source: README@ 625cb14

ablfs-more legacy trunk
Last change on this file since 625cb14 was b7583ec, checked in by Pierre Labastie <pierre@…>, 7 years ago

Removing the need to have write access to BUILDDIR:

  • remove an entry in Config.in (useless, since we impose sudo anyway)
  • Update README and CHEATSHEET
  • Property mode set to 100644
File size: 14.7 KB
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31. INTRODUCTION::
4
5 The scripts in this directory implement an automation of the building
6 of a GNU/LInux system, as described in the Linux From Scratch book series.
7 The name of the project is jhalfs: in that name, "alfs" stands for
8 "automated linux from scratch", and the initials "jh" have been kept since
9 the original "jhalfs-0.2" code developed by Jeremy Huntwork.
10
11 The list of supported books can be found at
12 http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/wiki/SupportedBooks.
13
14 The documentation is split among various README.* files. Here is a list
15 of what is in which:
16 - README (this file): instructions to use the LFS book. This should be
17 enough if you just want to build a base system as per the LFS book. It is
18 also a required reading for all the other projects.
19 - README.CLFS: supplementary instructions to use the CLFS book series.
20 - README.BLFS: instructions to install an automated build infrastructure
21 for the BLFS book. There are two ways to do so: (i) install the
22 tools at the end of an LFS build (CLFS is not supported in that case), or
23 (ii) install the tools on an already running system. Both methods are
24 described in that file.
25 - README.CUSTOM: instructions to run custom commands either during the xLFS
26 build, at the end of a xLFS build. Note that you will not find
27 instructions on how to write those commands, but some examples are
28 available.
29 - README.PACKAGE_MANAGEMENT: instructions to use package management during
30 the build (only for LFS, patches welcome for CLFS...)
31 - README.HLFS: very short file explaining why you cannot use HLFS with the
32 present tool version.
33
34 Other sources of information are the context help in the menu interface,
35 and the xLFS books themselves.
36
372. PREREQUISITES::
38
39 As said elsewhere, it is strongly advised that you first build manually
40 a complete system before attempting to automate the build.
41
42 Of course the "Host System Requirements" should be fulfilled. The needed
43 supplementary packages are detailed at the bottom of the page:
44 http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/download.html
45
463. INSTALLATION::
47
48 No installation is required. You may want to move the files in this
49 directory to a convenient location, and then follow the instructions below.
50
514. CONFIGURATION::
52
53 4.1. CONFIGURATION OF THE TOOLS:
54 There is no configuration of the tools themselves. The various
55 parameters for the build are set through a menu driven interface. See
56 the section RUNNING below for details.
57
58 4.2. PRELIMINARY TASKS:
59 This tool has no support at all for creating a partition and a mount
60 point for the built system. You should follow the book up to the section
61 "Mounting the new partition". Note that the default name for the
62 partition mount point is "/mnt/build_dir", instead of /mnt/{c,}lfs.
63 You can change that default to anything you'd like in the menu, so you
64 may name it /mnt/lfs, or whatever you like. We'll use the name
65 /mnt/build_dir in the sequel.
66
67 The tool can download the needed packages for you, or you may download
68 them yourself. The tool may optionally use a package archive directory
69 where the downloaded packages are stored. That directory name may be made
70 available to the tool in two ways: (i) export the SRC_ARCHIVE variable,
71 for example SRC_ARCHIVE=/usr/src, (ii) enter the name at the "Package
72 Archive Directory" menu prompt. Note that the user should have write
73 permission to that directory. If a needed package is found in that
74 directory, it is copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources, if not, it is
75 downloaded to that directory and copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources,
76 except if found in /mnt/build_dir/sources, in which case, it is just
77 copied to $SRC_ARCHIVE. If you want the tool to download packages and you
78 do not want to archive them, just unset SRC_ARCHIVE, and keep the
79 default entry for "Package Archive Directory". If you choose to download
80 the packages by yourself, you should download (or copy) them to
81 /mnt/build_dir/sources directly.
82
83 If you want to build the kernel as part of the automated build, select
84 "Build the kernel" in the menu. Then, a configuration file must be
85 provided. In order to do so, it is recommended to download the kernel
86 tarball, unpack it, run <make menuconfig>, configure the kernel as per
87 the book, and save the resulting .config file to a location where it can
88 be retrieved later on (a convenient location and name is
89 $SRC_ARCHIVE/config-<arch>-<kernel version>-<config details>).
