist a number of optional patches created by the LFS community. These optional patches solve minor problems or enable functionality that is not enabled by default. Feel free to peruse the patches database located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/downloads/ and acquire any additional patches to suit your system needs.
In this chapter, we will perform a few additional tasks to
prepare for building the temporary system. We will create a
directory in $LFS
for the
installation of the temporary tools, add an unprivileged user
to reduce risk, and create an appropriate build environment for
that user. We will also explain the unit of time we use to
measure how long LFS packages take to build, or “SBUs”,
and give some information about package test suites.
All programs compiled in Chapter
5 will be installed under $LFS/tools
to keep them separate from the
programs compiled in Chapter
6. The programs compiled here are temporary tools and will
not be a part of the final LFS system. By keeping these
programs in a separate directory, they can easily be discarded
later after their use. This also prevents these programs from
ending up in the host production directories (easy to do by
accident in Chapter
5).
Create the required directory by running the following as
root
:
mkdir -v $LFS/tools
The next step is to create a /tools
symlink on the host system. This will
point to the newly-created directory on the LFS partition. Run
this command as root
as well:
ln -sv $LFS/tools /
The above command is correct. The ln command has a few
syntactic variations, so be sure to check info coreutils ln and
ln(1)
before reporting what you
may think is an error.
The created symlink enables the toolchain to be compiled so
that it always refers to /tools
,
meaning that the compiler, assembler, and linker will work both
in Chapter 5 (when we are still using some tools from the host)
and in the next (when we are “chrooted” to the LFS partition).
When logged in as user root
,
making a single mistake can damage or destroy a system.
Therefore, we recommend building the packages in this chapter
as an unprivileged user. You could use your own user name, but
to make it easier to set up a clean working environment, create
a new user called lfs
as a
member of a new group (also named lfs
) and use this user during the
installation process. As root
,
issue the following commands to add the new user:
groupadd lfs useradd -s /bin/bash -g lfs -m -k /dev/null lfs
The meaning of the command line options:
-s
/bin/bash
This makes bash the default shell
for user lfs
.
-g
lfs
This option adds user lfs
to group lfs
.
-m
This creates a home directory for lfs
.
-k
/dev/null
This parameter prevents possible copying of files from a
skeleton directory (default is /etc/skel
) by changing the input
location to the special null device.
lfs
This is the actual name for the created group and user.
To log in as lfs
(as opposed to
switching to user lfs
when
logged in as root
, which does
not require the lfs
user to
have a password), give lfs
a
password:
passwd lfs
Grant lfs
full access to
$LFS/tools
by making lfs
the directory owner:
chown -v lfs $LFS/tools
If a separate working directory was created as suggested, give
user lfs
ownership of this
directory:
chown -v lfs $LFS/sources
Next, login as user lfs
. This
can be done via a virtual console, through a display manager,
or with the following substitute user command:
su - lfs
The “-
” instructs
su to start a
login shell as opposed to a non-login shell. The difference
between these two types of shells can be found in detail in
bash(1)
and info bash.
Set up a good working environment by creating two new startup
files for the bash shell. While logged in
as user lfs
, issue the
following command to create a new .bash_profile
:
cat > ~/.bash_profile << "EOF"
exec env -i HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM PS1='\u:\w\$ ' /bin/bash
EOF
When logged on as user lfs
, the
initial shell is usually a login shell which reads the
/etc/profile
of the host
(probably containing some settings and environment variables)
and then .bash_profile
. The
exec env
-i.../bin/bash command in the .bash_profile
file replaces the running shell
with a new one with a completely empty environment, except for
the HOME
, TERM
, and PS1
variables. This ensures that no unwanted and potentially
hazardous environment variables from the host system leak into
the build environment. The technique used here achieves the
goal of ensuring a clean environment.
The new instance of the shell is a non-login shell, which does not read
the /etc/profile
or .bash_profile
files, but rather reads the
.bashrc
file instead. Create the
.bashrc
file now:
cat > ~/.bashrc << "EOF"
set +h
umask 022
LFS=/mnt/lfs
LC_ALL=POSIX
LFS_TGT=$(uname -m)-lfs-linux-gnu
PATH=/tools/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
export LFS LC_ALL LFS_TGT PATH
EOF
The set +h
command turns off bash's hash function. Hashing
is ordinarily a useful feature—bash uses a hash table to
remember the full path of executable files to avoid searching
the PATH
time and again to find the
same executable. However, the new tools should be used as soon
as they are installed. By switching off the hash function, the
shell will always search the PATH
when a program is to be run. As such, the shell will find the
newly compiled tools in $LFS/tools
as soon as they are available
without remembering a previous version of the same program in a
different location.
Setting the user file-creation mask (umask) to 022 ensures that
newly created files and directories are only writable by their
owner, but are readable and executable by anyone (assuming
default modes are used by the open(2)
system call, new files will end up
with permission mode 644 and directories with mode 755).
The LFS
variable should be set to
the chosen mount point.
The LC_ALL
variable controls the
localization of certain programs, making their messages follow
the conventions of a specified country. Setting LC_ALL
to “POSIX”
or “C” (the two are equivalent) ensures
that everything will work as expected in the chroot
environment.
The LFS_TGT
variable sets a
non-default, but compatible machine description for use when
building our cross compiler and linker and when cross compiling
our temporary toolchain. More information is contained in
Section 5.2,
“Toolchain Technical Notes”.
By putting /tools/bin
ahead of
the standard PATH
, all the programs
installed in Chapter
5 are picked up by the shell immediately after their
installation. This, combined with turning off hashing, limits
the risk that old programs are used from the host when the same
programs are available in the chapter 5 environment.
Finally, to have the environment fully prepared for building the temporary tools, source the just-created user profile:
source ~/.bash_profile
Many people would like to know beforehand approximately how long it takes to compile and install each package. Because Linux From Scratch can be built on many different systems, it is impossible to provide accurate time estimates. The biggest package (Glibc) will take approximately 20 minutes on the fastest systems, but could take up to three days on slower systems! Instead of providing actual times, the Standard Build Unit (SBU) measure will be used instead.
The SBU measure works as follows. The first package to be compiled from this book is Binutils in Chapter 5. The time it takes to compile this package is what will be referred to as the Standard Build Unit or SBU. All other compile times will be expressed relative to this time.
For example, consider a package whose compilation time is 4.5 SBUs. This means that if a system took 10 minutes to compile and install the first pass of Binutils, it will take approximately 45 minutes to build this example package. Fortunately, most build times are shorter than the one for Binutils.
In general, SBUs are not entirely accurate because they depend on many factors, including the host system's version of GCC. They are provided here to give an estimate of how long it might take to install a package, but the numbers can vary by as much as dozens of minutes in some cases.
For many modern systems with multiple processors (or cores) the compilation time for a package can be reduced by performing a "parallel make" by either setting an environment variable or telling the make program how many processors are available. For instance, a Core2Duo can support two simultaneous processes with:
export MAKEFLAGS='-j 2'
or just building with:
make -j2
When multiple processors are used in this way, the SBU units in the book will vary even more than they normally would. In some cases, the make step will simply fail. Analyzing the output of the build process will also be more difficult because the lines of different processes will be interleaved. If you run into a problem with a build step, revert back to a single processor build to properly analyze the error messages.
Most packages provide a test suite. Running the test suite for a newly built package is a good idea because it can provide a “sanity check” indicating that everything compiled correctly. A test suite that passes its set of checks usually proves that the package is functioning as the developer intended. It does not, however, guarantee that the package is totally bug free.
Some test suites are more important than others. For example, the test suites for the core toolchain packages—GCC, Binutils, and Glibc—are of the utmost importance due to their central role in a properly functioning system. The test suites for GCC and Glibc can take a very long time to complete, especially on slower hardware, but are strongly recommended.
Experience has shown that there is little to be gained from running the test suites in Chapter 5. There can be no escaping the fact that the host system always exerts some influence on the tests in that chapter, often causing inexplicable failures. Because the tools built in Chapter 5 are temporary and eventually discarded, we do not recommend running the test suites in Chapter 5 for the average reader. The instructions for running those test suites are provided for the benefit of testers and developers, but they are strictly optional.
A common issue with running the test suites for Binutils and
GCC is running out of pseudo terminals (PTYs). This can result
in a high number of failing tests. This may happen for several
reasons, but the most likely cause is that the host system does
not have the devpts
file system
set up correctly. This issue is discussed in greater detail at
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html#no-ptys.
Sometimes package test suites will fail, but for reasons which the developers are aware of and have deemed non-critical. Consult the logs located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/build-logs/systemd/ to verify whether or not these failures are expected. This site is valid for all tests throughout this book.
This chapter shows how to build a minimal Linux system. This system will contain just enough tools to start constructing the final LFS system in Chapter 6 and allow a working environment with more user convenience than a minimum environment would.
There are two steps in building this minimal system. The first step is to build a new and host-independent toolchain (compiler, assembler, linker, libraries, and a few useful utilities). The second step uses this toolchain to build the other essential tools.
The files compiled in this chapter will be installed under the
$LFS/tools
directory to keep them
separate from the files installed in the next chapter and the
host production directories. Since the packages compiled here
are temporary, we do not want them to pollute the soon-to-be
LFS system.
This section explains some of the rationale and technical details behind the overall build method. It is not essential to immediately understand everything in this section. Most of this information will be clearer after performing an actual build. This section can be referred to at any time during the process.
The overall goal of Chapter 5 is to produce a temporary area that contains a known-good set of tools that can be isolated from the host system. By using chroot, the commands in the remaining chapters will be contained within that environment, ensuring a clean, trouble-free build of the target LFS system. The build process has been designed to minimize the risks for new readers and to provide the most educational value at the same time.
Before continuing, be aware of the name of the working
platform, often referred to as the target triplet. A simple
way to determine the name of the target triplet is to run the
config.guess
script that comes with the source for many packages. Unpack
the Binutils sources and run the script: ./config.guess
and note the
output. For example, for a modern 32-bit Intel processor the
output will likely be i686-pc-linux-gnu.
Also be aware of the name of the platform's dynamic linker,
often referred to as the dynamic loader (not to be confused
with the standard linker ld that is part of
Binutils). The dynamic linker provided by Glibc finds and
loads the shared libraries needed by a program, prepares the
program to run, and then runs it. The name of the dynamic
linker for a 32-bit Intel machine will be ld-linux.so.2
. A sure-fire way to determine
the name of the dynamic linker is to inspect a random binary
from the host system by running: readelf -l <name of binary> | grep
interpreter
and noting the output. The
authoritative reference covering all platforms is in the
shlib-versions
file in the root
of the Glibc source tree.
Some key technical points of how the Chapter 5 build method works:
Slightly adjusting the name of the working platform, by
changing the "vendor" field target triplet by way of the
LFS_TGT
variable, ensures that
the first build of Binutils and GCC produces a compatible
cross-linker and cross-compiler. Instead of producing
binaries for another architecture, the cross-linker and
cross-compiler will produce binaries compatible with the
current hardware.
The temporary libraries are cross-compiled. Because a cross-compiler by its nature cannot rely on anything from its host system, this method removes potential contamination of the target system by lessening the chance of headers or libraries from the host being incorporated into the new tools. Cross-compilation also allows for the possibility of building both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries on 64-bit capable hardware.
Careful manipulation of the GCC source tells the compiler which target dynamic linker will be used.
Binutils is installed first because the configure runs of both GCC and Glibc perform various feature tests on the assembler and linker to determine which software features to enable or disable. This is more important than one might first realize. An incorrectly configured GCC or Glibc can result in a subtly broken toolchain, where the impact of such breakage might not show up until near the end of the build of an entire distribution. A test suite failure will usually highlight this error before too much additional work is performed.
Binutils installs its assembler and linker in two locations,
/tools/bin
and /tools/$LFS_TGT/bin
. The tools in one
location are hard linked to the other. An important facet of
the linker is its library search order. Detailed information
can be obtained from ld by passing it the
--verbose
flag. For
example, an ld --verbose | grep
SEARCH
will illustrate the current search paths
and their order. It shows which files are linked by
ld by compiling a
dummy program and passing the --verbose
switch to the linker.
For example, gcc dummy.c
-Wl,--verbose 2>&1 | grep succeeded
will
show all the files successfully opened during the linking.
The next package installed is GCC. An example of what can be seen during its run of configure is:
checking what assembler to use... /tools/i686-lfs-linux-gnu/bin/as
checking what linker to use... /tools/i686-lfs-linux-gnu/bin/ld
This is important for the reasons mentioned above. It also
demonstrates that GCC's configure script does not search the
PATH directories to find which tools to use. However, during
the actual operation of gcc itself, the same search
paths are not necessarily used. To find out which standard
linker gcc will
use, run: gcc
-print-prog-name=ld
.
Detailed information can be obtained from gcc by passing it the
-v
command line option
while compiling a dummy program. For example, gcc -v dummy.c
will show
detailed information about the preprocessor, compilation, and
assembly stages, including gcc's included search paths
and their order.
Next installed are sanitized Linux API headers. These allow the standard C library (Glibc) to interface with features that the Linux kernel will provide.
The next package installed is Glibc. The most important
considerations for building Glibc are the compiler, binary
tools, and kernel headers. The compiler is generally not an
issue since Glibc will always use the compiler relating to the
--host
parameter passed
to its configure script, e.g. in our case, i686-lfs-linux-gnu-gcc. The
binary tools and kernel headers can be a bit more complicated.
Therefore, take no risks and use the available configure
switches to enforce the correct selections. After the run of
configure, check
the contents of the config.make
file in the glibc-build
directory
for all important details. Note the use of CC="i686-lfs-gnu-gcc"
to control
which binary tools are used and the use of the -nostdinc
and -isystem
flags to control the
compiler's include search path. These items highlight an
important aspect of the Glibc package—it is very
self-sufficient in terms of its build machinery and generally
does not rely on toolchain defaults.
During the second pass of Binutils, we are able to utilize the
--with-lib-path
configure switch to control ld's library search path.
For the second pass of GCC, its sources also need to be
modified to tell GCC to use the new dynamic linker. Failure to
do so will result in the GCC programs themselves having the
name of the dynamic linker from the host system's /lib
directory embedded into them, which
would defeat the goal of getting away from the host. From this
point onwards, the core toolchain is self-contained and
self-hosted. The remainder of the Chapter
5 packages all build against the new Glibc in /tools
.
Upon entering the chroot environment in Chapter
6, the first major package to be installed is Glibc, due to
its self-sufficient nature mentioned above. Once this Glibc is
installed into /usr
, we will
perform a quick changeover of the toolchain defaults, and then
proceed in building the rest of the target LFS system.
When building packages there are several assumptions made within the instructions:
Several of the packages are patched before compilation, but only when the patch is needed to circumvent a problem. A patch is often needed in both this and the next chapter, but sometimes in only one or the other. Therefore, do not be concerned if instructions for a downloaded patch seem to be missing. Warning messages about offset or fuzz may also be encountered when applying a patch. Do not worry about these warnings, as the patch was still successfully applied.
During the compilation of most packages, there will be several warnings that scroll by on the screen. These are normal and can safely be ignored. These warnings are as they appear—warnings about deprecated, but not invalid, use of the C or C++ syntax. C standards change fairly often, and some packages still use the older standard. This is not a problem, but does prompt the warning.
Check one last time that the LFS
environment variable is set up
properly:
echo $LFS
Make sure the output shows the path to the LFS
partition's mount point, which is /mnt/lfs
, using our example.
Finally, two last important items must be emphasized:
The build instructions assume that the Host System Requirements, including symbolic links, have been set properly:
bash is the shell in use.
sh is a symbolic link to bash.
/usr/bin/awk is a symbolic link to gawk.
/usr/bin/yacc is a symbolic link to bison or a small script that executes bison.
To re-emphasize the build process:
Place all the sources and patches in a directory
that will be accessible from the chroot
environment such as /mnt/lfs/sources/
. Do
not put
sources in /mnt/lfs/tools/
.
Change to the sources directory.
Using the tar program, extract the package to be built. In Chapter 5, ensure you are the lfs user when extracting the package.
Change to the directory created when the package was extracted.
Follow the book's instructions for building the package.
Change back to the sources directory.
Delete the extracted source directory and
any
directories that were created in the build
process unless instructed otherwise.
<package>
-build
The Binutils package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files.
Go back and re-read the notes in the previous section. Understanding the notes labeled important will save you a lot of problems later.
It is important that Binutils be the first package compiled because both Glibc and GCC perform various tests on the available linker and assembler to determine which of their own features to enable.
The Binutils documentation recommends building Binutils outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build
In order for the SBU values listed in the rest of the book
to be of any use, measure the time it takes to build this
package from the configuration, up to and including the
first install. To achieve this easily, wrap the commands in
a time
command like this: time {
./configure ... && ... && make install;
}
.
The approximate build SBU values and required disk space in Chapter 5 does not include test suite data.
