Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux From Scratch 7.1 Published

Posted by samzenpus on from the read-the-manual dept.

Thinkcloud writes "The Linux From Scratch (LFS) project has published version 7.1 of its manual for building a custom Linux installation. The new release of the step-by-step instructions is 345 pages long and uses more up-to-date components than previous versions – for example, the 3.2.6 Linux kernel and version 4.6.2 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). The update also includes fixes to bootscripts and corrections to the text, as well as updates to 20 packages."

12 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Just in case... by dyingtolive · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...I didn't want to see the girlfriend this weekend anyway.

    --
    Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
    1. Re:Just in case... by bigredradio · · Score: 4, Funny

      girlfriend

      LOL .. Good one.

      --
      Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
    2. Re:Just in case... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just because you're stalking her doesn't make her your girlfriend.

  2. Everyone should do a LFS install at least once by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    LFS is a great learning process that shows you exactly WHAT makes your Linux tick, and what packages depend on eachother. Anyone who uses Linux should do it at least once.

    And really, it is not that difficult.. if you follow the guide it is very unlikely you will have problems. And on modern hardware the compile is very fast.

    1. Re:Everyone should do a LFS install at least once by bjoast · · Score: 4, Informative

      I actually built my first LFS system on a netbook with an Intel Atom processor... It took a few days, but it was definitely worth it. You learn a lot.

    2. Re:Everyone should do a LFS install at least once by msobkow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree completely. I built an LFS system many years ago just to better understand the process a distribution goes through and to get a better grasp of the overall software components and build approaches used by Linux systems overall.

      It was a highly educational experience, but I'll stick with Debian-based systems that use APT updates, thank you very much. While educational to roll your own installation, rolling your own updates is incredibly time consuming.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  3. Re:bah plain old recipe by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I dare someone to try this without gcc compiler and gnu userland.

    fuck off, RMS.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  4. eBook formats? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's a PDF and an HTML version of their manual. With the advent of eBook readers like the Kindle, you think they'd release an eBook version. ePub is more open than Kindle's .mobi, but even an ePub version is easily convertible to .mobi.

    1. Re:eBook formats? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      We use the Docbook XML schema to markup the text of the book. There is support in the Docbook XSL stylesheets for producing ePub output and I tried it once (despite it requiring Ruby which I have no other use for), but the output wasn't particularly good looking. It probably just requires some tweaking to the stock stylesheets, but I didn't have the time to look into it any further than that. I know it's a cop-out, but patches welcome :-)

      Matt Burgess (LFS editor + part-time release manager)

  5. Re:I must be working too hard... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, scratch would appear to have support for a clock, and a NOR gate, so an x86 compatible scratch VM is only your sanity away...

  6. Re:no livecd by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Informative

    LFS can typically be built from any Linux host system - a Knoppix CD or a liveCD for any other distro would probably work.

    Or you could just check the host requirements.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  7. Re:no livecd by dkleinsc · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're coming as close as you can to building Linux on a bare machine without manually inputing machine code - the purpose of the host machine is to give you things like:
      * a running kernel
      * a shell
      * a C compiler
      * a linker
      * The standard C libraries
      * Some very basic text processing tools, like awk and sed
      * A way to download the source code
      * A way to set up a file system on the disk
    IIRC, Linus Torvalds used an existing Unix for most of this when he was first writing Linux.

    The first steps involve setting up a completely empty partition, then compiling the C library (glibc), linker (binutils), C compiler (gcc), a shell (bash), and a few other tools. Then you chroot onto the partition you just set up and work in your chroot jail, with the only dependency on the original distro being the running kernel. Once you get to the point of having a bootable system, you leave the original distro completely behind.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/