HTTP Mirrors

• Columbus, Ohio, United States - http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/intro/

• United States - http://lfs.sourceforge.net/intro/

• Canmore, Alberta, Canada - http://www.ca.linuxfromscratch.org/intro/

• Braunschweig, Germany - http://www.de.linuxfromscratch.org/intro/

• Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria - http://www.at.linuxfromscratch.org/intro/

• Bistrita, Romania - http://www.ro.linuxfromscratch.org/intro/

• Oslo, Norway - http://www.no.linuxfromscratch.org/intro/

• Brisbane, Australia - http://lfs.planetmirror.com/intro/

FTP Mirrors

• Columbus, Ohio, USA [FTP]- ftp://packages.linuxfromscratch.org

• Columbus, Ohio, USA [HTTP]- http://packages.linuxfromscratch.org

• Canmore, Alberta, Canada [FTP] - ftp://ftp.ca.linuxfromscratch.org/pub/

• Canmore, Alberta, Canada [HTTP] - http://ftp.ca.linuxfromscratch.org/pub/

• Vienna Univ. of Tech., Austria [FTP] - ftp://ftp.at.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/packages

• Vienna Univ. of Tech., Austria [HTTP] - http://ftp.at.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/packages

• Oslo, Norway [FTP] - ftp://ftp.no.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors/lfs/

• Brisbane, Australia - ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/lfs/

lfs-discuss

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

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

lfs-apps

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

lfs-announce

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

lfs-security

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

alfs-discuss

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

alfs-docs

ALFS-docs is the ALFS documentation project which creates and maintains all of the ALFS documentation.

alfs-ipc

The alfs-ipc list discusses the ALFS InterProcess Communication issues.

alfs-profile

The alfs-profile list discusses the development of the ALFS XML profile and DTD.

alfs-backend

The alfs-backend mailinglist discusses matters regarding the ALFS backend.

Mail archives

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

How to subscribe?

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

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

To: listar@linuxfromscratch.org
Subject:

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

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

How to unsubscribe?

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

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

To: listar@linuxfromscratch.org
Subject:

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

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

Other list modes

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

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

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

Digests

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

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

There is a second digest mode called digest2. When a user is set to this mode he will receive the daily digests but will also continue to receive the individual messages to the lists as they are posted. To set this mode digest2 has to be written instead of digest in the subject header.

Vacation

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

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

FHS compliance notes

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

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

Installation of Bash

Install Bash by running the following commands:

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

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

install-info: unknown option `--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir' 
usage: install-info [--version] [--help] [--debug] [--maxwidth=nnn] 
	[--section regexp title] [--infodir=xxx] [--align=nnn] 
	[--calign=nnn] [--quiet] [--menuentry=xxx]
	[--info-dir=xxx] 
	[--keep-old] [--description=xxx] [--test]
	[--remove] [--] filename 
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1 
make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/lfs/usr/src/bash-2.04/doc' 
make: [install] Error 2 (ignored)

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

Command explanations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contents

The Bash package contains the bash program

Description

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

Installation of Binutils

Install Binutils by running the following commands:

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

Command explanations

make -e: The -e parameter tells make that environment variables take precedence over variables defined in the Makefile file(s). This is needed in order to successfully link binutils statically.

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

tooldir=$LFS/usr: Normally, the tooldir (the directory where the executables from binutils end up in) is set to $(exec_prefix)/$(target_alias) which expands into, for example, /usr/i686-pc-linux-gnu. Since we only build for our own system, we don't need this target specific directory in $LFS/usr. That setup would be used if the system was used to cross-compile (for example compiling a package on the Intel machine that generates code that can be executed on Apple PowerPC machines).

Description

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

Description

Installation of Bzip2

Install Bzip2 by running the following commands:

sed \
   s/"\$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) -o"/"\$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) \$(LDFLAGS) -o"/ \
   Makefile | make -f - LDFLAGS=-static &&
make PREFIX=$LFS/usr install &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
mv bzcat bunzip2 bzip2 bzip2recover $LFS/bin

Command explanations

sed: The sed command here searches for the string "$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o" and replaces it by "$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -o" in the Makefile file. We make that modification so it will be easier to link bzip2 statically.