Now prepare Binutils for compilation:
../binutils-2.25.1/configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --with-sysroot=$LFS \ --with-lib-path=/tools/lib \ --target=$LFS_TGT \ --disable-nls \ --disable-werror
The meaning of the configure options:
--prefix=/tools
This tells the configure script to prepare to install
the Binutils programs in the /tools
directory.
--with-sysroot=$LFS
For cross compilation, this tells the build system to look in $LFS for the target system libraries as needed.
--with-lib-path=/tools/lib
This specifies which library path the linker should be configured to use.
--target=$LFS_TGT
Because the machine description in the LFS_TGT
variable is slightly different
than the value returned by the config.guess script,
this switch will tell the configure script to
adjust Binutil's build system for building a cross
linker.
--disable-nls
This disables internationalization as i18n is not needed for the temporary tools.
--disable-werror
This prevents the build from stopping in the event that there are warnings from the host's compiler.
Continue with compiling the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. Ordinarily we would now run the test suite, but at this early stage the test suite framework (Tcl, Expect, and DejaGNU) is not yet in place. The benefits of running the tests at this point are minimal since the programs from this first pass will soon be replaced by those from the second.
If building on x86_64, create a symlink to ensure the sanity of the toolchain:
case $(uname -m) in x86_64) mkdir -v /tools/lib && ln -sv lib /tools/lib64 ;; esac
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.13.2, “Contents of Binutils.”
The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, which includes the C and C++ compilers.
GCC now requires the GMP, MPFR and MPC packages. As these packages may not be included in your host distribution, they will be built with GCC. Unpack each package into the GCC source directory and rename the resulting directories so the GCC build procedures will automatically use them:
There are frequent misunderstandings about this chapter. The procedures are the same as every other chapter as explained earlier (Package build instructions). First extract the gcc tarball from the sources directory and then change to the directory created. Only then should you proceed with the instructions below.
tar -xf ../mpfr-3.1.3.tar.xz mv -v mpfr-3.1.3 mpfr tar -xf ../gmp-6.0.0a.tar.xz mv -v gmp-6.0.0 gmp tar -xf ../mpc-1.0.3.tar.gz mv -v mpc-1.0.3 mpc
The following command will change the location of GCC's
default dynamic linker to use the one installed in
/tools
. It also removes
/usr/include
from GCC's include
search path. Issue:
for file in \ $(find gcc/config -name linux64.h -o -name linux.h -o -name sysv4.h) do cp -uv $file{,.orig} sed -e 's@/lib\(64\)\?\(32\)\?/ld@/tools&@g' \ -e 's@/usr@/tools@g' $file.orig > $file echo ' #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 "/tools/lib/" #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 ""' >> $file touch $file.orig done
In case the above seems hard to follow, let's break it down a
bit. First we find all the files under the gcc/config
directory that are named either
linux.h
, linux64.h
or sysv4.h
. For each file found, we copy it to
a file of the same name but with an added suffix of
“.orig”. Then the first sed
expression prepends “/tools” to every instance of
“/lib/ld”, “/lib64/ld” or “/lib32/ld”, while the second one
replaces hard-coded instances of “/usr”.
Next, we add our define statements which alter the default
startfile prefix to the end of the file. Note that the
trailing “/” in “/tools/lib/” is required.
Finally, we use touch to update the
timestamp on the copied files. When used in conjunction with
cp -u, this
prevents unexpected changes to the original files in case the
commands are inadvertently run twice.
The GCC documentation recommends building GCC outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build
Prepare GCC for compilation:
../gcc-5.2.0/configure \ --target=$LFS_TGT \ --prefix=/tools \ --with-glibc-version=2.11 \ --with-sysroot=$LFS \ --with-newlib \ --without-headers \ --with-local-prefix=/tools \ --with-native-system-header-dir=/tools/include \ --disable-nls \ --disable-shared \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-decimal-float \ --disable-threads \ --disable-libatomic \ --disable-libgomp \ --disable-libquadmath \ --disable-libssp \ --disable-libvtv \ --disable-libstdcxx \ --enable-languages=c,c++
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-newlib
Since a working C library is not yet available, this ensures that the inhibit_libc constant is defined when building libgcc. This prevents the compiling of any code that requires libc support.
--without-headers
When creating a complete cross-compiler, GCC requires standard headers compatible with the target system. For our purposes these headers will not be needed. This switch prevents GCC from looking for them.
--with-local-prefix=/tools
The local prefix is the location in the system that GCC
will search for locally installed include files. The
default is /usr/local
.
Setting this to /tools
helps keep the host location of /usr/local
out of this GCC's search
path.
--with-native-system-header-dir=/tools/include
By default GCC searches /usr/include
for system headers. In
conjunction with the sysroot switch, this would
translate normally to $LFS/usr/include
. However the headers
that will be installed in the next two sections will go
to $LFS/tools/include
.
This switch ensures that gcc will find them correctly.
In the second pass of GCC, this same switch will ensure
that no headers from the host system are found.
--disable-shared
This switch forces GCC to link its internal libraries statically. We do this to avoid possible issues with the host system.
--disable-decimal-float,
--disable-threads, --disable-libatomic,
--disable-libgomp, --disable-libquadmath,
--disable-libssp, --disable-libvtv,
--disable-libstdcxx
These switches disable support for the decimal floating point extension, threading, libatomic, libgomp, libquadmath, libssp, libvtv, and the C++ standard library respectively. These features will fail to compile when building a cross-compiler and are not necessary for the task of cross-compiling the temporary libc.
--disable-multilib
On x86_64, LFS does not yet support a multilib configuration. This switch is harmless for x86.
--enable-languages=c,c++
This option ensures that only the C and C++ compilers are built. These are the only languages needed now.
Compile GCC by running:
make
Compilation is now complete. At this point, the test suite would normally be run, but, as mentioned before, the test suite framework is not in place yet. The benefits of running the tests at this point are minimal since the programs from this first pass will soon be replaced.
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.17.2, “Contents of GCC.”
The Linux API Headers (in linux-4.2.tar.xz) expose the kernel's API for use by Glibc.
The Linux kernel needs to expose an Application Programming Interface (API) for the system's C library (Glibc in LFS) to use. This is done by way of sanitizing various C header files that are shipped in the Linux kernel source tarball.
Make sure there are no stale files embedded in the package:
make mrproper
Now extract the user-visible kernel headers from the source. They are placed in an intermediate local directory and copied to the needed location because the extraction process removes any existing files in the target directory.
make INSTALL_HDR_PATH=dest headers_install cp -rv dest/include/* /tools/include
Details on this package are located in Section 6.7.2, “Contents of Linux API Headers.”
The Glibc package contains the main C library. This library provides the basic routines for allocating memory, searching directories, opening and closing files, reading and writing files, string handling, pattern matching, arithmetic, and so on.
First, fix a build problem that affects i386 systems:
patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.22-upstream_i386_fix-1.patch
The Glibc documentation recommends building Glibc outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../glibc-build cd ../glibc-build
Next, prepare Glibc for compilation:
../glibc-2.22/configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --host=$LFS_TGT \ --build=$(../glibc-2.22/scripts/config.guess) \ --disable-profile \ --enable-kernel=2.6.32 \ --enable-obsolete-rpc \ --with-headers=/tools/include \ libc_cv_forced_unwind=yes \ libc_cv_ctors_header=yes \ libc_cv_c_cleanup=yes
The meaning of the configure options:
--host=$LFS_TGT,
--build=$(../glibc-2.22/scripts/config.guess)
The combined effect of these switches is that Glibc's
build system configures itself to cross-compile, using
the cross-linker and cross-compiler in /tools
.
--disable-profile
This builds the libraries without profiling information. Omit this option if profiling on the temporary tools is necessary.
--enable-kernel=2.6.32
This tells Glibc to compile the library with support for 2.6.32 and later Linux kernels. Workarounds for older kernels are not enabled.
--enable-obsolete-rpc
This installs NIS and RPC related headers that are not installed by default. They are required to build GCC and by several BLFS packages.
--with-headers=/tools/include
This tells Glibc to compile itself against the headers recently installed to the tools directory, so that it knows exactly what features the kernel has and can optimize itself accordingly.
libc_cv_forced_unwind=yes
The linker installed during Section 5.4, “Binutils-2.25.1 - Pass 1” was cross-compiled and as such cannot be used until Glibc has been installed. This means that the configure test for force-unwind support will fail, as it relies on a working linker. The libc_cv_forced_unwind=yes variable is passed in order to inform configure that force-unwind support is available without it having to run the test.
libc_cv_c_cleanup=yes
Simlarly, we pass libc_cv_c_cleanup=yes through to the configure script so that the test is skipped and C cleanup handling support is configured.
libc_cv_ctors_header=yes
Simlarly, we pass libc_cv_ctors_header=yes through to the configure script so that the test is skipped and gcc constructor support is configured.
During this stage the following warning might appear:
configure: WARNING: *** These auxiliary programs are missing or *** incompatible versions: msgfmt *** some features will be disabled. *** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.
The missing or incompatible msgfmt program is generally harmless. This msgfmt program is part of the Gettext package which the host distribution should provide.
There have been reports that this package may fail when building as a "parallel make". If this occurs, rerun the make command with a "-j1" option.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
At this point, it is imperative to stop and ensure that the basic functions (compiling and linking) of the new toolchain are working as expected. To perform a sanity check, run the following commands:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c $LFS_TGT-gcc dummy.c readelf -l a.out | grep ': /tools'
If everything is working correctly, there should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be of the form:
[Requesting program interpreter: /tools/lib/ld-linux.so.2]
Note that for 64-bit machines, the interpreter name will be
/tools/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
.
If the output is not shown as above or there was no output at all, then something is wrong. Investigate and retrace the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it. This issue must be resolved before continuing on.
Once all is well, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out
Building Binutils in the section after next will serve as an additional check that the toolchain has been built properly. If Binutils fails to build, it is an indication that something has gone wrong with the previous Binutils, GCC, or Glibc installations.
Details on this package are located in Section 6.9.3, “Contents of Glibc.”
Libstdc++ is the standard C++ library. It is needed for the correct operation of the g++ compiler.
Libstdc++ is part of the
GCC sources. You should first unpack the GCC tarball and
change to the gcc-5.2.0
directory.
Create a directory for Libstdc++ and enter it:
mkdir -v ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build
Prepare Libstdc++ for compilation:
../gcc-5.2.0/libstdc++-v3/configure \ --host=$LFS_TGT \ --prefix=/tools \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-nls \ --disable-libstdcxx-threads \ --disable-libstdcxx-pch \ --with-gxx-include-dir=/tools/$LFS_TGT/include/c++/5.2.0
The meaning of the configure options:
--host=...
Indicates to use the cross compiler we have just built
instead of the one in /usr/bin
.
--disable-libstdcxx-threads
Since we have not yet built the C threads library, the C++ one cannot be built either.
--disable-libstdcxx-pch
This switch prevents the installation of precompiled include files, which are not needed at this stage.
--with-gxx-include-dir=/tools/$LFS_TGT/include/c++/5.2.0
This is the location where the standard include files are searched by the C++ compiler. In a normal build, this information is automatically passed to the Libstdc++ configure options from the toplevel directory. In our case, this information must be explicitly given.
Compile libstdc++ by running:
make
Install the library:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.17.2, “Contents of GCC.”
The Binutils package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files.
Create a separate build directory again:
mkdir -v ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build
Prepare Binutils for compilation:
CC=$LFS_TGT-gcc \ AR=$LFS_TGT-ar \ RANLIB=$LFS_TGT-ranlib \ ../binutils-2.25.1/configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --disable-nls \ --disable-werror \ --with-lib-path=/tools/lib \ --with-sysroot
The meaning of the new configure options:
CC=$LFS_TGT-gcc AR=$LFS_TGT-ar
RANLIB=$LFS_TGT-ranlib
Because this is really a native build of Binutils, setting these variables ensures that the build system uses the cross-compiler and associated tools instead of the ones on the host system.
--with-lib-path=/tools/lib
This tells the configure script to specify the library
search path during the compilation of Binutils,
resulting in /tools/lib
being passed to the linker. This prevents the linker
from searching through library directories on the host.
--with-sysroot
The sysroot feature enables the linker to find shared objects which are required by other shared objects explicitly included on the linker's command line. Without this, some packages may not build successfully on some hosts.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
Now prepare the linker for the “Re-adjusting” phase in the next chapter:
make -C ld clean make -C ld LIB_PATH=/usr/lib:/lib cp -v ld/ld-new /tools/bin
The meaning of the make parameters:
-C ld
clean
This tells the make program to remove all compiled
files in the ld
subdirectory.
-C ld
LIB_PATH=/usr/lib:/lib
This option rebuilds everything in the ld
subdirectory. Specifying the
LIB_PATH
Makefile variable
on the command line allows us to override the default
value of the temporary tools and point it to the proper
final path. The value of this variable specifies the
linker's default library search path. This preparation
is used in the next chapter.
Details on this package are located in Section 6.13.2, “Contents of Binutils.”
The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, which includes the C and C++ compilers.
Our first build of GCC has installed a couple of internal
system headers. Normally one of them, limits.h
, will in turn include the
corresponding system limits.h
header, in this case, /tools/include/limits.h
. However, at the
time of the first build of gcc /tools/include/limits.h
did not exist, so
the internal header that GCC installed is a partial,
self-contained file and does not include the extended
features of the system header. This was adequate for building
the temporary libc, but this build of GCC now requires the
full internal header. Create a full version of the internal
header using a command that is identical to what the GCC
build system does in normal circumstances:
cat gcc/limitx.h gcc/glimits.h gcc/limity.h > \ `dirname $($LFS_TGT-gcc -print-libgcc-file-name)`/include-fixed/limits.h
Once again, change the location of GCC's default dynamic
linker to use the one installed in /tools
.
for file in \ $(find gcc/config -name linux64.h -o -name linux.h -o -name sysv4.h) do cp -uv $file{,.orig} sed -e 's@/lib\(64\)\?\(32\)\?/ld@/tools&@g' \ -e 's@/usr@/tools@g' $file.orig > $file echo ' #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 #undef STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_1 "/tools/lib/" #define STANDARD_STARTFILE_PREFIX_2 ""' >> $file touch $file.orig done
As in the first build of GCC it requires the GMP, MPFR and MPC packages. Unpack the tarballs and move them into the required directory names:
tar -xf ../mpfr-3.1.3.tar.xz mv -v mpfr-3.1.3 mpfr tar -xf ../gmp-6.0.0a.tar.xz mv -v gmp-6.0.0 gmp tar -xf ../mpc-1.0.3.tar.gz mv -v mpc-1.0.3 mpc
Create a separate build directory again:
mkdir -v ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build
Before starting to build GCC, remember to unset any environment variables that override the default optimization flags.
Now prepare GCC for compilation:
CC=$LFS_TGT-gcc \ CXX=$LFS_TGT-g++ \ AR=$LFS_TGT-ar \ RANLIB=$LFS_TGT-ranlib \ ../gcc-5.2.0/configure \ --prefix=/tools \ --with-local-prefix=/tools \ --with-native-system-header-dir=/tools/include \ --enable-languages=c,c++ \ --disable-libstdcxx-pch \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-bootstrap \ --disable-libgomp
The meaning of the new configure options:
--enable-languages=c,c++
This option ensures that both the C and C++ compilers are built.
--disable-libstdcxx-pch
Do not build the pre-compiled header (PCH) for
libstdc++
. It takes up a
lot of space, and we have no use for it.
--disable-bootstrap
For native builds of GCC, the default is to do a "bootstrap" build. This does not just compile GCC, but compiles it several times. It uses the programs compiled in a first round to compile itself a second time, and then again a third time. The second and third iterations are compared to make sure it can reproduce itself flawlessly. This also implies that it was compiled correctly. However, the LFS build method should provide a solid compiler without the need to bootstrap each time.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
As a finishing touch, create a symlink. Many programs and scripts run cc instead of gcc, which is used to keep programs generic and therefore usable on all kinds of UNIX systems where the GNU C compiler is not always installed. Running cc leaves the system administrator free to decide which C compiler to install:
ln -sv gcc /tools/bin/cc
At this point, it is imperative to stop and ensure that the basic functions (compiling and linking) of the new toolchain are working as expected. To perform a sanity check, run the following commands:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c cc dummy.c readelf -l a.out | grep ': /tools'
If everything is working correctly, there should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be of the form:
[Requesting program interpreter: /tools/lib/ld-linux.so.2]
Note that /tools/lib
, or
/tools/lib64
for 64-bit
machines appears as the prefix of the dynamic linker.
If the output is not shown as above or there was no output
at all, then something is wrong. Investigate and retrace
the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it.
This issue must be resolved before continuing on. First,
perform the sanity check again, using gcc instead of
cc. If this
works, then the /tools/bin/cc
symlink is missing. Install the symlink as per above. Next,
ensure that the PATH
is correct.