90
91 Another file you may provide is the fstab file. To use it, select
92 "Use a custom fstab file" in the menu interface, and enter the name of
93 the file where asked. As for the kernel configuration, this file has to
94 be prepared before running the menu. A convenient location and name is
95 $SRC_ARCHIVE/fstablfs.
96
97 At a more advanced level, you may want to supply custom commands
98 to be run at the end of (C)LFS build. Scripts containing those commands
99 are located in the ./custom/config directory. Examples are given in
100 ./custom/examples. A template is provided as ./custom/template. See
101 README.CUSTOM for more details.
102
1035. RUNNING::
104
105 IMPORTANT::
106 You must be logged as a normal user with sudo privileges to run
107 the Makefile. Furthermore, you are supposed to have enough privilege
108 to become any user. If you are not bothered about security issues,
109 the entry for the user "jhalfs_user" in /etc/sudoers could be
110 jhalfs_user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
111
112 The command <make> will launch a menu based configuration program. The
113 underlying menu code was borrowed from BusyBox and slightly modified for
114 our use.
115
116 Help on parameter function is available from the on-line help. Please
117 make use of that feature: it may contain additional information not
118 duplicated in this file.
119
120 You should first choose which book and flavour you want to build. Note
121 that when you choose the BLFS book, the tool will just install the BLFS
122 tool to your system. You'll have to run that installed tool to build
123 packages in BLFS. See README.BLFS to know how. If you choose any other
124 book, you'll have to configure the settings and the build parameters
125 from the menu. Note that you may choose to install the blfs tools onto
126 the newly built system. It is not the same thing as choosing
127 the BLFS book in the menu, which will install the blfs tools on the
128 currently running system.
129
130 The "General Settings" menu is where the "Build Directory" name is to be
131 entered. Other entries in that menu select what the tool should do. The
132 "Run the Makefile" entry selects whether the tool will start the build
133 automatically after generating the needed files. The "Rebuild files" selects
134 whether to clean the build directory before doing anything else. To protect
135 against removing important files, this can only be done in an empty directory,
136 or a directory previously populated by the tool.
137
138 The "Build Settings" menu is where various options for the build can be
139 selected. Two options, "Use a custom fstab file" and "Build the kernel",
140 have been described above. "Do not use/display progress_bar", if set, will
141 prevent a progress bar to be displayed during the build. That may be useful
142 on slow machine. The other options should be self explanatory, using either
143 the online help or book reading.
144
145 The "Advanced Features" menu is for various maintenance tasks, like
146 testing the build instructions or reporting build statistics. One useful
147 option is "Optimization and parallelisation". It is not recommended to use
148 it for setting compiler optimization flags, although it is possible, but
149 if you select it, you'll be able to select the number of parallel `make'
150 jobs, which allows much faster builds on modern multicore CPUs.
151
152 Once you have set the parameters and saved the configuration, the script
153 is launched. Its aim is to extract instructions from the selected book
154 to generate scripts, and to generate a Makefile, which allows running
155 the scripts in the right order. The script verifies first that the host
156 can run itself and build the xLFS system, then validates the configuration
157 and lists the parameters. At this point, you may choose to quit or to
158 continue with the listed parameters. The script will then proceed to
159 generate the Makefile and the build scripts, optionally download
160 packages, and eventually verify the host prerequisite. If you have
161 selected "Run the makefile", the command <make> is launched in the
162 adequate directory, and the build begins. If not, you'll have to run
163 "make" manually, for example: "make -C /mnt/build_dir/jhalfs", if you
164 have used the default parameters (see the layout under $BUILDDIR in the
165 Q&A below).
166
167 NOTE::
168 If you run the jhalfs script directly the only function you can select
169 is to display the version number by running <./jhalfs -v>
170
1716. LAYOUT::
172
173 /BLFS (see README.BLFS)
174
175 /CLFS/master.sh
176 /clfs.xsl
177
178 /CLFS2/master.sh
179 /clfs2.xsl
180
181 /CLFS3/master.sh
182 /clfs3.xsl
183
184 /HLFS/master.sh
185 /hlfs.xsl
186
187 /LFS/master.sh
188 /lfs.xsl
189
190 /common/common_functions
191 /makefile_functions
192 /packages.xsl
193 /urls.xsl
194 /create-sbu_du-report.sh
195 /progress_bar.sh
196 /blfs-tool-deps/9xx-*
197 /libs/func_*
198
199 /custom/template
200 /config/
201 /examples/*
202 /examples_CLFS-E/*
203
204 /extras/do_copy_files
205 /do_ica_prep
206 /do_ica_work
207 /farce
208 /filelist
209
210 /optimize/opt_config
211 /opt_override
212 /optimize_functions
213 /opt_config.d/noOpt
214 /noSymbols
215 /O3pipe
216 /O3pipe_march
217 /defOpt_fPIC
218
219 /menu/*
220
221 README
222 README.BLFS
223 README.CLFS
224 README.HLFS
225 README.CUSTOM
226 TODO
227 LICENSE
228
229 Config.in
230 Makefile
231 jhalfs
232 blfs-tool
233
2347. FAQ::
235 Q. "It doesn't work"
236 A. There are several reasons why it may be so. One possibility is the
237 following: jhalfs was designed to work against the development versions
238 of the LFS series of books. Consequently changes in a book sometimes
239 break older versions of jhalfs. Before you start pulling out your hair,
240 download the latest version of jhalfs to see if that solves your
241 problem. Note that it may be the other way around. If you want to build
242 an old version of the book, you may have to downgrade your jhalfs
243 version.