...Makefile | make -f -: Makefile is the last parameter of the sed command which indicates the file to search and replace in. Sed normally sends the modified file to stdout (standard output), which will be the console. With the construction we use, sed's output will be piped to the make program. Normally, when make is started, it tries to find a number of files like Makefile. But we have modified the Makefile file so we don't want make to use it. The "-f -" parameter tells make to read it's input from another file, or from stdin (standard input) which the dash (-) implies. This is one way to do it. Another way would be to have sed write the output to a different file and tell make with the -f parameter to read that alternate file.

LDFLAGS=-static: This is the second way we use to link a package statically. This is also the most common way. The -all-static value is only used with the binutils and the gettext packages and won't be used throughout the rest of this book.

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Diffutils

Install Diffutils by running the following commands:

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

Command explanations

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Fileutils

Install Fileutils by running the following commands:

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

Command explanations

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of GCC

Install GCC by running the following commands:

mkdir $LFS/usr/src/gcc-build &&
cd $LFS/usr/src/gcc-build &&
../gcc-2.95.2.1/configure --prefix=/usr \
   --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/g++ \
   --enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-nls &&
make -e LDFLAGS=-static bootstrap &&
make prefix=$LFS/usr local_prefix=$LFS/usr/local \
   gxx_include_dir=$LFS/usr/include/g++ install &&
cd $LFS/lib &&
ln -s ../usr/bin/cpp &&
cd $LFS/usr/lib &&
ln -s ../bin/cpp &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
ln -s gcc cc

Command explanations

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

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

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Linux Kernel

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

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

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

Command explanations

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

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

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

cp -R ../src/linux/include/linux . and mkdir asm && cp -a ../src/linux/include/asm/* .: These commands copy the kernel headers in the $LFS/usr/include directory. For details on why we don't link to these directories (anymore), and instead copy them, please refer to the README file in the kernel source.

Contents

The Linux kernel package contains the Linux kernel.

Description

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

Installation of Grep

Install Grep by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Gzip

Before Gzip is installed, the gzip patch file needs to be unpacked.

patch -Np1 -i ../gzip-1.2.4a.patch &&
./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install &&
cp $LFS/usr/bin/gunzip $LFS/usr/bin/gzip $LFS/bin &&
rm $LFS/usr/bin/gunzip $LFS/usr/bin/gzip

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Make

Install Make by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Make package contains the make program.

Description

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

Installation of Sed

Install Sed by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Sed package contains the sed program.

Description

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

Installation of Sh-utils

Before Sh-utils is installed, the sh-utils patch file needs to be unpacked.

patch -Np1 -i ../sh-utils-2.0.patch &&
./configure --prefix=$LFS/usr --disable-nls &&
make LDFLAGS=-static &&
make install &&
cd $LFS/usr/bin &&
mv date echo false pwd stty $LFS/bin &&
mv su true uname hostname $LFS/bin

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Tar

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

Apply the patch by running the following command:

cd src &&
patch -i ../../gnutarpatch.txt &&
cd ..

Install Tar by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The tar package contains the tar and rmt programs.

Description

Installation of Textutils

Install Textutils by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Mawk

Install Mawk by running the following commands:

./configure &&
sed \
   s/"\$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) -o"/"\$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) \$(LDFLAGS) -o"/ \
   Makefile | make -f - LDFLAGS=-static &&
make BINDIR=$LFS/usr/bin \
   MANDIR=$LFS/usr/share/man/man1 install

Contents

The Mawk package contains the mawk program.

Description

Installation of Texinfo

Install Texinfo by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Patch

Install Make by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Patch package contains the patch program.

Description

The patch program modifies a file according to a patch file. A patch file usually is a list created by the diff program that contains instructions on how an original file needs to be modified. Patch is used a lot for source code patches since it saves time and space. Imagine a package that is 1MB in size. The next version of that package only has changes in two files of the first version. It can be shipped as an entirely new package of 1MB or just as a patch file of 1KB which will update the first version to make it identical to the second version. So if the first version was downloaded already, a patch file avoids a second large download.