This can be checked by running echo $PATH and verifying
that /tools/bin
is at the
head of the list. If the PATH
is
wrong it could mean that you are not logged in as user
lfs
or that something went
wrong back in Section 4.4,
“Setting Up the Environment.”
Once all is well, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out
Details on this package are located in Section 6.17.2, “Contents of GCC.”
The Tcl package contains the Tool Command Language.
This package and the next three (Expect, DejaGNU, and Check) are installed to support running the test suites for GCC and Binutils and other packages. Installing four packages for testing purposes may seem excessive, but it is very reassuring, if not essential, to know that the most important tools are working properly. Even if the test suites are not run in this chapter (they are not mandatory), these packages are required to run the test suites in Chapter 6.
Note that the Tcl package used here is a minimal version needed to run the LFS tests. For the full package, see the BLFS Tcl procedures.
Prepare Tcl for compilation:
cd unix ./configure --prefix=/tools
Build the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Tcl test suite anyway, issue the following command:
TZ=UTC make test
The Tcl test suite may experience failures under certain host
conditions that are not fully understood. Therefore, test
suite failures here are not surprising, and are not
considered critical. The TZ=UTC
parameter sets the time
zone to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), but only for the
duration of the test suite run. This ensures that the clock
tests are exercised correctly. Details on the TZ
environment variable are provided in
Chapter
7.
Install the package:
make install
Make the installed library writable so debugging symbols can be removed later:
chmod -v u+w /tools/lib/libtcl8.6.so
Install Tcl's headers. The next package, Expect, requires them to build.
make install-private-headers
Now make a necessary symbolic link:
ln -sv tclsh8.6 /tools/bin/tclsh
The Expect package contains a program for carrying out scripted dialogues with other interactive programs.
First, force Expect's configure script to use /bin/stty
instead of a /usr/local/bin/stty
it may find on the host
system. This will ensure that our test suite tools remain
sane for the final builds of our toolchain:
cp -v configure{,.orig} sed 's:/usr/local/bin:/bin:' configure.orig > configure
Now prepare Expect for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-tcl=/tools/lib \ --with-tclinclude=/tools/include
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-tcl=/tools/lib
This ensures that the configure script finds the Tcl installation in the temporary tools location instead of possibly locating an existing one on the host system.
--with-tclinclude=/tools/include
This explicitly tells Expect where to find Tcl's internal headers. Using this option avoids conditions where configure fails because it cannot automatically discover the location of Tcl's headers.
Build the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Expect test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make test
Note that the Expect test suite is known to experience failures under certain host conditions that are not within our control. Therefore, test suite failures here are not surprising and are not considered critical.
Install the package:
make SCRIPTS="" install
The meaning of the make parameter:
SCRIPTS=""
This prevents installation of the supplementary Expect scripts, which are not needed.
The DejaGNU package contains a framework for testing other programs.
Prepare DejaGNU for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Build and install the package:
make install
To test the results, issue:
make check
Check is a unit testing framework for C.
Prepare Check for compilation:
PKG_CONFIG= ./configure --prefix=/tools
The meaning of the configure parameter:
PKG_CONFIG=
This tells the configure script to ignore any
pkg-config options that may cause the system to try to
link with libraries not in the /tools
directory.
Build the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Check test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Note that the Check test suite may take a relatively long (up to 4 SBU) time.
Install the package:
make install
The Ncurses package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens.
First, ensure that gawk is found first during configuration:
sed -i s/mawk// configure
Prepare Ncurses for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools \ --with-shared \ --without-debug \ --without-ada \ --enable-widec \ --enable-overwrite
The meaning of the configure options:
--without-ada
This ensures that Ncurses does not build support for the Ada compiler which may be present on the host but will not be available once we enter the chroot environment.
--enable-overwrite
This tells Ncurses to install its header files into
/tools/include
, instead
of /tools/include/ncurses
, to ensure
that other packages can find the Ncurses headers
successfully.
--enable-widec
This switch causes wide-character libraries (e.g.,
libncursesw.so.6.0
) to be
built instead of normal ones (e.g., libncurses.so.6.0
). These
wide-character libraries are usable in both multibyte
and traditional 8-bit locales, while normal libraries
work properly only in 8-bit locales. Wide-character and
normal libraries are source-compatible, but not
binary-compatible.
Compile the package:
make
This package has a test suite, but it can only be run after
the package has been installed. The tests reside in the
test/
directory. See the
README
file in that directory
for further details.
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.20.2, “Contents of Ncurses.”
The Bash package contains the Bourne-Again SHell.
Prepare Bash for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --without-bash-malloc
The meaning of the configure options:
--without-bash-malloc
This option turns off the use of Bash's memory
allocation (malloc
)
function which is known to cause segmentation faults.
By turning this option off, Bash will use the
malloc
functions from
Glibc which are more stable.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Bash test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make tests
Install the package:
make install
Make a link for the programs that use sh for a shell:
ln -sv bash /tools/bin/sh
Details on this package are located in Section 6.36.2, “Contents of Bash.”
The Bzip2 package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. Compressing text files with bzip2 yields a much better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip.
The Bzip2 package does not contain a configure script. Compile and test it with:
make
Install the package:
make PREFIX=/tools install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.18.2, “Contents of Bzip2.”
The Coreutils package contains utilities for showing and setting the basic system characteristics.
Prepare Coreutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --enable-install-program=hostname
The meaning of the configure options:
--enable-install-program=hostname
This enables the hostname binary to be built and installed – it is disabled by default but is required by the Perl test suite.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Coreutils test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check
The RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes
parameter tells the test suite to run several additional
tests that are considered relatively expensive (in terms of
CPU power and memory usage) on some platforms, but generally
are not a problem on Linux.
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.29.2, “Contents of Coreutils.”
The Diffutils package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories.
Prepare Diffutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Diffutils test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.46.2, “Contents of Diffutils.”
The File package contains a utility for determining the type of a given file or files.
Prepare File for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the File test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.12.2, “Contents of File.”
The Findutils package contains programs to find files. These programs are provided to recursively search through a directory tree and to create, maintain, and search a database (often faster than the recursive find, but unreliable if the database has not been recently updated).
Prepare Findutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Findutils test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.48.2, “Contents of Findutils.”
The Gawk package contains programs for manipulating text files.
Prepare Gawk for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Gawk test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.47.2, “Contents of Gawk.”
The Gettext package contains utilities for internationalization and localization. These allow programs to be compiled with NLS (Native Language Support), enabling them to output messages in the user's native language.
For our temporary set of tools, we only need to build and install three programs from Gettext.
Prepare Gettext for compilation:
cd gettext-tools EMACS="no" ./configure --prefix=/tools --disable-shared
The meaning of the configure option:
EMACS="no"
This prevents the configure script from determining where to install Emacs Lisp files as the test is known to hang on some hosts.
--disable-shared
We do not need to install any of the shared Gettext libraries at this time, therefore there is no need to build them.
Compile the package:
make -C gnulib-lib make -C intl pluralx.c make -C src msgfmt make -C src msgmerge make -C src xgettext
As only three programs have been compiled, it is not possible to run the test suite without compiling additional support libraries from the Gettext package. It is therefore not recommended to attempt to run the test suite at this stage.
Install the msgfmt, msgmerge and xgettext programs:
cp -v src/{msgfmt,msgmerge,xgettext} /tools/bin
Details on this package are located in Section 6.49.2, “Contents of Gettext.”
The Grep package contains programs for searching through files.
Prepare Grep for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Grep test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.34.2, “Contents of Grep.”
The Gzip package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files.
Prepare Gzip for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Gzip test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.56.2, “Contents of Gzip.”
The M4 package contains a macro processor.
Prepare M4 for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the M4 test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.31.2, “Contents of M4.”
The Make package contains a program for compiling packages.
Prepare Make for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools --without-guile
The meaning of the configure option:
--without-guile
This ensures that Make-4.1 won't link against Guile libraries, which may be present on the host system, but won't be available within the chroot environment in the next chapter.
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Make test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.61.2, “Contents of Make.”
The Patch package contains a program for modifying or creating files by applying a “patch” file typically created by the diff program.
Prepare Patch for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Patch test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.62.2, “Contents of Patch.”
The Perl package contains the Practical Extraction and Report Language.
Prepare Perl for compilation:
sh Configure -des -Dprefix=/tools -Dlibs=-lm
Build the package:
make
Although Perl comes with a test suite, it would be better to wait until it is installed in the next chapter.
Only a few of the utilities and libraries need to be installed at this time:
cp -v perl cpan/podlators/pod2man /tools/bin mkdir -pv /tools/lib/perl5/5.22.0 cp -Rv lib/* /tools/lib/perl5/5.22.0
Details on this package are located in Section 6.42.2, “Contents of Perl.”
The Sed package contains a stream editor.
Prepare Sed for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Sed test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.24.2, “Contents of Sed.”
The Tar package contains an archiving program.
Prepare Tar for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Tar test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.67.2, “Contents of Tar.”
The Texinfo package contains programs for reading, writing, and converting info pages.
Prepare Texinfo for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Texinfo test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.68.2, “Contents of Texinfo.”
The Util-linux package contains miscellaneous utility programs.
Prepare Util-linux for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools \ --without-python \ --disable-makeinstall-chown \ --without-systemdsystemunitdir \ PKG_CONFIG=""
The meaning of the configure option:
--without-python
This switch disables using Python if it is installed on the host system. It avoids trying to build unneeded bindings.
--disable-makeinstall-chown
This switch disables using the chown command during installation. This is not needed when installing into the /tools directory and avoids the necessity of installing as root.
--without-systemdsystemunitdir
On systems that use systemd, the package tries to install a systemd specific file to a non-existent directory in /tools. This switch disables the unnecessary action.
PKG_CONFIG=""
Setting this envronment variable prevents adding unneeded features that may be available on the host. Note that the location shown for setting this environment variable is different from other LFS sections where variables are set preceding the command. This location is shown to demonstrate an alternative way of setting an environment variable when using configure.
Compile the package:
make
Install the package:
make install
The Xz package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. It provides capabilities for the lzma and the newer xz compression formats. Compressing text files with xz yields a better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip or bzip2 commands.
Prepare Xz for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/tools
Compile the package:
make
Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, running the test suite is not mandatory for the temporary tools here in this chapter. To run the Xz test suite anyway, issue the following command:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Details on this package are located in Section 6.53.2, “Contents of Xz.”
The steps in this section are optional, but if the LFS partition is rather small, it is beneficial to learn that unnecessary items can be removed. The executables and libraries built so far contain about 70 MB of unneeded debugging symbols. Remove those symbols with:
strip --strip-debug /tools/lib/* /usr/bin/strip --strip-unneeded /tools/{,s}bin/*
These commands will skip a number of files, reporting that it does not recognize their file format. Most of these are scripts instead of binaries. Also use the system strip command to include the strip binary in /tools.
Take care not to use
--strip-unneeded
on the
libraries. The static ones would be destroyed and the toolchain
packages would need to be built all over again.
To save more, remove the documentation:
rm -rf /tools/{,share}/{info,man,doc}
At this point, you should have at least 3 GB of free space in
$LFS
that can be used to build and
install Glibc and Gcc in the next phase. If you can build and
install Glibc, you can build and install the rest too.
The commands in the remainder of this book must be performed
while logged in as user root
and no longer as user lfs
.
Also, double check that $LFS
is
set in root
's environment.
Currently, the $LFS/tools
directory is owned by the user lfs
, a user that exists only on the host
system. If the $LFS/tools
directory is kept as is, the files are owned by a user ID
without a corresponding account. This is dangerous because a
user account created later could get this same user ID and
would own the $LFS/tools
directory and all the files therein, thus exposing these files
to possible malicious manipulation.
To avoid this issue, you could add the lfs
user to the new LFS system later when
creating the /etc/passwd
file,
taking care to assign it the same user and group IDs as on the
host system. Better yet, change the ownership of the
$LFS/tools
directory to user
root
by running the following
command:
chown -R root:root $LFS/tools
Although the $LFS/tools
directory
can be deleted once the LFS system has been finished, it can be
retained to build additional LFS systems of the same book version. How best
to backup $LFS/tools
is a matter
of personal preference.
If you intend to keep the temporary tools for use in building future LFS systems, now is the time to back them up. Subsequent commands in chapter 6 will alter the tools currently in place, rendering them useless for future builds.
In this chapter, we enter the building site and start constructing the LFS system in earnest. That is, we chroot into the temporary mini Linux system, make a few final preparations, and then begin installing the packages.
The installation of this software is straightforward. Although in many cases the installation instructions could be made shorter and more generic, we have opted to provide the full instructions for every package to minimize the possibilities for mistakes. The key to learning what makes a Linux system work is to know what each package is used for and why you (or the system) may need it.
We do not recommend using optimizations. They can make a
program run slightly faster, but they may also cause
compilation difficulties and problems when running the program.
If a package refuses to compile when using optimization, try to
compile it without optimization and see if that fixes the
problem. Even if the package does compile when using
optimization, there is the risk it may have been compiled
incorrectly because of the complex interactions between the
code and build tools. Also note that the -march
and -mtune
options using values not specified in the book have not been
tested. This may cause problems with the toolchain packages
(Binutils, GCC and Glibc). The small potential gains achieved
in using compiler optimizations are often outweighed by the
risks. First-time builders of LFS are encouraged to build
without custom optimizations. The subsequent system will still
run very fast and be stable at the same time.
The order that packages are installed in this chapter needs to
be strictly followed to ensure that no program accidentally
acquires a path referring to /tools
hard-wired into it. For the same
reason, do not compile separate packages in parallel. Compiling
in parallel may save time (especially on dual-CPU machines),
but it could result in a program containing a hard-wired path
to /tools
, which will cause the
program to stop working when that directory is removed.
Before the installation instructions, each installation page provides information about the package, including a concise description of what it contains, approximately how long it will take to build, and how much disk space is required during this building process. Following the installation instructions, there is a list of programs and libraries (along with brief descriptions of these) that the package installs.
The SBU values and required disk space includes test suite data for all applicable packages in Chapter 6.
In general, the LFS editors discourage building and installing static libraries. The original purpose for most static libraries has been made obsolete in a modern Linux system. In addition linking a static library into a program can be detrimental. If an update to the library is needed to remove a security problem, all programs that use the static library will need to be relinked to the new library. Since the use of static libraries is not always obvious, the relevant programs (and the procedures needed to do the linking) may not even be known.
In the procedures in Chapter 6, we remove or disable
installation of most static libraries. In a few cases,
especially glibc and gcc, the use of static libraries remains
essential to the general package building process. Usually
this is done by passing a --disable-static
option to configure. In other cases,
alternate means are needed.
For a more complete discussion of libraries, see the discussion Libraries: Static or shared? in the BLFS book.
Various file systems exported by the kernel are used to communicate to and from the kernel itself. These file systems are virtual in that no disk space is used for them. The content of the file systems resides in memory.
Begin by creating directories onto which the file systems will be mounted:
mkdir -pv $LFS/{dev,proc,sys,run}
When the kernel boots the system, it requires the presence of
a few device nodes, in particular the console
and null
devices. The device nodes must be
created on the hard disk so that they are available before
udevd has been
started, and additionally when Linux is started with
init=/bin/bash
.
Create the devices by running the following commands:
mknod -m 600 $LFS/dev/console c 5 1 mknod -m 666 $LFS/dev/null c 1 3
The recommended method of populating the /dev
directory with devices is to mount a
virtual filesystem (such as tmpfs
) on the /dev
directory, and allow the devices to be
created dynamically on that virtual filesystem as they are
detected or accessed. Device creation is generally done
during the boot process by Udev. Since this new system does
not yet have Udev and has not yet been booted, it is
necessary to mount and populate /dev
manually. This is accomplished by bind
mounting the host system's /dev
directory. A bind mount is a special type of mount that
allows you to create a mirror of a directory or mount point
to some other location. Use the following command to achieve
this:
mount -v --bind /dev $LFS/dev
Now mount the remaining virtual kernel filesystems:
mount -vt devpts devpts $LFS/dev/pts -o gid=5,mode=620 mount -vt proc proc $LFS/proc mount -vt sysfs sysfs $LFS/sys mount -vt tmpfs tmpfs $LFS/run
The meaning of the mount options for devpts:
gid=5
This ensures that all devpts-created device nodes are
owned by group ID 5. This is the ID we will use later
on for the tty
group.
We use the group ID instead of a name, since the host
system might use a different ID for its tty
group.
mode=0620
This ensures that all devpts-created device nodes have mode 0620 (user readable and writable, group writable). Together with the option above, this ensures that devpts will create device nodes that meet the requirements of grantpt(), meaning the Glibc pt_chown helper binary (which is not installed by default) is not necessary.
In some host systems, /dev/shm
is a symbolic link to /run/shm
.
