Beginning this project

annihilan · 03-17-2010, 09:18 PM

I've decided to embark on the journey of constructing a LFS system, so I can finally shed the manacles of not knowing enough about Linux to use it well. I've finished the preface, and before I jump into the 3 prior knowledge sources, I want to ask some questions:

1. I have a Athlon 64 processor. Though I can obtain an Intel x86 processor, I would much rather do this on my main computer. Will using a x86_64 processor have any serious repercussions?

2. On page vii, "Host System Requirements" is that the list of packages that my LFS system should ultimately be equipped with, or am I misunderstanding? I am almost certain, even with my limited knowledge with Linux, that the packages listed in LFSB are outdated. Should I disregard the age of the packages and construct my LFS system from the outdated packages to ensure my results follow the book the first time?

3. I understand the basic workings of Linux itself, but I would feel secure if I knew as much as is rational before going into the LFS project. Naturally, I don't want to understand it entirely and then repeat my learning with LFS, but I do want to understand all of what the LFS talks about. Will the three sources LFSB mentions be enough?

4. Is this a good idea to learn Linux itself? I read the Slackbook when I test-ran Slackware, and it helped me to understand the quirks of Slackware, but it didn't really teach me much about Linux itself, even though the book was rather large and took me a good 3 hours to read, and test the commands in. Will reading these 3 sources and building a LFS system cause me to acquire a knowledge of Linux that will equip me to use Linux competently, or am I hopeless?

Thanks very much,
Annihilan

P.S. I realize that I have ambiguously used LFSB. I mean the book about LFS, thus Linux From Scratch Book. Sorry about that.

crts · 03-17-2010, 09:46 PM

Hi,

I do not exactly know what you mean by 'the 3 prior knowledge sources'. As for your questions:

1.) Nope, AFAIK 64bit CPUs do still understand 32 bit.

2.) You are misunderstanding. 'Host System Requirements' refers to the system that you will use to build your LFS. Best practice I always recommend is to use the LFS liveCD for that.

3.) As mentioned before, I don't know what you mean with the three sources. From what I can tell you will learn a lot while chasing down the errors you will inadvertently run into. The most confusing part will be the sed substitutions. Basically, it is just file editing, however, very confusing since you do not see what is being edited. So you might want to read up on sed, but it is not mandatory.

4.) If you want to build your own distro some day, then IMO building LFS is absolutly mandatory.

Hope this helps.

[EDIT]
Do you mean the prerequisites by the '3 sources'? I did not read them, however, this depends on your knowledge of linux. I you have not been working frequently with linux then it won't hurt to read them.

annihilan · 03-17-2010, 10:21 PM

Yes, I do mean the three prerequisites listed in the book. So, The 'Host System Requirements' are the base of the LFS system I'll make. If I'm understanding correctly, would these requirements be the bare minimum for Linux to work?

I will use the LiveCD, as I would expect it to have all of these prereqs., right?

crts · 03-17-2010, 10:45 PM

You still do not understand. If you are not a native english speaker, I suggest that you lookup the word 'host' in a dictionary. The 'Host System Requirements' are the bare minimum of the system that you will use to compile the 'Linux From Scratch' sources.

Anyway, if you use the liveCD you won't have to bother about that. Just do not use the sources of the liveCD unless you intend to build a LFS version 6.3. In any other case download them as recommended by the LFS-book.

annihilan · 03-17-2010, 11:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crts

You still do not understand. If you are not a native english speaker, I suggest that you lookup the word 'host' in a dictionary. The 'Host System Requirements' are the bare minimum of the system that you will use to compile the 'Linux From Scratch' sources.

Anyway, if you use the liveCD you won't have to bother about that. Just do not use the sources of the liveCD unless you intend to build a LFS version 6.3. In any other case download them as recommended by the LFS-book.

Good god! I just read over my last reply and I myself am abhorred at how non-native it sounds! I am a native. I'm reading the page myself, and it reads this way.

Code:

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.

Bash-2.05a (/bin/sh should be a symbolic or hard link to bash)

Binutils-2.12 (Versions greater than 2.20 are not recommended as they have not been tested)

Bison-1.875 (/usr/bin/yacc should be a link to bison or small script that executes bison)

Bzip2-1.0.2

Coreutils-5.0 (or Sh-Utils-2.0, Textutils-2.0, and Fileutils-4.1)

Diffutils-2.8

Findutils-4.1.20

Gawk-3.0 (/usr/bin/awk should be a link to gawk)

Gcc-3.0.1 (Versions greater than 4.4.3 are not recommended as they have not been tested)

Glibc-2.2.5 (Versions greater than 2.11.1 are not recommended as they have not been tested)

Grep-2.5

Gzip-1.2.4

Linux Kernel-2.6.18 (having been compiled with GCC-3.0 or greater)

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. This can be overridden if desired but at least a 2.6.0 kernel is required because thread-local storage support in Binutils will not be built and the Native POSIX Threading Library (NPTL) test suite will segfault if the host's kernel isn't at least a 2.6.0 version compiled with a 3.0 or later release of GCC.

If the host kernel is either earlier than 2.6.18, or it was not compiled using a GCC-3.0 (or later) compiler, you will need to replace the kernel with one adhering to the specifications. There are two ways you can go about this. First, see if your Linux vendor provides a 2.6.18 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

Make-3.79.1

Patch-2.5.4

Perl-5.6.0

Sed-3.0.2

Tar-1.14

Texinfo-4.8

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:

Nothing here screams sys reqs. It seems more to me like a list of packages.

After the last part of the code box, there's just a large section of script that I felt wasn't necessary to include.

Would using Windows to compile my LFS system bring up problems?

crts · 03-17-2010, 11:28 PM

Quote:

Good god! I just read over my last reply and I myself am abhorred at how non-native it sounds!

No biggie. I am sometimes also scratching my head after reading what I wrote.

annihilan · 03-17-2010, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crts

No biggie. I am sometimes also scratching my head after reading what I wrote.

Thanks. So, do I have to go hound out these packages listed in the Host Sys Reqs, or is there an already-established way for Windows users to compile their LFS systems?

annihilan · 03-17-2010, 11:41 PM

I feel like a giant idiot. I just read the entire page again, and managed to see a bit that I missed before "This version of the book requires an existing 32-bit Linux distribution to work."

Gah!!!

crts · 03-18-2010, 12:07 AM

Quote:

I just read the entire page again, and managed to see a bit that I missed before "This version of the book requires an existing 32-bit Linux distribution to work.

This is a very popular mistake.
READ THE BOOK!
Do not skip even a single word and do NOT deviate from it. You will see many posts complaining about a failed build. A lot of them could have been avoided by simply
READING THE BOOK!
I can't stress this point out enough.

annihilan · 03-18-2010, 03:11 AM

I imagine that I could use the LFS LiveCD to do this install with, right? I imagine the LiveCD has these packages. I'm not trying to sound stupid, I just don't know a ton about the LFS project.