Installation of Glibc

Unpack the glibc-linuxthreads in the glibc-2.2.1 directory, not in /usr/src.

Install Glibc by running the following commands:

mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3 &&
touch /etc/ld.so.conf &&
mkdir /usr/src/glibc-build &&
cd /usr/src/glibc-build &&
sed s/"\$(PERL)"/"\/usr\/bin\/perl"/ \
   ../glibc-2.2.1/malloc/Makefile > tmp~ &&
mv tmp~ ../glibc-2.2.1/malloc/Makefile &&
sed "s/root/0/" ../glibc-2.2.1/login/Makefile > tmp~ &&
mv tmp~ ../glibc-2.2.1/login/Makefile &&
../glibc-2.2.1/configure \
   --prefix=/usr --enable-add-ons \
   --libexecdir=/usr/bin &&
sed s/"cross-compiling = yes"/"cross-compiling = no"/ \
   config.make > config.make~ &&
mv config.make~ config.make &&
make &&
make install &&
make localedata/install-locales

During the configure stage you will see the following warning:

configure: warning:
*** An auxiliary program is missing or too old;
*** some features will be disabled.
*** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.

This warning refers to the missing msgfmt program from the gettext package. But there is nothing to worry about: Glib will still be installed the same way as when msgfmt is present. It can safely be ignored in our case.

By exiting the chroot'ed environment and re-entering it, you will be able to get rid of the "I have no name!" message in the command prompt, which is caused by bash's inability to resolve a userid to a username. You don't have to exit and re-enter chroot, but it's highly recommended to ensure a properly working bash.

Run the following commands to accomplish this:

logout
chroot $LFS /usr/bin/env -i HOME=/root \
   TERM=$TERM /bin/bash --login
 

Command explanations

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

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

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

Contents

The Glibc package contains the GNU C Library.

Description

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

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

Creating devices

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

Create the device files by running the following commands:

chmod 755 MAKEDEV &&
cp MAKEDEV /dev &&
cd /dev &&
./MAKEDEV -v generic

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

Command explanations

./MAKEDEV -v generic: This creates generic devices. Normally, these devices are all devices you need. It's possible that you are missing some special devices that are needed for your hardware configuration. Create them with ./MAKEDEV -v <device>.

Contents

The MAKEDEV package contains the MAKEDEV script.

Description

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

Installation of Man-pages

Install Man-pages by running the following command:

patch -Np1 -i ../man-pages-1.35.patch &&
make install

Contents

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

Description

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

Installation of Ed

Install Ed by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
mv /usr/bin/ed /usr/bin/red /bin

Contents

The Ed package contains the ed program.

Description

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

Installation of Patch

Install Patch by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Patch package contains the patch program.

Description

The patch program modifies a file according to a patch file. A patch file usually is a list created by the diff program that contains instructions on how an original file needs to be modified. Patch is used a lot for source code patches since it saves time and space. Imagine a package that is 1MB in size. The next version of that package only has changes in two files of the first version. It can be shipped as an entirely new package of 1MB or just as a patch file of 1KB which will update the first version to make it identical to the second version. So if the first version was downloaded already, a patch file avoids a second large download.

Installing Findutils

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

Install Findutils by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Mawk

Install Mawk by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Mawk package contains the mawk program.

Description

Installation of Ncurses

Install Ncurses by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/lib \
   --with-shared --disable-termcap &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /lib &&
ln -s libncurses.a libcurses.a

Command explanations

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

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

ln -s libncurses.a libcurses.a: This creates the /lib/libcurses.a symlink that for some reason isn't created during the libncurses installation.