The /run tmpfs was mounted above so in this case only a
directory needs to be created.
if [ -h $LFS/dev/shm ]; then mkdir -pv $LFS/$(readlink $LFS/dev/shm) fi
Package Management is an often requested addition to the LFS Book. A Package Manager allows tracking the installation of files making it easy to remove and upgrade packages. As well as the binary and library files, a package manager will handle the installation of configuration files. Before you begin to wonder, NO—this section will not talk about nor recommend any particular package manager. What it provides is a roundup of the more popular techniques and how they work. The perfect package manager for you may be among these techniques or may be a combination of two or more of these techniques. This section briefly mentions issues that may arise when upgrading packages.
Some reasons why no package manager is mentioned in LFS or BLFS include:
Dealing with package management takes the focus away from the goals of these books—teaching how a Linux system is built.
There are multiple solutions for package management, each having its strengths and drawbacks. Including one that satisfies all audiences is difficult.
There are some hints written on the topic of package management. Visit the Hints Project and see if one of them fits your need.
A Package Manager makes it easy to upgrade to newer versions when they are released. Generally the instructions in the LFS and BLFS Book can be used to upgrade to the newer versions. Here are some points that you should be aware of when upgrading packages, especially on a running system.
If Glibc needs to be upgraded to a newer version, (e.g. from glibc-2.19 to glibc-2.20, it is safer to rebuild LFS. Though you may be able to rebuild all the packages in their dependency order, we do not recommend it.
If a package containing a shared library is updated,
and if the name of the library changes, then all the
packages dynamically linked to the library need to be
recompiled to link against the newer library. (Note
that there is no correlation between the package
version and the name of the library.) For example,
consider a package foo-1.2.3 that installs a shared
library with name libfoo.so.1
. Say you upgrade the
package to a newer version foo-1.2.4 that installs a
shared library with name libfoo.so.2
. In this case, all
packages that are dynamically linked to libfoo.so.1
need to be recompiled to
link against libfoo.so.2
.
Note that you should not remove the previous libraries
until the dependent packages are recompiled.
The following are some common package management techniques. Before making a decision on a package manager, do some research on the various techniques, particularly the drawbacks of the particular scheme.
Yes, this is a package management technique. Some folks do not find the need for a package manager because they know the packages intimately and know what files are installed by each package. Some users also do not need any package management because they plan on rebuilding the entire system when a package is changed.
This is a simplistic package management that does not need
any extra package to manage the installations. Each package
is installed in a separate directory. For example, package
foo-1.1 is installed in /usr/pkg/foo-1.1
and a symlink is made
from /usr/pkg/foo
to
/usr/pkg/foo-1.1
. When
installing a new version foo-1.2, it is installed in
/usr/pkg/foo-1.2
and the
previous symlink is replaced by a symlink to the new
version.
Environment variables such as PATH
, LD_LIBRARY_PATH
, MANPATH
, INFOPATH
and CPPFLAGS
need to be expanded
to include /usr/pkg/foo
. For
more than a few packages, this scheme becomes unmanageable.
This is a variation of the previous package management
technique. Each package is installed similar to the
previous scheme. But instead of making the symlink, each
file is symlinked into the /usr
hierarchy. This removes the need to
expand the environment variables. Though the symlinks can
be created by the user to automate the creation, many
package managers have been written using this approach. A
few of the popular ones include Stow, Epkg, Graft, and
Depot.
The installation needs to be faked, so that the package
thinks that it is installed in /usr
though in reality it is installed in
the /usr/pkg
hierarchy.
Installing in this manner is not usually a trivial task.
For example, consider that you are installing a package
libfoo-1.1. The following instructions may not install the
package properly:
./configure --prefix=/usr/pkg/libfoo/1.1 make make install
The installation will work, but the dependent packages may
not link to libfoo as you would expect. If you compile a
package that links against libfoo, you may notice that it
is linked to /usr/pkg/libfoo/1.1/lib/libfoo.so.1
instead of /usr/lib/libfoo.so.1
as you would expect.
The correct approach is to use the DESTDIR
strategy to fake installation of the
package. This approach works as follows:
./configure --prefix=/usr make make DESTDIR=/usr/pkg/libfoo/1.1 install
Most packages support this approach, but there are some
which do not. For the non-compliant packages, you may
either need to manually install the package, or you may
find that it is easier to install some problematic packages
into /opt
.
In this technique, a file is timestamped before the installation of the package. After the installation, a simple use of the find command with the appropriate options can generate a log of all the files installed after the timestamp file was created. A package manager written with this approach is install-log.
Though this scheme has the advantage of being simple, it has two drawbacks. If, during installation, the files are installed with any timestamp other than the current time, those files will not be tracked by the package manager. Also, this scheme can only be used when one package is installed at a time. The logs are not reliable if two packages are being installed on two different consoles.
In this approach, the commands that the installation scripts perform are recorded. There are two techniques that one can use:
The LD_PRELOAD
environment
variable can be set to point to a library to be preloaded
before installation. During installation, this library
tracks the packages that are being installed by attaching
itself to various executables such as cp, install, mv and tracking the
system calls that modify the filesystem. For this approach
to work, all the executables need to be dynamically linked
without the suid or sgid bit. Preloading the library may
cause some unwanted side-effects during installation.
Therefore, it is advised that one performs some tests to
ensure that the package manager does not break anything and
logs all the appropriate files.
The second technique is to use strace, which logs all system calls made during the execution of the installation scripts.
In this scheme, the package installation is faked into a separate tree as described in the Symlink style package management. After the installation, a package archive is created using the installed files. This archive is then used to install the package either on the local machine or can even be used to install the package on other machines.
This approach is used by most of the package managers found in the commercial distributions. Examples of package managers that follow this approach are RPM (which, incidentally, is required by the Linux Standard Base Specification), pkg-utils, Debian's apt, and Gentoo's Portage system. A hint describing how to adopt this style of package management for LFS systems is located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/fakeroot.txt.
Creation of package files that include dependency information is complex and is beyond the scope of LFS.
Slackware uses a tar based system for package archives. This system purposely does not handle package dependencies as more complex package managers do. For details of Slackware package management, see http://www.slackbook.org/html/package-management.html.
This scheme, unique to LFS, was devised by Matthias Benkmann, and is available from the Hints Project. In this scheme, each package is installed as a separate user into the standard locations. Files belonging to a package are easily identified by checking the user ID. The features and shortcomings of this approach are too complex to describe in this section. For the details please see the hint at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/more_control_and_pkg_man.txt.
One of the advantages of an LFS system is that there are no
files that depend on the position of files on a disk system.
Cloning an LFS build to another computer with the same
architecture as the base system is as simple as using
tar on the LFS
partition that contains the root directory (about 250MB
uncompressed for a base LFS build), copying that file via
network transfer or CD-ROM to the new system and expanding
it. From that point, a few configuration files will have to
be changed. Configuration files that may need to be updated
include: /etc/hosts
,
/etc/fstab
, /etc/passwd
, /etc/group
, /etc/shadow
, and /etc/ld.so.conf
.
A custom kernel may need to be built for the new system depending on differences in system hardware and the original kernel configuration.
There have been some reports of issues when copying between similar but not identical architectures. For instance, the instruction set for an Intel architecture is not identical with an AMD processor and later versions of some processors may have instructions that are unavailable in earlier versions.
Finally the new system has to be made bootable via Section 8.4, “Using GRUB to Set Up the Boot Process”.
It is time to enter the chroot environment to begin building
and installing the final LFS system. As user root
, run the following command to enter
the realm that is, at the moment, populated with only the
temporary tools:
chroot "$LFS" /tools/bin/env -i \ HOME=/root \ TERM="$TERM" \ PS1='\u:\w\$ ' \ PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/tools/bin \ /tools/bin/bash --login +h
The -i
option given to
the env command
will clear all variables of the chroot environment. After that,
only the HOME
, TERM
, PS1
, and
PATH
variables are set again. The
TERM=$TERM
construct
will set the TERM
variable inside
chroot to the same value as outside chroot. This variable is
needed for programs like vim and less to operate properly. If
other variables are needed, such as CFLAGS
or CXXFLAGS
,
this is a good place to set them again.
From this point on, there is no need to use the LFS
variable anymore, because all work will be
restricted to the LFS file system. This is because the Bash
shell is told that $LFS
is now
the root (/
) directory.
Notice that /tools/bin
comes last
in the PATH
. This means that a
temporary tool will no longer be used once its final version is
installed. This occurs when the shell does not “remember” the locations of executed
binaries—for this reason, hashing is switched off by
passing the +h
option
to bash.
Note that the bash prompt will say
I have no name!
This is
normal because the /etc/passwd
file has not been created yet.
It is important that all the commands throughout the remainder of this chapter and the following chapters are run from within the chroot environment. If you leave this environment for any reason (rebooting for example), ensure that the virtual kernel filesystems are mounted as explained in Section 6.2.2, “Mounting and Populating /dev” and Section 6.2.3, “Mounting Virtual Kernel File Systems” and enter chroot again before continuing with the installation.
It is time to create some structure in the LFS file system. Create a standard directory tree by issuing the following commands:
mkdir -pv /{bin,boot,etc/{opt,sysconfig},home,lib/firmware,mnt,opt} mkdir -pv /{media/{floppy,cdrom},sbin,srv,var} install -dv -m 0750 /root install -dv -m 1777 /tmp /var/tmp mkdir -pv /usr/{,local/}{bin,include,lib,sbin,src} mkdir -pv /usr/{,local/}share/{color,dict,doc,info,locale,man} mkdir -v /usr/{,local/}share/{misc,terminfo,zoneinfo} mkdir -v /usr/libexec mkdir -pv /usr/{,local/}share/man/man{1..8} case $(uname -m) in x86_64) ln -sv lib /lib64 ln -sv lib /usr/lib64 ln -sv lib /usr/local/lib64 ;; esac mkdir -v /var/{log,mail,spool} ln -sv /run /var/run ln -sv /run/lock /var/lock mkdir -pv /var/{opt,cache,lib/{color,misc,locate},local}
Directories are, by default, created with permission mode 755,
but this is not desirable for all directories. In the commands
above, two changes are made—one to the home directory of
user root
, and another to the
directories for temporary files.
The first mode change ensures that not just anybody can enter
the /root
directory—the
same as a normal user would do with his or her home directory.
The second mode change makes sure that any user can write to
the /tmp
and /var/tmp
directories, but cannot remove
another user's files from them. The latter is prohibited by the
so-called “sticky
bit,” the highest bit (1) in the 1777 bit
mask.
The directory tree is based on the Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard (FHS) (available at https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/en/FHS).
The FHS also stipulates the existence of /usr/local/games
and /usr/share/games
. The FHS is not precise as
to the structure of the /usr/local/share
subdirectory, so we create
only the directories that are needed. However, feel free to
create these directories if you prefer to conform more
strictly to the FHS.
Some programs use hard-wired paths to programs which do not exist yet. In order to satisfy these programs, create a number of symbolic links which will be replaced by real files throughout the course of this chapter after the software has been installed:
ln -sv /tools/bin/{bash,cat,echo,pwd,stty} /bin ln -sv /tools/bin/perl /usr/bin ln -sv /tools/lib/libgcc_s.so{,.1} /usr/lib ln -sv /tools/lib/libstdc++.so{,.6} /usr/lib sed 's/tools/usr/' /tools/lib/libstdc++.la > /usr/lib/libstdc++.la ln -sv bash /bin/sh
The purpose of each link:
/bin/bash
Many bash
scripts specify /bin/bash
.
/bin/cat
This pathname is hard-coded into Glibc's configure script.
/bin/echo
This is to satisfy one of the tests in Glibc's test
suite, which expects /bin/echo
.
/bin/pwd
Some configure scripts, particularly Glibc's, have this pathname hard-coded.
/bin/stty
This pathname is hard-coded into Expect, therefore it is needed for Binutils and GCC test suites to pass.
/usr/bin/perl
Many Perl scripts hard-code this path to the perl program.
/usr/lib/libgcc_s.so{,.1}
Glibc needs this for the pthreads library to work.
/usr/lib/libstdc++{,.6}
This is needed by several tests in Glibc's test suite, as well as for C++ support in GMP.
/usr/lib/libstdc++.la
This prevents a /tools
reference that would otherwise be in /usr/lib/libstdc++.la
after GCC is
installed.
/bin/sh
Many shell scripts hard-code /bin/sh
.
Historically, Linux maintains a list of the mounted file
systems in the file /etc/mtab
.
Modern kernels maintain this list internally and exposes it to
the user via the /proc
filesystem. To satisfy utilities that expect the presence of
/etc/mtab
, create the following
symbolic link:
ln -sv /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtab
In order for user root
to be
able to login and for the name “root” to
be recognized, there must be relevant entries in the
/etc/passwd
and /etc/group
files.
Create the /etc/passwd
file by
running the following command:
cat > /etc/passwd << "EOF"
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/dev/null:/bin/false
daemon:x:6:6:Daemon User:/dev/null:/bin/false
messagebus:x:18:18:D-Bus Message Daemon User:/var/run/dbus:/bin/false
systemd-bus-proxy:x:72:72:systemd Bus Proxy:/:/bin/false
systemd-journal-gateway:x:73:73:systemd Journal Gateway:/:/bin/false
systemd-journal-remote:x:74:74:systemd Journal Remote:/:/bin/false
systemd-journal-upload:x:75:75:systemd Journal Upload:/:/bin/false
systemd-network:x:76:76:systemd Network Management:/:/bin/false
systemd-resolve:x:77:77:systemd Resolver:/:/bin/false
systemd-timesync:x:78:78:systemd Time Synchronization:/:/bin/false
nobody:x:99:99:Unprivileged User:/dev/null:/bin/false
EOF
The actual password for root
(the “x” used here is just a placeholder)
will be set later.
Create the /etc/group
file by
running the following command:
cat > /etc/group << "EOF"
root:x:0:
bin:x:1:daemon
sys:x:2:
kmem:x:3:
tape:x:4:
tty:x:5:
daemon:x:6:
floppy:x:7:
disk:x:8:
lp:x:9:
dialout:x:10:
audio:x:11:
video:x:12:
utmp:x:13:
usb:x:14:
cdrom:x:15:
adm:x:16:
messagebus:x:18:
systemd-journal:x:23:
input:x:24:
mail:x:34:
systemd-bus-proxy:x:72:
systemd-journal-gateway:x:73:
systemd-journal-remote:x:74:
systemd-journal-upload:x:75:
systemd-network:x:76:
systemd-resolve:x:77:
systemd-timesync:x:78:
nogroup:x:99:
users:x:999:
EOF
The created groups are not part of any standard—they are
groups decided on in part by the requirements of the Udev
configuration in this chapter, and in part by common convention
employed by a number of existing Linux distributions. In
addition, some test suites rely on specific users or groups.
The Linux Standard Base (LSB, available at http://www.linuxbase.org)
recommends only that, besides the group root
with a Group ID (GID) of 0, a group
bin
with a GID of 1 be present.
All other group names and GIDs can be chosen freely by the
system administrator since well-written programs do not depend
on GID numbers, but rather use the group's name.
To remove the “I
have no name!” prompt, start a new shell.
Since a full Glibc was installed in Chapter
5 and the /etc/passwd
and
/etc/group
files have been
created, user name and group name resolution will now work:
exec /tools/bin/bash --login +h
Note the use of the +h
directive. This tells bash not to use its internal
path hashing. Without this directive, bash would remember the paths
to binaries it has executed. To ensure the use of the newly
compiled binaries as soon as they are installed, the +h
directive will be used for the
duration of this chapter.
The login, agetty, and init programs (and others) use a number of log files to record information such as who was logged into the system and when. However, these programs will not write to the log files if they do not already exist. Initialize the log files and give them proper permissions:
touch /var/log/{btmp,lastlog,wtmp} chgrp -v utmp /var/log/lastlog chmod -v 664 /var/log/lastlog chmod -v 600 /var/log/btmp
The /var/log/wtmp
file records
all logins and logouts. The /var/log/lastlog
file records when each user
last logged in. The /var/log/btmp
file records the bad login attempts.
The /run/utmp
file records the
users that are currently logged in. This file is created
dynamically in the boot scripts.
The Linux API Headers (in linux-4.2.tar.xz) expose the kernel's API for use by Glibc.
The Linux kernel needs to expose an Application Programming Interface (API) for the system's C library (Glibc in LFS) to use. This is done by way of sanitizing various C header files that are shipped in the Linux kernel source tarball.
Make sure there are no stale files and dependencies lying around from previous activity:
make mrproper
Now extract the user-visible kernel headers from the source. They are placed in an intermediate local directory and copied to the needed location because the extraction process removes any existing files in the target directory. There are also some hidden files used by the kernel developers and not needed by LFS that are removed from the intermediate directory.
make INSTALL_HDR_PATH=dest headers_install find dest/include \( -name .install -o -name ..install.cmd \) -delete cp -rv dest/include/* /usr/include
The Man-pages package contains over 2,200 man pages.