244
245 Q. "How do I specify the build location?"
246 A. The original LFS document worked against the well known location
247 /mnt/lfs. This script automates the build of all of the LFS series of
248 books and uses a generic location $BUILDDIR with a default value of
249 /mnt/build_dir. You may change this value to suit your needs.
250
251 The layout below $BUILDDIR is as follows.
252 $BUILDDIR/
253 jhalfs (Makefile, cmd scripts, logs, etc..)
254 sources (where packages reside)
255 tools (temporary bootstrap system)
256 cross-tools (temporary CLFS only)
257 ...
258 FHS dir structure
259 ...
260 blfs_root (files to use blfs-tool if selected to install it)
261
262 Q. "What is the function of the SRC_ARCHIVE variable?"
263 A. When jhalfs runs and packages download was selected, it creates a local
264 copy of the necessary packages in $BUILDDIR/sources by downloading the
265 files. If the variable SRC_ARCHIVE is defined the software will first
266 look in this location for the file and, if found, will copy it to
267 $BUILDDIR/sources.
268 If the files are not found in SRC_ARCHIVE _and_ you have write priv to
269 the directory any downloaded files will be mirrored there.
270
271 Q. "How do I set the SRC_ARCHIVE location?"
272 A. The best way to set the value of SRC_ARCHIVE is
273
274 export SRC_ARCHIVE=/wherever/you/store/downloaded/packages
275
276 or you can set the full path in the proper menu entry.
277
278 Q. "Why have 2 copies of the files?"
279 A. The package files must be visible during the chroot phase and this is a
280 simple and reliable method of doing so. This method also handles the
281 CLFS boot build method where the final build may be done on a separate
282 machine.
283
284 Q. "What is the function of "User account" and "Group account" menu
285 settings?"
286 A. If you are running jhalfs from a low or non-privileged account you may
287 not have the priv to create/delete the user needed to build temporary
288 tools.
289 These settings allow you to use your own user and group name to do those
290 build steps.
291
292 These variables are adjustable also when invoking make:
293
294 cd $BUILDDIR; make LUSER=myaccount LGROUP=mygroup
295
296 The only changes to your account will be the creation of a NEW .bashrc
297 after saving your original to .bashrc.XXX
298
299 Q. "When I try to build CLFS the Makefile fails at mid-point"
300 A. There could be numerous reasons for the failure but the most likely
301 reason is you are doing a cross-build using the 'chroot' method and the
302 target is not compatible with the host. If you choose to build using
303 the chroot method a test is performed at the end of the temptools
304 phase. If the test succeeds the build continues inside a chroot jail.
305 However if the test fails, it means the host and target are not
306 compatible an you should use the 'boot' method to create your target
307 code.
308 As an extreme example: You can build a sparc target on a x86 platform but
309 only the temptools phase. You must select the 'boot' method and not the
310 'chroot.' You must transfer the toolchain to a sparc platform, reboot the
311 sparc box and continue the build.
312 Of all the LFS series of books Cross-LFS requires the greatest
313 understanding of host/target hardware combination. Please read the book
314 carefully and don't skip the easy parts (there are none...)
315
316 Q. "How could I stop the build at a predefined chosen point?"
317 A. Launch the Makefile manually passing the last numbered target to be build
318 as the break point. For example:
319
320 make BREAKPOINT=84-bash
321
322 The build can be stopped also at the end of a top-level build phase by
323 calling directly the appropriate mk_* target. For example:
324
325 make mk_LUSER
326
327 See the Makefile to know the proper target names for that book build.
328
329Authors:
330 George Boudreau
331 Manuel Canales Esparcia
332 Pierre Labastie
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