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Vim

If you don't like vim to be installed as an editor on the LFS system, you may want to download an alternative and install an editor he prefers. There are a few hints how to install different editors available at http://archive.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs-hints/editors/

Both the vim-rt and vim-src packages need to be unpacked to install Vim. Both packages will unpack their files into the vim-5.7 directory. This won't overwrite any files from the other package. So it doesn't matter in which order it is done. Install Vim by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -s vim vi

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

FHS compliance notes

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

./configure --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var/lib/vim &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
ln -s vim vi &&
mkdir /var/lib/vim

Contents

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

Description

Installation of GCC

Install GCC by running the following commands:

mkdir /usr/src/gcc-build &&
cd /usr/src/gcc-build &&
../gcc-2.95.2.1/configure --prefix=/usr \
   --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/g++ \
   --enable-shared --enable-languages=c,c++ &&
make bootstrap &&
make install

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Bison

Install Bison by running the following commands:

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

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

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

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

/usr/bin/bison -y "$@"

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

Command explanations

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

Contents

The Bison package contains the bison program.

Description

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

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

Given the string :

        1 + 2 * 3

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

            +
           / \
          *   1
         / \
        2   3

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

Installation of Less

Install Less by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Less package contains the less program

Description

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

Installation of Groff

Install Groff by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Man

Before Man is installed, the man patch file needs to be unpacked.

patch -Np1 -i ../man-1.5i.patch &&
./configure -default &&
make &&
make install

You may want to take a look at the man hint which deals with formatting and compression issues for man pages.

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Perl

Install Perl by running the following commands:

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

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

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

Contents

The Perl package contains Perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language

Description

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

Installation of M4

Install M4 by running the following commands:

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

If the base system is running a 2.0 kernel and the Glibc version is 2.1 then a user will most likely get problems executing M4 in the chroot'ed environment due to incompatibilities between the M4 program, Glibc-2.1 and the running 2.0 kernel. If he has problems executing the m4 program in the chroot'ed environment (for example when he installs the autoconf and automake packages) he'll have to exit the chroot'ed environment and compile M4 statically. This way the binary is linked against Glibc 2.0 (if he runs kernel 2.0, Glibc version is 2.0 as well on a decent system. Kernel 2.0 and Glibc-2.1 don't mix very well) and won't give any problems.

To create a statically linked version of M4, execute the following commands:

logout
cd $LFS/usr/src/m4-1.4
./configure --prefix=/usr
make LDFLAGS=-static
make prefix=$LFS/usr install

Now the chroot'ed environment can be re-entered and the next package an be installed. If M4 should be re-compiled dynamically, this can be done after having rebooted into the LFS system rather than chrooting into it.

chroot $LFS /usr/bin/env -i HOME=/root \
   TERM=$TERM /bin/bash --login

Contents

The M4 package contains the M4 processor

Description

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

Installation of Texinfo

Install Texinfo by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Autoconf

Install Autoconf by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Automake

Install Automake by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Automake package contains the aclocal and automake programs

Description

Installation of Bash

Install Bash by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-curses &&
make &&
make install &&
logout

The static bash is replaced with the dynamic bash and the chroot'ed environment is re-entered by running:

mv $LFS/usr/bin/bash $LFS/usr/bin/bashbug $LFS/bin &&
chroot $LFS /usr/bin/env -i HOME=/root \
   TERM=$TERM /bin/bash --login
 

Contents

The Bash package contains the bash program

Description

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

Installation of Flex

Install Flex by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Flex package contains the flex program

Description

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

Installation of File

Install File by running the following commands:

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

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

        file -C

Contents

The File package contains the file program.

Description

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

Installation of Libtool

Install Libtool by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Bin86

Install Bin86 by running the following commands:

make &&
make INSTALL_OPTS="-m 755" PREFIX=/usr install

Command explanations

make INSTALL_OPTS="-m 755"...: The Makefile declares INSTALL_OPTS="-m 755 -s". The -s parameter causes the install program to invoke the strip program to strip debug symbols from the program. This doesn't work properly because a few files aren't programs, but shell scripts. The strip program errors on those.

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Binutils

Install Binutils by running the following commands:

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

Description

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

Description

Installation of Bzip2

Install Bzip2 by running the following commands:

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

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

Command explanations

make -f Makefile-libbz2_so: This will cause bzip2 to be build 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.