Install Man-pages by running:
make install
The Glibc package contains the main C library. This library provides the basic routines for allocating memory, searching directories, opening and closing files, reading and writing files, string handling, pattern matching, arithmetic, and so on.
Some packages outside of LFS suggest installing GNU
libiconv in order to translate data from one encoding to
another. The project's home page (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/)
says “This
library provides an iconv()
implementation, for use on systems which don't have one, or
whose implementation cannot convert from/to
Unicode.” Glibc provides an
iconv()
implementation and
can convert from/to Unicode, therefore libiconv is not
required on an LFS system.
Some of the Glibc programs use non-FHS compilant /var/db
directory to store their runtime
data. Apply the following patch to make such programs store
their runtime data in the FHS-compliant locations:
patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.22-fhs-1.patch
The Glibc build system is self-contained and will install
perfectly, even though the compiler specs file and linker are
still pointing at /tools
. The
specs and linker cannot be adjusted before the Glibc install
because the Glibc autoconf tests would give false results and
defeat the goal of achieving a clean build.
Now, fix a build problem that affects i386 systems:
patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.22-upstream_i386_fix-1.patch
The Glibc documentation recommends building Glibc outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../glibc-build cd ../glibc-build
Prepare Glibc for compilation:
../glibc-2.22/configure \ --prefix=/usr \ --disable-profile \ --enable-kernel=2.6.32 \ --enable-obsolete-rpc
Compile the package:
make
In this section, the test suite for Glibc is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstance.
Generally a few tests do not pass, but you can generally ignore any of the test failures listed below. Now test the build results:
make check
You will probably see some test failures. The Glibc test suite is somewhat dependent on the host system. This is a list of the most common issues seen for this version of LFS:
posix/tst-getaddrinfo4 will always fail due to not having the necessary network applications when the tests are run.
The tst/tst-cputimer1 and rt/tst-cpuclock2 tests have been known to fail. The reason is not completely understood, but indications are that minor timing issues can trigger these failures.
The math tests sometimes fail when running on systems where the CPU is not a relatively new genuine Intel or authentic AMD processor.
The elf/tst-protected1a and elf/tst-protected1b tests are known to fail with the current stable version of binutils.
Other tests known to fail on some architectures are malloc/tst-malloc-usable and nptl/tst-cleanupx4.
Though it is a harmless message, the install stage of Glibc
will complain about the absence of /etc/ld.so.conf
. Prevent this warning with:
touch /etc/ld.so.conf
Install the package:
make install
Install the configuration file and runtime directory for nscd:
cp -v ../glibc-2.22/nscd/nscd.conf /etc/nscd.conf mkdir -pv /var/cache/nscd
Install the systemd support files for nscd:
install -v -Dm644 ../glibc-2.22/nscd/nscd.tmpfiles /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/nscd.conf install -v -Dm644 ../glibc-2.22/nscd/nscd.service /lib/systemd/system/nscd.service
The locales that can make the system respond in a different language were not installed by the above command. None of the locales are required, but if some of them are missing, test suites of the future packages would skip important testcases.
Individual locales can be installed using the localedef program. E.g.,
the first localedef command below
combines the /usr/share/i18n/locales/cs_CZ
charset-independent locale definition with the /usr/share/i18n/charmaps/UTF-8.gz
charmap
definition and appends the result to the /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
file. The
following instructions will install the minimum set of
locales necessary for the optimal coverage of tests:
mkdir -pv /usr/lib/locale localedef -i cs_CZ -f UTF-8 cs_CZ.UTF-8 localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro localedef -i de_DE -f UTF-8 de_DE.UTF-8 localedef -i en_GB -f UTF-8 en_GB.UTF-8 localedef -i en_HK -f ISO-8859-1 en_HK localedef -i en_PH -f ISO-8859-1 en_PH localedef -i en_US -f ISO-8859-1 en_US localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8 localedef -i es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX localedef -i fa_IR -f UTF-8 fa_IR localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro localedef -i fr_FR -f UTF-8 fr_FR.UTF-8 localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT localedef -i it_IT -f UTF-8 it_IT.UTF-8 localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP localedef -i ru_RU -f KOI8-R ru_RU.KOI8-R localedef -i ru_RU -f UTF-8 ru_RU.UTF-8 localedef -i tr_TR -f UTF-8 tr_TR.UTF-8 localedef -i zh_CN -f GB18030 zh_CN.GB18030
In addition, install the locale for your own country, language and character set.
Alternatively, install all locales listed in the glibc-2.22/localedata/SUPPORTED
file (it
includes every locale listed above and many more) at once
with the following time-consuming command:
make localedata/install-locales
Then use the localedef command to create
and install locales not listed in the glibc-2.22/localedata/SUPPORTED
file in the
unlikely case you need them.
The /etc/nsswitch.conf
file
needs to be created because the Glibc defaults do not work
well in a networked environment.
Create a new file /etc/nsswitch.conf
by running the
following:
cat > /etc/nsswitch.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf
passwd: files
group: files
shadow: files
hosts: files dns myhostname
networks: files
protocols: files
services: files
ethers: files
rpc: files
# End /etc/nsswitch.conf
EOF
Install and set up the timezone data with the following:
tar -xf ../tzdata2015f.tar.gz ZONEINFO=/usr/share/zoneinfo mkdir -pv $ZONEINFO/{posix,right} for tz in etcetera southamerica northamerica europe africa antarctica \ asia australasia backward pacificnew systemv; do zic -L /dev/null -d $ZONEINFO -y "sh yearistype.sh" ${tz} zic -L /dev/null -d $ZONEINFO/posix -y "sh yearistype.sh" ${tz} zic -L leapseconds -d $ZONEINFO/right -y "sh yearistype.sh" ${tz} done cp -v zone.tab zone1970.tab iso3166.tab $ZONEINFO zic -d $ZONEINFO -p America/New_York unset ZONEINFO
The meaning of the zic commands:
zic -L
/dev/null ...
This creates posix timezones, without any leap
seconds. It is conventional to put these in both
zoneinfo
and
zoneinfo/posix
. It is
necessary to put the POSIX timezones in zoneinfo
, otherwise various
test-suites will report errors. On an embedded
system, where space is tight and you do not intend to
ever update the timezones, you could save 1.9MB by
not using the posix
directory, but some applications or test-suites might
produce some failures.
zic -L
leapseconds ...
This creates right timezones, including leap seconds.
On an embedded system, where space is tight and you
do not intend to ever update the timezones, or care
about the correct time, you could save 1.9MB by
omitting the right
directory.
zic ...
-p ...
This creates the posixrules
file. We use New York
because POSIX requires the daylight savings time
rules to be in accordance with US rules.
One way to determine the local time zone is to run the following script:
tzselect
After answering a few questions about the location, the
script will output the name of the time zone (e.g.,
America/Edmonton).
There are also some other possible timezones listed in
/usr/share/zoneinfo
such as
Canada/Eastern or
EST5EDT that are not
identified by the script but can be used.
Then create the /etc/localtime
file by running:
ln -sfv /usr/share/zoneinfo/<xxx>
/etc/localtime
Replace <xxx>
with the name
of the time zone selected (e.g., Canada/Eastern).
By default, the dynamic loader (/lib/ld-linux.so.2
) searches through
/lib
and /usr/lib
for dynamic libraries that are
needed by programs as they are run. However, if there are
libraries in directories other than /lib
and /usr/lib
, these need to be added to the
/etc/ld.so.conf
file in order
for the dynamic loader to find them. Two directories that
are commonly known to contain additional libraries are
/usr/local/lib
and
/opt/lib
, so add those
directories to the dynamic loader's search path.
Create a new file /etc/ld.so.conf
by running the following:
cat > /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/ld.so.conf
/usr/local/lib
/opt/lib
EOF
If desired, the dynamic loader can also search a directory and include the contents of files found there. Generally the files in this include directory are one line specifying the desired library path. To add this capability run the following commands:
cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"
# Add an include directory
include /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf
EOF
mkdir -pv /etc/ld.so.conf.d
Can be used to create a stack trace when a program terminates with a segmentation fault |
|
Generates message catalogues |
|
Displays the system configuration values for file system specific variables |
|
Gets entries from an administrative database |
|
Performs character set conversion |
|
Creates fastloading iconv module configuration files |
|
Configures the dynamic linker runtime bindings |
|
Reports which shared libraries are required by each given program or shared library |
|
Assists ldd with object files |
|
Prints various information about the current locale |
|
Compiles locale specifications |
|
Creates a simple database from textual input |
|
Reads and interprets a memory trace file and displays a summary in human-readable format |
|
A daemon that provides a cache for the most common name service requests |
|
Dumps information generated by PC profiling |
|
Lists dynamic shared objects used by running processes |
|
Generates C code to implement the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol |
|
A statically linked ln program |
|
Traces shared library procedure calls of a specified command |
|
Reads and displays shared object profiling data |
|
Asks the user about the location of the system and reports the corresponding time zone description |
|
Traces the execution of a program by printing the currently executed function |
|
The time zone dumper |
|
The time zone compiler |
|
The helper program for shared library executables |
|
Used internally by Glibc as a gross hack to get
broken programs (e.g., some Motif applications)
running. See comments in |
|
The segmentation fault signal handler, used by catchsegv |
|
An asynchronous name lookup library |
|
The main C library |
|
Used internally by Glibc for handling
internationalized domain names in the |
|
The cryptography library |
|
The dynamic linking interface library |
|
Dummy library containing no functions. Previously was a runtime library for g++ |
|
Linking in this module forces error handling rules for math functions as defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The default is POSIX.1 error handling |
|
The mathematical library |
|
Turns on memory allocation checking when linked to |
|
Used by memusage to help collect information about the memory usage of a program |
|
The network services library |
|
The Name Service Switch libraries, containing functions for resolving host names, user names, group names, aliases, services, protocols, etc. |
|
Contains profiling functions used to track the amount of CPU time spent in specific source code lines |
|
The POSIX threads library |
|
Contains functions for creating, sending, and interpreting packets to the Internet domain name servers |
|
Contains functions providing miscellaneous RPC services |
|
Contains functions providing most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension |
|
Contains functions useful for building debuggers for multi-threaded programs |
|
Contains code for “standard” functions used in many different Unix utilities |
Now that the final C libraries have been installed, it is time to adjust the toolchain so that it will link any newly compiled program against these new libraries.
First, backup the /tools
linker,
and replace it with the adjusted linker we made in chapter 5.
We'll also create a link to its counterpart in /tools/$(gcc -dumpmachine)/bin
:
mv -v /tools/bin/{ld,ld-old} mv -v /tools/$(gcc -dumpmachine)/bin/{ld,ld-old} mv -v /tools/bin/{ld-new,ld} ln -sv /tools/bin/ld /tools/$(gcc -dumpmachine)/bin/ld
Next, amend the GCC specs file so that it points to the new dynamic linker. Simply deleting all instances of “/tools” should leave us with the correct path to the dynamic linker. Also adjust the specs file so that GCC knows where to find the correct headers and Glibc start files. A sed command accomplishes this:
gcc -dumpspecs | sed -e 's@/tools@@g' \ -e '/\*startfile_prefix_spec:/{n;s@.*@/usr/lib/ @}' \ -e '/\*cpp:/{n;s@$@ -isystem /usr/include@}' > \ `dirname $(gcc --print-libgcc-file-name)`/specs
It is a good idea to visually inspect the specs file to verify the intended change was actually made.
It is imperative at this point to ensure that the basic functions (compiling and linking) of the adjusted toolchain are working as expected. To do this, perform the following sanity checks:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c cc dummy.c -v -Wl,--verbose &> dummy.log readelf -l a.out | grep ': /lib'
There should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name):
[Requesting program interpreter: /lib/ld-linux.so.2]
Note that /lib
is now the prefix
of our dynamic linker.
Now make sure that we're setup to use the correct startfiles:
grep -o '/usr/lib.*/crt[1in].*succeeded' dummy.log
The output of the last command should be:
/usr/lib/crt1.o succeeded
/usr/lib/crti.o succeeded
/usr/lib/crtn.o succeeded
Verify that the compiler is searching for the correct header files:
grep -B1 '^ /usr/include' dummy.log
This command should return the following output:
#include <...> search starts here:
/usr/include
Next, verify that the new linker is being used with the correct search paths:
grep 'SEARCH.*/usr/lib' dummy.log |sed 's|; |\n|g'
References to paths that have components with '-linux-gnu' should be ignored, but otherwise the output of the last command should be:
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib");
Next make sure that we're using the correct libc:
grep "/lib.*/libc.so.6 " dummy.log
The output of the last command (allowing for a lib64 directory on 64-bit hosts) should be:
attempt to open /lib/libc.so.6 succeeded
Lastly, make sure GCC is using the correct dynamic linker:
grep found dummy.log
The output of the last command should be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name and a lib64 directory on 64-bit hosts):
found ld-linux.so.2 at /lib/ld-linux.so.2
If the output does not appear as shown above or is not received at all, then something is seriously wrong. Investigate and retrace the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it. The most likely reason is that something went wrong with the specs file adjustment. Any issues will need to be resolved before continuing on with the process.
Once everything is working correctly, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out dummy.log
The Zlib package contains compression and decompression routines used by some programs.
Prepare Zlib for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libz.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libz.so) /usr/lib/libz.so
The File package contains a utility for determining the type of a given file or files.
Prepare File for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Binutils package contains a linker, an assembler, and other tools for handling object files.
Verify that the PTYs are working properly inside the chroot environment by performing a simple test:
expect -c "spawn ls"
This command should output the following:
spawn ls
If, instead, the output includes the message below, then the environment is not set up for proper PTY operation. This issue needs to be resolved before running the test suites for Binutils and GCC:
The system has no more ptys.
Ask your system administrator to create more.
The Binutils documentation recommends building Binutils outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../binutils-build cd ../binutils-build
Prepare Binutils for compilation:
../binutils-2.25.1/configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-shared \ --disable-werror
Compile the package:
make tooldir=/usr
The meaning of the make parameter:
tooldir=/usr
Normally, the tooldir (the directory where the
executables will ultimately be located) is set to
$(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias)
. For
example, x86_64 machines would expand that to
/usr/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
.
Because this is a custom system, this target-specific
directory in /usr
is not
required. $(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias)
would
be used if the system was used to cross-compile (for
example, compiling a package on an Intel machine that
generates code that can be executed on PowerPC
machines).
The test suite for Binutils in this section is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstances.
Test the results:
make check
Install the package:
make tooldir=/usr install
Translates program addresses to file names and line numbers; given an address and the name of an executable, it uses the debugging information in the executable to determine which source file and line number are associated with the address |
|
Creates, modifies, and extracts from archives |
|
An assembler that assembles the output of gcc into object files |
|
Used by the linker to de-mangle C++ and Java symbols and to keep overloaded functions from clashing |
|
Updates the ELF header of ELF files |
|
Displays call graph profile data |
|
A linker that combines a number of object and archive files into a single file, relocating their data and tying up symbol references |
|
Hard link to ld |
|
Lists the symbols occurring in a given object file |
|
Translates one type of object file into another |
|
Displays information about the given object file, with options controlling the particular information to display; the information shown is useful to programmers who are working on the compilation tools |
|
Generates an index of the contents of an archive and stores it in the archive; the index lists all of the symbols defined by archive members that are relocatable object files |
|
Displays information about ELF type binaries |
|
Lists the section sizes and the total size for the given object files |
|
Outputs, for each given file, the sequences of printable characters that are of at least the specified length (defaulting to four); for object files, it prints, by default, only the strings from the initializing and loading sections while for other types of files, it scans the entire file |
|
Discards symbols from object files |
|
The Binary File Descriptor library |
|
A library for dealing with opcodes—the “readable text” versions of instructions for the processor; it is used for building utilities like objdump |
The GMP package contains math libraries. These have useful functions for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
If you are building for 32-bit x86, but you have a CPU
which is capable of running 64-bit code and you have specified
CFLAGS
in the environment, the
configure script will attempt to configure for 64-bits and
fail. Avoid this by invoking the configure command below
with
ABI=32
./configure ...
Prepare GMP for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --enable-cxx \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/gmp-6.0.0a
The meaning of the new configure options:
--enable-cxx
This parameter enables C++ support
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gmp-6.0.0a
This variable specifies the correct place for the documentation.
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
The test suite for GMP in this section is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstances.
Test the results:
make check 2>&1 | tee gmp-check-log
Ensure that all 188 tests in the test suite passed. Check the results by issuing the following command:
awk '/tests passed/{total+=$2} ; END{print total}' gmp-check-log
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make install-html
The MPFR package contains functions for multiple precision math.
First, apply the following patch to fix various bugs that have been addressed upstream:
patch -Np1 -i ../mpfr-3.1.3-upstream_fixes-1.patch
Prepare MPFR for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --enable-thread-safe \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/mpfr-3.1.3
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
The test suite for MPFR in this section is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstances.
Test the results and ensure that all tests passed:
make check
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make install-html
The MPC package contains a library for the arithmetic of complex numbers with arbitrarily high precision and correct rounding of the result.
Prepare MPC for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/mpc-1.0.3
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make install-html
The GCC package contains the GNU compiler collection, which includes the C and C++ compilers.
The GCC documentation recommends building GCC outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../gcc-build cd ../gcc-build
Prepare GCC for compilation:
SED=sed \ ../gcc-5.2.0/configure \ --prefix=/usr \ --enable-languages=c,c++ \ --disable-multilib \ --disable-bootstrap \ --with-system-zlib
Note that for other languages, there are some prerequisites that are not yet available. See the BLFS Book for instructions on how to build all of GCC's supported languages.
The meaning of the new configure option:
SED=sed
Setting this environment variable prevents a hard-coded path to /tools/bin/sed.
--with-system-zlib
This switch tells GCC to link to the system installed copy of the Zlib library, rather than its own internal copy.
Compile the package:
make
In this section, the test suite for GCC is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstance.
One set of tests in the GCC test suite is known to exhaust the stack, so increase the stack size prior to running the tests:
ulimit -s 32768
Test the results, but do not stop at errors:
make -k check
To receive a summary of the test suite results, run:
../gcc-5.2.0/contrib/test_summary
For only the summaries, pipe the output through
grep -A7
Summ
.
Results can be compared with those located at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/build-logs/systemd/ and http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-testresults/.
A few unexpected failures cannot always be avoided. The GCC developers are usually aware of these issues, but have not resolved them yet. In particular, one test in the libgomp test suite is known to fail. Unless the test results are vastly different from those at the above URL, it is safe to continue.
Install the package:
make install
Some packages expect the C preprocessor to be installed in
the /lib
directory. To support
those packages, create this symlink:
ln -sv ../usr/bin/cpp /lib
Many packages use the name cc to call the C compiler. To satisfy those packages, create a symlink:
ln -sv gcc /usr/bin/cc
Add a compatibility symlink to enable building programs with Link Time Optimization (LTO):
install -v -dm755 /usr/lib/bfd-plugins ln -sfv ../../libexec/gcc/$(gcc -dumpmachine)/5.2.0/liblto_plugin.so /usr/lib/bfd-plugins/
Now that our final toolchain is in place, it is important to again ensure that compiling and linking will work as expected. We do this by performing the same sanity checks as we did earlier in the chapter:
echo 'int main(){}' > dummy.c cc dummy.c -v -Wl,--verbose &> dummy.log readelf -l a.out | grep ': /lib'
There should be no errors, and the output of the last command will be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name):
[Requesting program interpreter: /lib/ld-linux.so.2]
Now make sure that we're setup to use the correct startfiles:
grep -o '/usr/lib.*/crt[1in].*succeeded' dummy.log
The output of the last command should be:
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/5.2.0/../../../crt1.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/5.2.0/../../../crti.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/5.2.0/../../../crtn.o succeeded
Depending on your machine architecture, the above may differ
slightly, the difference usually being the name of the
directory after /usr/lib/gcc
.
If your machine is a 64-bit system, you may also see a
directory named lib64
towards
the end of the string. The important thing to look for here
is that gcc has
found all three crt*.o
files
under the /usr/lib
directory.
Verify that the compiler is searching for the correct header files:
grep -B4 '^ /usr/include' dummy.log
This command should return the following output:
#include <...> search starts here:
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/5.2.0/include
/usr/local/include
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/5.2.0/include-fixed
/usr/include
Again, note that the directory named after your target triplet may be different than the above, depending on your architecture.
As of version 4.3.0, GCC now unconditionally installs the
limits.h
file into the
private include-fixed
directory, and that directory is required to be in place.
Next, verify that the new linker is being used with the correct search paths:
grep 'SEARCH.*/usr/lib' dummy.log |sed 's|; |\n|g'
References to paths that have components with '-linux-gnu' should be ignored, but otherwise the output of the last command should be:
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib32")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib");
A 64-bit system may see a few different directories. For example, here is the output from an x86_64 machine:
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib64")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/lib")
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib");
Next make sure that we're using the correct libc:
grep "/lib.*/libc.so.6 " dummy.log
The output of the last command (allowing for a lib64 directory on 64-bit hosts) should be:
attempt to open /lib/libc.so.6 succeeded
Lastly, make sure GCC is using the correct dynamic linker:
grep found dummy.log
The output of the last command should be (allowing for platform-specific differences in dynamic linker name and a lib64 directory on 64-bit hosts):
found ld-linux.so.2 at /lib/ld-linux.so.2
If the output does not appear as shown above or is not received at all, then something is seriously wrong. Investigate and retrace the steps to find out where the problem is and correct it. The most likely reason is that something went wrong with the specs file adjustment. Any issues will need to be resolved before continuing on with the process.
Once everything is working correctly, clean up the test files:
rm -v dummy.c a.out dummy.log
Finally, move a misplaced file:
mkdir -pv /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib mv -v /usr/lib/*gdb.py /usr/share/gdb/auto-load/usr/lib
The C++ compiler |
|
The C compiler |
|
The C preprocessor; it is used by the compiler to expand the #include, #define, and similar statements in the source files |
|
The C++ compiler |
|
The C compiler |
|
A wrapper around ar that adds a plugin to the command line. This program is only used to add "link time optization" and is not useful with the default build options |
|
A wrapper around nm that adds a plugin to the command line. This program is only used to add "link time optization" and is not useful with the default build options |
|
A wrapper around ranlib that adds a plugin to the command line. This program is only used to add "link time optization" and is not useful with the default build options |
|
A coverage testing tool; it is used to analyze programs to determine where optimizations will have the most effect |
|
The Address Sanitizer runtime library |
|
Contains run-time support for gcc |
|
This library is linked in to a program when GCC is instructed to enable profiling |
|
GNU implementation of the OpenMP API for multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming in C/C++ and Fortran |
|
Contains routines used by various GNU programs, including getopt, obstack, strerror, strtol, and strtoul |
|
GCC's Link Time Optimization (LTO) plugin allows GCC to perform optimizations across compilation units |
|
GCC Quad Precision Math Library API |
|
Contains routines supporting GCC's stack-smashing protection functionality |
|
The standard C++ library |
|
Provides supporting routines for the C++ programming language |
|
The Thread Sanitizer runtime library |
The Bzip2 package contains programs for compressing and decompressing files. Compressing text files with bzip2 yields a much better compression percentage than with the traditional gzip.
Apply a patch that will install the documentation for this package:
patch -Np1 -i ../bzip2-1.0.6-install_docs-1.patch
The following command ensures installation of symbolic links are relative:
sed -i 's@\(ln -s -f \)$(PREFIX)/bin/@\1@' Makefile
Ensure the man pages are installed into the correct location:
sed -i "s@(PREFIX)/man@(PREFIX)/share/man@g" Makefile
Prepare Bzip2 for compilation with:
make -f Makefile-libbz2_so make clean
The meaning of the make parameter:
-f
Makefile-libbz2_so
This will cause Bzip2 to be built using a different
Makefile
file, in this
case the Makefile-libbz2_so
file, which
creates a dynamic libbz2.so
library and links the Bzip2
utilities against it.
Compile and test the package:
make
Install the programs:
make PREFIX=/usr install
Install the shared bzip2 binary into the
/bin
directory, make some
necessary symbolic links, and clean up:
cp -v bzip2-shared /bin/bzip2 cp -av libbz2.so* /lib ln -sv ../../lib/libbz2.so.1.0 /usr/lib/libbz2.so rm -v /usr/bin/{bunzip2,bzcat,bzip2} ln -sv bzip2 /bin/bunzip2 ln -sv bzip2 /bin/bzcat
Decompresses bzipped files |
|
Decompresses to standard output |
|
Runs cmp on bzipped files |
|
Runs diff on bzipped files |
|
Runs egrep on bzipped files |
|
Runs fgrep on bzipped files |
|
Runs grep on bzipped files |
|
Compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm with Huffman coding; the compression rate is better than that achieved by more conventional compressors using “Lempel-Ziv” algorithms, like gzip |
|
Tries to recover data from damaged bzipped files |
|
Runs less on bzipped files |
|
Runs more on bzipped files |
|
The library implementing lossless, block-sorting data compression, using the Burrows-Wheeler algorithm |
The pkg-config package contains a tool for passing the include path and/or library paths to build tools during the configure and make file execution.
Prepare Pkg-config for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --with-internal-glib \ --disable-host-tool \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/pkg-config-0.28
The meaning of the new configure options:
--with-internal-glib
This will allow pkg-config to use its internal version of Glib because an external version is not available in LFS.
--disable-host-tool
This option disables the creation of an undesired hard link to the pkg-config program.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Ncurses package contains libraries for terminal-independent handling of character screens.
Don't install a static library that is not handled by configure:
sed -i '/LIBTOOL_INSTALL/d' c++/Makefile.in
Prepare Ncurses for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --mandir=/usr/share/man \ --with-shared \ --without-debug \ --without-normal \ --enable-pc-files \ --enable-widec
The meaning of the new configure options:
--enable-widec
This switch causes wide-character libraries (e.g.,
libncursesw.so.6.0
) to be
built instead of normal ones (e.g., libncurses.so.6.0
). These
wide-character libraries are usable in both multibyte
and traditional 8-bit locales, while normal libraries
work properly only in 8-bit locales. Wide-character and
normal libraries are source-compatible, but not
binary-compatible.
--enable-pc-files
This switch generates and installs .pc files for pkg-config.
--without-normal
This switch disables building and installing most static libraries.
Compile the package:
make
This package has a test suite, but it can only be run after
the package has been installed. The tests reside in the
test/
directory. See the
README
file in that directory
for further details.
Install the package:
make install
Move the shared libraries to the /lib
directory, where they are expected to
reside:
mv -v /usr/lib/libncursesw.so.6* /lib
Because the libraries have been moved, one symlink points to a non-existent file. Recreate it:
ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libncursesw.so) /usr/lib/libncursesw.so
Many applications still expect the linker to be able to find non-wide-character Ncurses libraries. Trick such applications into linking with wide-character libraries by means of symlinks and linker scripts:
for lib in ncurses form panel menu ; do rm -vf /usr/lib/lib${lib}.so echo "INPUT(-l${lib}w)" > /usr/lib/lib${lib}.so ln -sfv ${lib}w.pc /usr/lib/pkgconfig/${lib}.pc done
Finally, make sure that old applications that look for
-lcurses
at build time are
still buildable:
rm -vf /usr/lib/libcursesw.so echo "INPUT(-lncursesw)" > /usr/lib/libcursesw.so ln -sfv libncurses.so /usr/lib/libcurses.so
If desired, install the Ncurses documentation:
mkdir -v /usr/share/doc/ncurses-6.0 cp -v -R doc/* /usr/share/doc/ncurses-6.0
The instructions above don't create non-wide-character Ncurses libraries since no package installed by compiling from sources would link against them at runtime. However, the only known binary-only applications that link against non-wide-character Ncurses libraries require version 5. If you must have such libraries because of some binary-only application or to be compliant with LSB, build the package again with the following commands:
make distclean ./configure --prefix=/usr \ --with-shared \ --without-normal \ --without-debug \ --without-cxx-binding \ --with-abi-version=5 make sources libs cp -av lib/lib*.so.5* /usr/lib
Converts a termcap description into a terminfo description |
|
Clears the screen, if possible |
|
Compares or prints out terminfo descriptions |
|
Converts a terminfo description into a termcap description |
|
Provides configuration information for ncurses |
|
Reinitializes a terminal to its default values |
|
Clears and sets tab stops on a terminal |
|
The terminfo entry-description compiler that translates a terminfo file from source format into the binary format needed for the ncurses library routines [A terminfo file contains information on the capabilities of a certain terminal.] |
|
Lists all available terminal types, giving the primary name and description for each |
|
Makes the values of terminal-dependent capabilities available to the shell; it can also be used to reset or initialize a terminal or report its long name |
|
Can be used to initialize terminals |
|
A link to |
|
Contains functions to display text in many complex ways on a terminal screen; a good example of the use of these functions is the menu displayed during the kernel's make menuconfig |
|
Contains functions to implement forms |
|
Contains functions to implement menus |
|
Contains functions to implement panels |
The attr package contains utilities to administer the extended attributes on filesystem objects.
Modify the documentation directory so that it is a versioned directory:
sed -i -e 's|/@pkg_name@|&-@pkg_version@|' include/builddefs.in
Prevent installation of manual pages that were already
installed by the man pages
package:
sed -i -e "/SUBDIRS/s|man2||" man/Makefile
Prepare Attr for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
Compile the package:
make
The tests need to be run on a filesystem that supports extended attributes such as the ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystems. The tests are also known to fail if running multiple simultaneous tests (-j option greater than 1). To test the results, issue:
make -j1 tests root-tests
Install the package:
make install install-dev install-lib chmod -v 755 /usr/lib/libattr.so
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libattr.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libattr.so) /usr/lib/libattr.so
The Acl package contains utilities to administer Access Control Lists, which are used to define more fine-grained discretionary access rights for files and directories.
Modify the documentation directory so that it is a versioned directory:
sed -i -e 's|/@pkg_name@|&-@pkg_version@|' include/builddefs.in
Fix some broken tests:
sed -i "s:| sed.*::g" test/{sbits-restore,cp,misc}.test
Additionally, fix a bug that causes getfacl -e to segfault on overly long group name:
sed -i -e "/TABS-1;/a if (x > (TABS-1)) x = (TABS-1);" \ libacl/__acl_to_any_text.c
Prepare Acl for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --libexecdir=/usr/lib
Compile the package:
make
The Acl tests need to be run on a filesystem that supports access controls after Coreutils has been built with the Acl libraries. If desired, return to this package and run make -j1 tests after Coreutils has been built later in this chapter.
Install the package:
make install install-dev install-lib chmod -v 755 /usr/lib/libacl.so
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libacl.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libacl.so) /usr/lib/libacl.so
The Libcap package implements the user-space interfaces to the POSIX 1003.1e capabilities available in Linux kernels. These capabilities are a partitioning of the all powerful root privilege into a set of distinct privileges.
Prevent a static library from being installed:
sed -i '/install.*STALIBNAME/d' libcap/Makefile
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make RAISE_SETFCAP=no prefix=/usr install chmod -v 755 /usr/lib/libcap.so
The meaning of the make option:
RAISE_SETFCAP=no
This parameter skips trying to use setcap on itself. This avoids an installation error if the kernel or file system does not support extended capabilities.
The shared library needs to be moved to /lib
, and as a result the .so
file in /usr/lib
will need to be recreated:
mv -v /usr/lib/libcap.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libcap.so) /usr/lib/libcap.so
The Sed package contains a stream editor.
Prepare Sed for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin --htmldir=/usr/share/doc/sed-4.2.2
The meaning of the new configure option:
--htmldir
This sets the installation directory for the HTML documentation.
Compile the package and generate the HTML documentation:
make make html
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package and its documentation:
make install make -C doc install-html
The Shadow package contains programs for handling passwords in a secure way.
If you would like to enforce the use of strong passwords,
refer to
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/systemd/postlfs/cracklib.html
for installing CrackLib prior to building Shadow. Then add
--with-libcrack
to
the configure
command below.
Disable the installation of the groups program and its man pages, as Coreutils provides a better version:
sed -i 's/groups$(EXEEXT) //' src/Makefile.in find man -name Makefile.in -exec sed -i 's/groups\.1 / /' {} \;
Instead of using the default
crypt method, use the
more secure SHA-512
method of password encryption, which also allows passwords
longer than 8 characters. It is also necessary to change the
obsolete /var/spool/mail
location for user mailboxes that Shadow uses by default to
the /var/mail
location used
currently:
sed -i -e 's@#ENCRYPT_METHOD DES@ENCRYPT_METHOD SHA512@' \ -e 's@/var/spool/mail@/var/mail@' etc/login.defs
If you chose to build Shadow with Cracklib support, run the following:
sed -i 's@DICTPATH.*@DICTPATH\t/lib/cracklib/pw_dict@' etc/login.defs
Make a minor change to make the default useradd consistent with the LFS groups file:
sed -i 's/1000/999/' etc/useradd
Prepare Shadow for compilation:
./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --with-group-name-max-length=32
The meaning of the configure option:
--with-group-name-max-length=32
The maximum user name is 32 characters. Make the maximum group name the same.
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
Move a misplaced program to its proper location:
mv -v /usr/bin/passwd /bin
This package contains utilities to add, modify, and delete
users and groups; set and change their passwords; and perform
other administrative tasks. For a full explanation of what
password shadowing
means, see the doc/HOWTO
file
within the unpacked source tree. If using Shadow support,
keep in mind that programs which need to verify passwords
(display managers, FTP programs, pop3 daemons, etc.) must be
Shadow-compliant. That is, they need to be able to work with
shadowed passwords.