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Gettext

Install Gettext by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Kbd

Install Kbd by running the following commands:

./configure --datadir=/usr/share/kbd &&
make &&
make install &&
rm /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/defkeymap.map.gz

Now we have to choose a default keymap. Explore the /usr/share/kbd/keymaps directory, and find the keymap that you would like to use as a default. Then execute this command:

cd /usr/share/kbd/keymaps &&
ln -s <path-to-keymap> defkeymap.map.gz

Replace <path-to-keymap> with the path to the keymap you have selected, relative to the /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/ directory. For example, if you have chosen the US keymap, you would replace it with i386/qwerty/us.map.gz.

Command explanations

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

rm /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/defkeymap.map.gz: We remove this file because we don't know which keymap you need to use.

ln -s <path-to-keymap> defkeymap.map.gz With this command you set the default keymap that can be loaded using the loadkeys -d command.

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Diffutils

Install Diffutils by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of E2fsprogs

Install E2fsprogs by running the following commands:

Please note that the empty --with-root-prefix= option below is supposed to be like this. We did not forget to supply a value there.

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-root-prefix= \
   --enable-elf-shlibs &&
make &&
make install &&
make install-libs &&
mv /usr/sbin/mklost+found /sbin

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Fileutils

Install Fileutils by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Grep

Install Grep by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Gzip

Install Gzip by running the following commands:

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

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Lilo

We have chosen Lilo because we feel confortable with it, but you may wish to take a look elsewhere. Someone has written a hint on GRUB, an alternative boot loader.

Install Lilo by running the following commands:

make &&
make install

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

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

Maybe you'll be interested to know that someone wrote a hint on how to get a logo instead the the standard LILO prompt or menu. Take a look at it here.

Contents

The Lilo package contains the lilo program.

Description

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

Installation of Make

Install Make by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Make package contains the make program.

Description

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

Installation of Modutils

Install Modutils by running the following commands:

./configure &&
make &&
make install

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Procinfo

Install Procinfo by running the following commands:

sed "s/-ltermcap/-lncurses/" Makefile | make -f - &&
make install

Command explanations

sed "s/-ltermcap/-lncurses/" Makefile | make -f -: This will replace -ltermcap with -lncurses in the Makefile and pipe the output of sed (the modified Makefile) directly to the make program. This is an alternate and more efficient way to direct the output to a file and tell make to use that alternate file. We do this because libtermcap is declared obsolete in favor of libncurses.

Contents

The Procinfo package contains the procinfo program.

Description

procinfo gathers some system data from the /proc directory and prints it nicely formatted on the standard output device.

Installation of Procps

Install Procps by running the following commands:

make &&
make XSCPT='' install &&
mv /usr/bin/kill /bin

Command explanations

make XSCPT='' install: This will set the Makefile variable XSCPT to an empty value so that the XConsole installation is disabled. Otherwise "Make install" tries to copy the file XConsole to /usr/X11R6/bin. And that directory does not exist, because X is not installed yet.

Contents

The Procps package contains the free, kill, oldps, ps, skill, snice, sysctl, tload, top, uptime, vmstat, w and watch programs.

Description

Installation of Psmisc

Install Psmisc by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Psmisc package contains the fuser, killall and pstree programs.

Description

Installation of Sed

Install Sed by running the following commands:

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

Contents

The Sed package contains the sed program.

Description

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

Installation of Sh-utils

Install Shellutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd /usr/bin &&
mv date echo false pwd stty /bin &&
mv su true uname hostname /bin

FHS compliance notes

There is a command installed in this package which is named test. It is often used in shell scripts to evaluate conditions, but if more often encountered under the form [ condition ]. These brackets are built into the bash interpreter, but the FHS dictates that there should exist a [ binary. We create that in this way, while still in the /usr/bin directory:

ln -s test [

Contents

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

Description

Installation of Shadow Password Suite

Install the Shadow Password Suite by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../shadow-20001016.patch &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd etc &&
cp limits login.access /etc &&
sed "s|/var/spool/mail|/var/mail|" login.defs.linux > /etc/login.defs

Command explanations

cp limits login.access and others: These files were not installed during the installation of the package so we copy them manually as those files are used to configure authentication details on the system.

sed "s|/var/spool/mail|/var/mail|" login.defs.linux > /etc/login.defs: /var/spool/mail is the old location of the user mailboxes. The location that is used nowadays is /var/mail.