To enable shadowed passwords, run the following command:
pwconv
To enable shadowed group passwords, run:
grpconv
Shadow's stock configuration for the useradd utility has a few
caveats that need some explanation. First, the default action
for the useradd
utility is to create the user and a group of the same name as
the user. By default the user ID (UID) and group ID (GID)
numbers will begin with 1000. This means if you don't pass
parameters to useradd, each user will be
a member of a unique group on the system. If this behaviour
is undesirable, you'll need to pass the -g
parameter to useradd. The default
parameters are stored in the /etc/default/useradd
file. You may need to
modify two parameters in this file to suit your particular
needs.
/etc/default/useradd
Parameter Explanations
GROUP=1000
This parameter sets the beginning of the group numbers
used in the /etc/group file. You can modify it to
anything you desire. Note that useradd will never
reuse a UID or GID. If the number identified in this
parameter is used, it will use the next available
number after this. Note also that if you don't have a
group 1000 on your system the first time you use
useradd
without the -g
parameter, you'll get a message displayed on the
terminal that says: useradd: unknown GID 1000
. You
may disregard this message and group number 1000 will
be used.
CREATE_MAIL_SPOOL=yes
This parameter causes useradd to create a
mailbox file for the newly created user. useradd will make the
group ownership of this file to the mail
group with 0660 permissions.
If you would prefer that these mailbox files are not
created by useradd, issue the
following command:
sed -i 's/yes/no/' /etc/default/useradd
Choose a password for user root and set it by running:
passwd root
Used to change the maximum number of days between obligatory password changes |
|
Used to change a user's full name and other information |
|
Used to update group passwords in batch mode |
|
Used to update user passwords in batch mode |
|
Used to change a user's default login shell |
|
Checks and enforces the current password expiration policy |
|
Is used to examine the log of login failures, to set a maximum number of failures before an account is blocked, or to reset the failure count |
|
Is used to add and delete members and administrators to groups |
|
Creates a group with the given name |
|
Deletes the group with the given name |
|
Allows a user to administer his/her own group membership list without the requirement of super user privileges. |
|
Is used to modify the given group's name or GID |
|
Verifies the integrity of the group files
|
|
Creates or updates the shadow group file from the normal group file |
|
Updates |
|
Reports the most recent login of all users or of a given user |
|
Is used by the system to let users sign on |
|
Is a daemon used to enforce restrictions on log-on time and ports |
|
Is used to change the current GID during a login session |
|
Is used to create or update an entire series of user accounts |
|
Displays a message that an account is not available; it is designed to be used as the default shell for accounts that have been disabled |
|
Is used to change the password for a user or group account |
|
Verifies the integrity of the password files
|
|
Creates or updates the shadow password file from the normal password file |
|
Updates |
|
Executes a given command while the user's GID is set to that of the given group |
|
Runs a shell with substitute user and group IDs |
|
Creates a new user with the given name, or updates the default new-user information |
|
Deletes the given user account |
|
Is used to modify the given user's login name, User Identification (UID), shell, initial group, home directory, etc. |
|
Edits the |
|
Edits the |
The Psmisc package contains programs for displaying information about running processes.
Prepare Psmisc for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
Finally, move the killall and fuser programs to the location specified by the FHS:
mv -v /usr/bin/fuser /bin mv -v /usr/bin/killall /bin
Reports the Process IDs (PIDs) of processes that use the given files or file systems |
|
Kills processes by name; it sends a signal to all processes running any of the given commands |
|
Peek at file descriptors of a running process, given its PID |
|
Prints information about a process |
|
Displays running processes as a tree |
|
Same as pstree, except that it waits for confirmation before exiting |
The Procps-ng package contains programs for monitoring processes.
Now prepare procps-ng for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --exec-prefix= \ --libdir=/usr/lib \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/procps-ng-3.3.11 \ --disable-static \ --disable-kill
The meaning of the configure options:
--disable-kill
This switch disables building the kill command that will be installed by the Util-linux package.
Compile the package:
make
The test suite needs some custom modifications for LFS. Remove the test that fails when scripting does not use a tty device. To run the test suite, run the following commands:
sed -i -r 's|(pmap_initname)\\\$|\1|' testsuite/pmap.test/pmap.exp make check
Install the package:
make install
Finally, move essential libraries to a location that can be
found if /usr
is not mounted.
mv -v /usr/lib/libprocps.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libprocps.so) /usr/lib/libprocps.so
Reports the amount of free and used memory (both physical and swap memory) in the system |
|
Looks up processes based on their name and other attributes |
|
Reports the PIDs of the given programs |
|
Signals processes based on their name and other attributes |
|
Reports the memory map of the given process |
|
Lists the current running processes |
|
Reports the current working directory of a process |
|
Displays detailed kernel slap cache information in real time |
|
Modifies kernel parameters at run time |
|
Prints a graph of the current system load average |
|
Displays a list of the most CPU intensive processes; it provides an ongoing look at processor activity in real time |
|
Reports how long the system has been running, how many users are logged on, and the system load averages |
|
Reports virtual memory statistics, giving information about processes, memory, paging, block Input/Output (IO), traps, and CPU activity |
|
Shows which users are currently logged on, where, and since when |
|
Runs a given command repeatedly, displaying the first screen-full of its output; this allows a user to watch the output change over time |
|
Contains the functions used by most programs in this package |
The E2fsprogs package contains the utilities for handling the
ext2
file system. It also
supports the ext3
and
ext4
journaling file systems.
The E2fsprogs documentation recommends that the package be built in a subdirectory of the source tree:
mkdir -v build cd build
Prepare E2fsprogs for compilation:
LIBS=-L/tools/lib \ CFLAGS=-I/tools/include \ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/tools/lib/pkgconfig \ ../configure --prefix=/usr \ --bindir=/bin \ --with-root-prefix="" \ --enable-elf-shlibs \ --disable-libblkid \ --disable-libuuid \ --disable-uuidd \ --disable-fsck
The meaning of the environment variable and configure options:
PKG_CONFIG_PATH, LIBS,
CFLAGS
These variables enable e2fsprogs to be built using the Section 5.33, “Util-linux-2.27” package built earlier.
--with-root-prefix=""
and
--bindir=/bin
Certain programs (such as the e2fsck program) are
considered essential programs. When, for example,
/usr
is not mounted,
these programs still need to be available. They belong
in directories like /lib
and /sbin
. If this option
is not passed to E2fsprogs' configure, the programs are
installed into the /usr
directory.
--enable-elf-shlibs
This creates the shared libraries which some programs in this package use.
--disable-*
This prevents E2fsprogs from building and installing
the libuuid
and
libblkid
libraries, the
uuidd
daemon, and the
fsck
wrapper, as Util-Linux installs more recent versions.
Compile the package:
make
To set up and run the test suite we need to first link some libraries from /tools/lib to a location where the test programs look. To run the tests, issue:
ln -sfv /tools/lib/lib{blk,uu}id.so.1 lib make LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/tools/lib check
One of the E2fsprogs tests will attempt to allocate 256 MB of memory. If you do not have significantly more RAM than this, be sure to enable sufficient swap space for the test. See Section 2.3, “Creating a File System on the Partition” and Section 2.5, “Mounting the New Partition” for details on creating and enabling swap space.
Install the binaries, documentation, and shared libraries:
make install
Install the static libraries and headers:
make install-libs
Make the installed static libraries writable so debugging symbols can be removed later:
chmod -v u+w /usr/lib/{libcom_err,libe2p,libext2fs,libss}.a
This package installs a gzipped .info
file but doesn't update the
system-wide dir
file. Unzip
this file and then update the system dir
file using the following commands.
gunzip -v /usr/share/info/libext2fs.info.gz install-info --dir-file=/usr/share/info/dir /usr/share/info/libext2fs.info
If desired, create and install some additional documentation by issuing the following commands:
makeinfo -o doc/com_err.info ../lib/et/com_err.texinfo install -v -m644 doc/com_err.info /usr/share/info install-info --dir-file=/usr/share/info/dir /usr/share/info/com_err.info
Searches a device (usually a disk partition) for bad blocks |
|
Changes the attributes of files on an |
|
An error table compiler; it converts a table of
error-code names and messages into a C source file
suitable for use with the |
|
A file system debugger; it can be used to examine
and change the state of an |
|
Prints the super block and blocks group information for the file system present on a given device |
|
Reports free space fragmentation information |
|
Is used to check, and optionally repair
|
|
Is used to save critical |
|
Displays or changes the file system label on the
|
|
Replays the undo log undo_log for an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem found on a device [This can be used to undo a failed operation by an e2fsprogs program.] |
|
Online defragmenter for ext4 filesystems |
|
Reports on how badly fragmented a particular file might be |
|
By default checks |
|
By default checks |
|
By default checks |
|
By default checks |
|
Saves the output of a command in a log file |
|
Lists the attributes of files on a second extended file system |
|
Converts a table of command names and help messages
into a C source file suitable for use with the
|
|
Creates an |
|
By default creates |
|
By default creates |
|
By default creates |
|
By default creates |
|
Used to create a |
|
Can be used to enlarge or shrink an |
|
Adjusts tunable file system parameters on an
|
|
The common error display routine |
|
Used by dumpe2fs, chattr, and lsattr |
|
Contains routines to enable user-level programs to
manipulate an |
|
Provides an interface for creating and updating quota files and ext4 superblock fields |
|
Used by debugfs |
The Coreutils package contains utilities for showing and setting the basic system characteristics.
POSIX requires that programs from Coreutils recognize character boundaries correctly even in multibyte locales. The following patch fixes this non-compliance and other internationalization-related bugs. Afterwards disable a test that fails with the current version of perl.
patch -Np1 -i ../coreutils-8.24-i18n-1.patch sed -i '/tests\/misc\/sort.pl/ d' Makefile.in
In the past, many bugs were found in this patch. When reporting new bugs to Coreutils maintainers, please check first if they are reproducible without this patch.
Now prepare Coreutils for compilation:
FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1 ./configure \ --prefix=/usr \ --enable-no-install-program=kill,uptime
The meaning of the configure options:
FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1
This environment variable allows the package to be built as the root user.
--enable-no-install-program=kill,uptime
The purpose of this switch is to prevent Coreutils from installing binaries that will be installed by other packages later.
Compile the package:
make
Skip down to “Install the package” if not running the test suite.
Now the test suite is ready to be run. First, run the tests
that are meant to be run as user root
:
make NON_ROOT_USERNAME=nobody check-root
We're going to run the remainder of the tests as the
nobody
user. Certain tests,
however, require that the user be a member of more than one
group. So that these tests are not skipped we'll add a
temporary group and make the user nobody
a part of it:
echo "dummy:x:1000:nobody" >> /etc/group
Fix some of the permissions so that the non-root user can compile and run the tests:
chown -Rv nobody .
Now run the tests. Make sure the PATH in the su
environment includes
/tools/bin.
su nobody -s /bin/bash \ -c "PATH=$PATH make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check"
The stty-pairs test is known to fail on a virtual console, but passes if run in a X terminal.
Remove the temporary group:
sed -i '/dummy/d' /etc/group
Install the package:
make install
Move programs to the locations specified by the FHS:
mv -v /usr/bin/{cat,chgrp,chmod,chown,cp,date,dd,df,echo} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/{false,ln,ls,mkdir,mknod,mv,pwd,rm} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/{rmdir,stty,sync,true,uname} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/chroot /usr/sbin mv -v /usr/share/man/man1/chroot.1 /usr/share/man/man8/chroot.8 sed -i s/\"1\"/\"8\"/1 /usr/share/man/man8/chroot.8
Some packages in BLFS and beyond expect the following
programs in /bin
, so make sure
they are placed there:
mv -v /usr/bin/{head,sleep,nice,test,[} /bin
Encodes and decodes data according to the base64 (RFC 3548) specification |
|
Strips any path and a given suffix from a file name |
|
Concatenates files to standard output |
|
Changes security context for files and directories |
|
Changes the group ownership of files and directories |
|
Changes the permissions of each file to the given mode; the mode can be either a symbolic representation of the changes to make or an octal number representing the new permissions |
|
Changes the user and/or group ownership of files and directories |
|
Runs a command with the specified directory as the
|
|
Prints the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) checksum and the byte counts of each specified file |
|
Compares two sorted files, outputting in three columns the lines that are unique and the lines that are common |
|
Copies files |
|
Splits a given file into several new files, separating them according to given patterns or line numbers and outputting the byte count of each new file |
|
Prints sections of lines, selecting the parts according to given fields or positions |
|
Displays the current time in the given format, or sets the system date |
|
Copies a file using the given block size and count, while optionally performing conversions on it |
|
Reports the amount of disk space available (and used) on all mounted file systems, or only on the file systems holding the selected files |
|
Lists the contents of each given directory (the same as the ls command) |
|
Outputs commands to set the |
|
Strips the non-directory suffix from a file name |
|
Reports the amount of disk space used by the current directory, by each of the given directories (including all subdirectories) or by each of the given files |
|
Displays the given strings |
|
Runs a command in a modified environment |
|
Converts tabs to spaces |
|
Evaluates expressions |
|
Prints the prime factors of all specified integer numbers |
|
Does nothing, unsuccessfully; it always exits with a status code indicating failure |
|
Reformats the paragraphs in the given files |
|
Wraps the lines in the given files |
|
Reports a user's group memberships |
|
Prints the first ten lines (or the given number of lines) of each given file |
|
Reports the numeric identifier (in hexadecimal) of the host |
|
Reports the effective user ID, group ID, and group memberships of the current user or specified user |
|
Copies files while setting their permission modes and, if possible, their owner and group |
|
Joins the lines that have identical join fields from two separate files |
|
Creates a hard link with the given name to a file |
|
Makes hard links or soft (symbolic) links between files |
|
Reports the current user's login name |
|
Lists the contents of each given directory |
|
Reports or checks Message Digest 5 (MD5) checksums |
|
Creates directories with the given names |
|
Creates First-In, First-Outs (FIFOs), a "named pipe" in UNIX parlance, with the given names |
|
Creates device nodes with the given names; a device node is a character special file, a block special file, or a FIFO |
|
Creates temporary files in a secure manner; it is used in scripts |
|
Moves or renames files or directories |
|
Runs a program with modified scheduling priority |
|
Numbers the lines from the given files |
|
Runs a command immune to hangups, with its output redirected to a log file |
|
Prints the number of processing units available to a process |
|
Converts numbers to or from human-readable strings |
|
Dumps files in octal and other formats |
|
Merges the given files, joining sequentially corresponding lines side by side, separated by tab characters |
|
Checks if file names are valid or portable |
|
Is a lightweight finger client; it reports some information about the given users |
|
Paginates and columnates files for printing |
|
Prints the environment |
|
Prints the given arguments according to the given format, much like the C printf function |
|
Produces a permuted index from the contents of the given files, with each keyword in its context |
|
Reports the name of the current working directory |
|
Reports the value of the given symbolic link |
|
Prints the resolved path |
|
Removes files or directories |
|
Removes directories if they are empty |
|
Runs a command with specified security context |
|
Prints a sequence of numbers within a given range and with a given increment |
|
Prints or checks 160-bit Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA1) checksums |
|
Prints or checks 224-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Prints or checks 256-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Prints or checks 384-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Prints or checks 512-bit Secure Hash Algorithm checksums |
|
Overwrites the given files repeatedly with complex patterns, making it difficult to recover the data |
|
Shuffles lines of text |
|
Pauses for the given amount of time |
|
Sorts the lines from the given files |
|
Splits the given file into pieces, by size or by number of lines |
|
Displays file or filesystem status |
|
Runs commands with altered buffering operations for its standard streams |
|
Sets or reports terminal line settings |
|
Prints checksum and block counts for each given file |
|
Flushes file system buffers; it forces changed blocks to disk and updates the super block |
|
Concatenates the given files in reverse |
|
Prints the last ten lines (or the given number of lines) of each given file |
|
Reads from standard input while writing both to standard output and to the given files |
|
Compares values and checks file types |
|
Runs a command with a time limit |
|
Changes file timestamps, setting the access and modification times of the given files to the current time; files that do not exist are created with zero length |
|
Translates, squeezes, and deletes the given characters from standard input |
|
Does nothing, successfully; it always exits with a status code indicating success |
|
Shrinks or expands a file to the specified size |
|
Performs a topological sort; it writes a completely ordered list according to the partial ordering in a given file |
|
Reports the file name of the terminal connected to standard input |
|
Reports system information |
|
Converts spaces to tabs |
|
Discards all but one of successive identical lines |
|
Removes the given file |
|
Reports the names of the users currently logged on |
|
Is the same as ls -l |
|
Reports the number of lines, words, and bytes for each given file, as well as a total line when more than one file is given |
|
Reports who is logged on |
|
Reports the user name associated with the current effective user ID |
|
Repeatedly outputs “y” or a given string until killed |
|
Library used by stdbuf |
The Iana-Etc package provides data for network services and protocols.