Contents

The Shadow Password Suite contains the chage, chfn, chsh, expiry, faillog, gpasswd, lastlog, login, newgrp, passwd, sg, su, chpasswd, dpasswd, groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, grpck, grpconv, grpunconv, logoutd, mkpasswd, newusers, pwck, pwconv, pwunconv, useradd, userdel, usermod and vipw programs.

Description

Installation of Sysklogd

Install Sysklogd by running the following commands:

make &&
make install

Contents

The Sysklogd package contains the klogd and syslogd programs.

Description

Installation of Sysvinit

When run levels are changed (for example when going to shutdown the system) the init program is going to send the TERM and KILL signals to all the processes that init started. But init prints a message to the screen saying "sending all processes the TERM signal" and the same for the KILL signal. This implies that init sends this signal to all the currently running processes, which isn't the case. To avoid this confusion a user can apply the sysvinit patch found on the LFS FTP site to sysvinit that changes the sentence in the shutdown.c file and have it print "sending all processes started by init the TERM signal".

Apply the patch by running the following command:

patch -Np1 -i ../sysvinit-2.78.patch

Install Sysvinit by running the following commands:

make -C src &&
make -C src install

Contents

The Sysvinit package contains the pidof, last, lastb, mesg, utmpdump, wall, halt, init, killall5, poweroff, reboot, runlevel, shutdown, sulogin and telinit programs.

Description

Installation of Tar

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

Apply the patch by running the following command:

cd src &&
patch -i ../../gnutarpatch.txt &&
cd ..

Install Tar by running the following commands from the toplevel directory:

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

Contents

The tar package contains the tar and rmt programs.

Description

Installation of Textutils

Install Textutils by running the following commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
mv /usr/bin/cat /bin

Contents

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

Description

FHS compliance notes

The FHS recommends that we use /var/lib/hwclock as the location of the adjtime file, instead of the usual /etc. To make hwclock, which is part of the util-linux package, FHS-compliant, run the following.

sed "s|etc/adjtime\"\$|var/lib/hwclock/adjtime\"|" \
   hwclock/hwclock.c > hwclock~ &&
mv hwclock~ hwclock/hwclock.c &&
mkdir /var/lib/hwclock

Installation of Util-Linux

Install Util-Linux by running the following commands:

sed s/HAVE_SLN=no/HAVE_SLN=yes/ \
   MCONFIG > MCONFIG~ &&
mv MCONFIG~ MCONFIG &&
./configure &&
make &&
make install

Command explanations

HAVE_SLN=yes: We don't build this program because it already was installed by Glibc.

Contents

The Util-linux package contains the arch, dmesg, kill, more, mount, umount, agetty, blockdev, cfdisk, ctrlaltdel, elvtune, fdisk, fsck.minix, hwclock, kbdrate, losetup, mkfs, mkfs.bfs, mkfs.minix, mkswap, sfdisk, swapoff, swapon, cal, chkdupexe, col, colcrt, colrm, column, cytune, ddate, fdformat, getopt, hexdump, ipcrm, ipcs, logger, look, mcookie, namei, rename, renice, rev, script, setfdprm, setsid, setterm, ul, whereis, write, ramsize, rdev, readprofile, rootflags, swapdev, tunelp and vidmode programs.

Description

Configuring Vim

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

cat > /root/.vimrc << "EOF"
" Begin /root/.vimrc

set nocompatible
set bs=2

" End /root/.vimrc
EOF

Configuring Glibc

We need to create the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. Although glibc should provide defaults when this file is missing or corrupt, it's defaults don't work well with networking which will be dealt with in a later chapter. Also, our timezone needs to be setup.

Create a new file /etc/nsswitch.conf by running the following:

cat > /etc/nsswitch.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd: files
group: files
shadow: files

publickey: files

hosts: files dns
networks: files

protocols: db files
services: db files
ethers: db files
rpc: db files

netgroup: db files

# End /etc/nsswitch.conf
EOF

The tzselect script has to be run and the questions regarding your timezone have to be answered. When you're done, the script will give the location of the needed timezone file.

Create the /etc/localtime symlink by running:

cd /etc &&
ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/<tzselect's output> localtime

tzselect's output can be something like EST5EDT or Canada/Eastern.

The symlink you'd create with that information would be:

ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT localtime 

Or:

ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern localtime

Configuring Dynamic Loader

By default the dynamic loader searches a few default paths for dynamic libraries, so there normally isn't a need for the /etc/ld.so.conf file unless the system has extra directories in which a user wants the system to search for paths. The /usr/local/lib directory isn't searched through for dynamic libraries by default, so we want to add this path so when you install software you won't be surprised by them not running for some reason.

Create a new file /etc/ld.so.conf by running the following:

cat > /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/ld.so.conf

/lib
/usr/lib
/usr/local/lib

# End /etc/ld.so.conf
EOF

Although it's not necessary to add the /lib and /usr/lib directories it doesn't hurt. This way it can be seen right away what's being searched and a you don't have to remember the default search paths if you don't want to.

Configuring Sysklogd

Create a new file /etc/syslog.conf by running the following:

cat > /etc/syslog.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/syslog.conf

auth,authpriv.* -/var/log/auth.log
*.*;auth,authpriv.none -/var/log/sys.log
daemon.* -/var/log/daemon.log
kern.* -/var/log/kern.log
mail.* -/var/log/mail.log
user.* -/var/log/user.log
*.emerg *

# End /etc/syslog.conf
EOF

Configuring Shadow Password Suite

This package contains the utilities to modify user's passwords, add new users/groups, delete users/groups and more. We're not going to explain what 'password shadowing' means. All about that can be read in the doc/HOWTO file within the unpacked shadow password suite's source tree. There's one thing you should keep in mind, if you decide to use shadow support, that programs that need to verify passwords (examples are xdm, ftp daemons, pop3 daemons, etc) need to be 'shadow-compliant', eg. they need to be able to work with shadow'ed passwords.

Shadow'ed passwords are not enabled by default. Simply installing the shadow password suite does not enable shadow'ed passwords.

Now is a very good moment to read chapter 5 of the doc/HOWTO file. It describes how to enable shadow'ed passwords, how to test whether shadowing works and if not, how to disable it again.

The documentation mentions something about the creation of npasswd and nshadow after pwconv is run. This is an error in the documentation. Those two files will not be created. After pwconv is run, /etc/passwd will no longer contain the passwords and /etc/shadow will. You don't need to rename the npasswd and nshadow files yourself.

Configuring Sysvinit

Create a new file /etc/inittab by running the following:

cat > /etc/inittab << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/inittab

id:3:initdefault:

si::sysinit:/etc/init.d/rcS

l0:0:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 0
l1:S1:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 6

ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now

su:S016:respawn:/sbin/sulogin

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty1 9600
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty2 9600
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty3 9600
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty4 9600
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty5 9600
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty tty6 9600

# End /etc/inittab
EOF

Creating the /var/run/utmp, /var/log/wtmp and /var/log/btmp files

Programs like login, shutdown, uptime and others want to read from and write to the /var/run/utmp /var/log/btmp and /var/log/wtmp. These files contain information about who is currently logged in. It also contains information on when the computer was last booted and shutdown and a record of the bad login attempts.

Create these files with their proper permissions by running the following commands:

touch /var/run/utmp /var/log/wtmp \
    /var/log/btmp /var/log/lastlog &&
chmod 644 /var/run/utmp /var/log/wtmp \
   /var/log/btmp /var/log/lastlog

Creating root password

Choose a password for user root and create it by running the following command:

passwd root