The following command converts the raw data provided by IANA
into the correct formats for the /etc/protocols
and /etc/services
data files:
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make install
The M4 package contains a macro processor.
Prepare M4 for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
The test-update-copyright.sh failure can safely be ignored.
Install the package:
make install
copies the given files while expanding the macros that they contain [These macros are either built-in or user-defined and can take any number of arguments. Besides performing macro expansion, m4 has built-in functions for including named files, running Unix commands, performing integer arithmetic, manipulating text, recursion, etc. The m4 program can be used either as a front-end to a compiler or as a macro processor in its own right.] |
The Flex package contains a utility for generating programs that recognize patterns in text.
First, skip running three regression tests that require Bison:
sed -i -e '/test-bison/d' tests/Makefile.in
Prepare Flex for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/flex-2.5.39
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (about 0.5 SBU), issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
A few programs do not know about flex yet and try to run its
predecessor, lex. To support those
programs, create a symbolic link named lex
that runs flex
in lex emulation mode:
ln -sv flex /usr/bin/lex
A tool for generating programs that recognize patterns in text; it allows for the versatility to specify the rules for pattern-finding, eradicating the need to develop a specialized program |
|
An extension of flex, is used for generating C++ code and classes. It is a symbolic link to flex |
|
A script that runs flex in lex emulation mode |
|
The |
The Bison package contains a parser generator.
Prepare Bison for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/bison-3.0.4
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (about 0.5 SBU), issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Generates, from a series of rules, a program for analyzing the structure of text files; Bison is a replacement for Yacc (Yet Another Compiler Compiler) |
|
A wrapper for bison, meant for
programs that still call yacc instead of
bison; it calls
bison
with the |
|
The Yacc library containing implementations of
Yacc-compatible |
The Grep package contains programs for searching through files.
First fix a potential security issue identified upstream:
sed -i -e '/tp++/a if (ep <= tp) break;' src/kwset.c
Prepare Grep for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/bin
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
The test-update-copyright.sh failure can be safely ignored.
Install the package:
make install
The Readline package is a set of libraries that offers command-line editing and history capabilities.
First install some patches to fix various bugs that have been addressed upstream:
patch -Np1 -i ../readline-6.3-upstream_fixes-3.patch
Reinstalling Readline will cause the old libraries to be moved to <libraryname>.old. While this is normally not a problem, in some cases it can trigger a linking bug in ldconfig. This can be avoided by issuing the following two seds:
sed -i '/MV.*old/d' Makefile.in sed -i '/{OLDSUFF}/c:' support/shlib-install
Prepare Readline for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/readline-6.3
Compile the package:
make SHLIB_LIBS=-lncurses
The meaning of the make option:
SHLIB_LIBS=-lncurses
This option forces Readline to link against the
libncurses
(really,
libncursesw
) library.
This package does not come with a test suite.
Install the package:
make SHLIB_LIBS=-lncurses install
Now move the dynamic libraries to a more appropriate location and fix up some symbolic links:
mv -v /usr/lib/lib{readline,history}.so.* /lib ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libreadline.so) /usr/lib/libreadline.so ln -sfv ../../lib/$(readlink /usr/lib/libhistory.so ) /usr/lib/libhistory.so
If desired, install the documentation:
install -v -m644 doc/*.{ps,pdf,html,dvi} /usr/share/doc/readline-6.3
The Bash package contains the Bourne-Again SHell.
First, apply the following patch to fix various bugs that have been addressed upstream:
patch -Np1 -i ../bash-4.3.30-upstream_fixes-2.patch
Prepare Bash for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --bindir=/bin \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/bash-4.3.30 \ --without-bash-malloc \ --with-installed-readline
The meaning of the new configure option:
--with-installed-readline
This option tells Bash to use the readline
library that is already
installed on the system rather than using its own
readline version.
Compile the package:
make
Skip down to “Install the package” if not running the test suite.
To prepare the tests, ensure that the nobody
user can write to the sources
tree:
chown -Rv nobody .
Now, run the tests as the nobody
user:
su nobody -s /bin/bash -c "PATH=$PATH make tests"
Install the package:
make install
Run the newly compiled bash program (replacing the one that is currently being executed):
exec /bin/bash --login +h
The parameters used make the bash process an interactive login shell and continue to disable hashing so that new programs are found as they become available.
A widely-used command interpreter; it performs many types of expansions and substitutions on a given command line before executing it, thus making this interpreter a powerful tool |
|
A shell script to help the user compose and mail standard formatted bug reports concerning bash |
|
A symlink to the bash program; when invoked as sh, bash tries to mimic the startup behavior of historical versions of sh as closely as possible, while conforming to the POSIX standard as well |
The Bc package contains an arbitrary precision numeric processing language.
First, fix some minor memory leaks in the code:
patch -Np1 -i ../bc-1.06.95-memory_leak-1.patch
Prepare Bc for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --with-readline \ --mandir=/usr/share/man \ --infodir=/usr/share/info
The meaning of the configure options:
--with-readline
This option tells Bc to use the readline
library that is already
installed on the system rather than using its own
readline version.
Compile the package:
make
To test bc, run the commands below. There is quite a bit of output, so you may want to redirect it to a file. There are a very small percentage of tests (10 of 12,144) that will indicate a roundoff error at the last digit.
echo "quit" | ./bc/bc -l Test/checklib.b
Install the package:
make install
The Libtool package contains the GNU generic library support script. It wraps the complexity of using shared libraries in a consistent, portable interface.
Prepare Libtool for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (about 11.0 SBU), issue:
make check
Five tests are known to fail in the LFS build envronment due to a circular dependency, but all tests pass if rechecked after automake is installed.
Install the package:
make install
The GDBM package contains the GNU Database Manager. It is a library of database functions that use extensible hashing and work similar to the standard UNIX dbm. The library provides primitives for storing key/data pairs, searching and retrieving the data by its key and deleting a key along with its data.
Prepare GDBM for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --enable-libgdbm-compat
The meaning of the configure option:
--enable-libgdbm-compat
This switch enables the libgdbm compatibility library to be built, as some packages outside of LFS may require the older DBM routines it provides.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
The Expat package contains a stream oriented C library for parsing XML.
Prepare Expat for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-static
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
If desired, install the documentation:
install -v -dm755 /usr/share/doc/expat-2.1.0 install -v -m644 doc/*.{html,png,css} /usr/share/doc/expat-2.1.0
The Inetutils package contains programs for basic networking.
Prepare Inetutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --localstatedir=/var \ --disable-logger \ --disable-whois \ --disable-rcp \ --disable-rexec \ --disable-rlogin \ --disable-rsh \ --disable-servers
The meaning of the configure options:
--disable-r*
These parameters disable building obsolete programs that should not be used due to security issues. The functions provided by these programs can be provided by the openssh package in the BLFS book.
--disable-logger
This option prevents Inetutils from installing the logger program, which is used by scripts to pass messages to the System Log Daemon. Do not install it because Util-linux installs a more recent version.
--disable-whois
This option disables the building of the Inetutils whois client, which is out of date. Instructions for a better whois client are in the BLFS book.
--disable-servers
This disables the installation of the various network servers included as part of the Inetutils package. These servers are deemed not appropriate in a basic LFS system. Some are insecure by nature and are only considered safe on trusted networks. Note that better replacements are available for many of these servers.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
One test, libls.sh, is known to fail due to hard coding of some support program paths. All tests pass if the tests are rerun at the end of Chapter 6.
Install the package:
make install
Move some programs so they are available if /usr
is not accessible:
mv -v /usr/bin/{hostname,ping,ping6,traceroute} /bin mv -v /usr/bin/ifconfig /sbin
Is the file transfer protocol program |
|
Manages network interfaces |
|
Reports or sets the name of the host |
|
Sends echo-request packets and reports how long the replies take |
|
A version of ping for IPv6 networks |
|
Is used to chat with another user |
|
An interface to the TELNET protocol |
|
A trivial file transfer program |
|
Traces the route your packets take from the host you are working on to another host on a network, showing all the intermediate hops (gateways) along the way |
The Perl package contains the Practical Extraction and Report Language.
First create a basic /etc/hosts
file to be referenced in one of Perl's configuration files as
well as the optional test suite:
echo "127.0.0.1 localhost $(hostname)" > /etc/hosts
This version of Perl now builds the Compress::Raw::Zlib and Compress::Raw::BZip2 modules. By default Perl will use an internal copy of the sources for the build. Issue the following command so that Perl will use the libraries installed on the system:
export BUILD_ZLIB=False export BUILD_BZIP2=0
To have full control over the way Perl is set up, you can remove the “-des” options from the following command and hand-pick the way this package is built. Alternatively, use the command exactly as below to use the defaults that Perl auto-detects:
sh Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr \ -Dvendorprefix=/usr \ -Dman1dir=/usr/share/man/man1 \ -Dman3dir=/usr/share/man/man3 \ -Dpager="/usr/bin/less -isR" \ -Duseshrplib
The meaning of the configure options:
-Dvendorprefix=/usr
This ensures perl knows how to tell packages where they should install their perl modules.
-Dpager="/usr/bin/less
-isR"
This ensures that less
is used instead
of more
.
-Dman1dir=/usr/share/man/man1
-Dman3dir=/usr/share/man/man3
Since Groff is not installed yet, Configure thinks that we do not want man pages for Perl. Issuing these parameters overrides this decision.
-Duseshrplib
Build a shared libperl needed by some perl modules.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (approximately 2.5 SBU), issue:
make -k test
Install the package and clean up:
make install unset BUILD_ZLIB BUILD_BZIP2
Translates awk to Perl |
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Dumps C structures as generated from cc -g -S |
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A commandline frontend to Module::CoreList |
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Interact with the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) from the command line |
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The CPANPLUS distribution creator |
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The CPANPLUS launcher |
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Perl script that is used to enable flushing of the output buffer after each write in spawned processes |
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Builds a Perl extension for the Encode module from either Unicode Character Mappings or Tcl Encoding Files |
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Translates find commands to Perl |
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Converts |
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Converts |
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Shell script for examining installed Perl modules, and can even create a tarball from an installed module |
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Converts data between certain input and output formats |
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Can be used to configure the |
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Combines some of the best features of C, sed, awk and sh into a single swiss-army language |
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A hard link to perl |
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Used to generate bug reports about Perl, or the modules that come with it, and mail them |
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Displays a piece of documentation in pod format that is embedded in the Perl installation tree or in a Perl script |
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The Perl Installation Verification Procedure; it can be used to verify that Perl and its libraries have been installed correctly |
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Used to generate thank you messages to mail to the Perl developers |
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A Perl version of the character encoding converter iconv |
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A rough tool for converting Perl4 |
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Converts files from pod format to HTML format |
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Converts files from pod format to LaTeX format |
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Converts pod data to formatted *roff input |
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Converts pod data to formatted ASCII text |
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Prints usage messages from embedded pod docs in files |
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Checks the syntax of pod format documentation files |
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Displays selected sections of pod documentation |
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Command line tool for running tests against the Test::Harness module |
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A Perl version of the stream editor sed |
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Dumps C structures as generated from cc -g -S stabs |
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A tar-like program written in Perl |
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A Perl program that compares an extracted archive with an unextracted one |
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A Perl program that applies pattern matching to the contents of files in a tar archive |
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Translates sed scripts to Perl |
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Prints or checks SHA checksums |
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Is used to force verbose warning diagnostics in Perl |
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Converts Perl XS code into C code |
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Displays details about the internal structure of a Zip file |
The XML::Parser module is a Perl interface to James Clark's XML parser, Expat.
Prepare XML::Parser for compilation:
perl Makefile.PL
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make test
Install the package:
make install
The Autoconf package contains programs for producing shell scripts that can automatically configure source code.
Prepare Autoconf for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
This takes a long time, about 4.7 SBUs. In addition, 6 tests are skipped that use Automake. For full test coverage, Autoconf can be re-tested after Automake has been installed. In addition, two tests fail due to changes in libtool-2.4.3 and later.
Install the package:
make install
Produces shell scripts that automatically configure software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of Unix-like systems; the configuration scripts it produces are independent—running them does not require the autoconf program |
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A tool for creating template files of C #define statements for configure to use |
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A wrapper for the M4 macro processor |
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Automatically runs autoconf, autoheader, aclocal, automake, gettextize, and libtoolize in the correct order to save time when changes are made to autoconf and automake template files |
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Helps to create a |
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Modifies a |
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Helps when writing |
The Automake package contains programs for generating Makefiles for use with Autoconf.
First fix a warning that is caused by perl-5.22 and later:
sed -i 's:/\\\${:/\\\$\\{:' bin/automake.in
Prepare Automake for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --docdir=/usr/share/doc/automake-1.15
Compile the package:
make
There are a couple of tests that incorrectly link to the wrong version of the flex library, so we temporarily work around the problem. Also, using the -j4 make option speeds up the tests, even on systems with only one processor, due to internal delays in individual tests. To test the results, issue:
sed -i "s:./configure:LEXLIB=/usr/lib/libfl.a &:" t/lex-{clean,depend}-cxx.sh make -j4 check
Install the package:
make install
Generates |
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A hard link to aclocal |
|
A tool for automatically generating |
|
A hard link to automake |
|
A wrapper for compilers |
|
A script that attempts to guess the canonical triplet for the given build, host, or target architecture |
|
A configuration validation subroutine script |
|
A script for compiling a program so that dependency information is generated in addition to the desired output |
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A script that installs a program, script, or data file |
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A script that prints the modification time of a file or directory |
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A script acting as a common stub for missing GNU programs during an installation |
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A script that creates a directory tree |
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Compiles a Python program |
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A wrapper for lex and yacc |
The Diffutils package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories.
First fix a file so locale files are installed:
sed -i 's:= @mkdir_p@:= /bin/mkdir -p:' po/Makefile.in.in
Prepare Diffutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
The test-update-copyright.sh failure can be safely ignored.
Install the package:
make install
The Gawk package contains programs for manipulating text files.
Prepare Gawk for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
If desired, install the documentation:
mkdir -v /usr/share/doc/gawk-4.1.3 cp -v doc/{awkforai.txt,*.{eps,pdf,jpg}} /usr/share/doc/gawk-4.1.3
The Findutils package contains programs to find files. These programs are provided to recursively search through a directory tree and to create, maintain, and search a database (often faster than the recursive find, but unreliable if the database has not been recently updated).
Prepare Findutils for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/locate
The meaning of the configure options:
--localstatedir
This option changes the location of the locate database to be
in /var/lib/locate
, which
is FHS-compliant.
Compile the package:
make
To test the results, issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Some packages in BLFS and beyond expect the find program in
/bin
, so make sure it's placed
there:
mv -v /usr/bin/find /bin sed -i 's|find:=${BINDIR}|find:=/bin|' /usr/bin/updatedb
Was formerly used to produce locate databases |
|
Was formerly used to produce locate databases; it is the ancestor of frcode |
|
Searches given directory trees for files matching the specified criteria |
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Is called by updatedb to compress the list of file names; it uses front-compression, reducing the database size by a factor of four to five |
|
Searches through a database of file names and reports the names that contain a given string or match a given pattern |
|
Older version of find, using a different algorithm |
|
Updates the locate database; it scans the entire file system (including other file systems that are currently mounted, unless told not to) and puts every file name it finds into the database |
|
Can be used to apply a given command to a list of files |
The Gettext package contains utilities for internationalization and localization. These allow programs to be compiled with NLS (Native Language Support), enabling them to output messages in the user's native language.
Prepare Gettext for compilation:
./configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-static \ --docdir=/usr/share/doc/gettext-0.19.5.1
Compile the package:
make
To test the results (this takes a long time, around 3 SBUs), issue:
make check
Install the package:
make install
Copies standard Gettext infrastructure files into a source package |
|
Outputs a system-dependent table of character encoding aliases |
|
Outputs a system-dependent set of variables, describing how to set the runtime search path of shared libraries in an executable |
|
Substitutes environment variables in shell format strings |
|
Translates a natural language message into the user's language by looking up the translation in a message catalog |
|
Primarily serves as a shell function library for gettext |
|
Copies all standard Gettext files into the given top-level directory of a package to begin internationalizing it |
|
Displays a network hostname in various forms |
|
Filters the messages of a translation catalog according to their attributes and manipulates the attributes |
|
Concatenates and merges the given |
|
Compares two |
|
Finds the messages that are common to to the given
|
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Converts a translation catalog to a different character encoding |
|
Creates an English translation catalog |
|
Applies a command to all translations of a translation catalog |
|
Applies a filter to all translations of a translation catalog |
|
Generates a binary message catalog from a translation catalog |
|
Extracts all messages of a translation catalog that match a given pattern or belong to some given source files |
|
Creates a new |
|
Combines two raw translations into a single file |
|
Decompiles a binary message catalog into raw translation text |
|
Unifies duplicate translations in a translation catalog |
|
Displays native language translations of a textual message whose grammatical form depends on a number |
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