source: README@ f756851

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11. INTRODUCTION::
2
3 The scripts in this directory implement an automation of the building
4 of a GNU/LInux system, as described in the Linux From Scratch book series.
5 The name of the project is jhalfs: in that name, "alfs" stands for
6 "automated linux from scratch", and the initials "jh" have been kept since
7 the original "jhalfs-0.2" code developed by Jeremy Huntwork.
8
9 The list of supported books can be found at
10 http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/wiki/SupportedBooks.
11
12 The documentation is split among various README.* files. Here is a list
13 of what is in which:
14 - README (this file): instructions to use the LFS book. This should be
15 enough if you just want to build a base system as per the LFS book. It is
16 also a required reading for all the other projects.
17 - README.CLFS: supplementary instructions to use the CLFS book series.
18 - README.BLFS: instructions to install an automated build infrastructure
19 for the BLFS book. There are two ways to do so: (i) install the
20 tools at the end of an LFS build (CLFS is not supported in that case), or
21 (ii) install the tools on an already running system. Both methods are
22 described in that file.
23 - README.CUSTOM: instructions to run custom commands either during the xLFS
24 build, at the end of a xLFS build. Note that you will not find
25 instructions on how to write those commands, but some examples are
26 available.
27 - README.PACKAGE_MANAGEMENT: instructions to use package management during
28 the build (only for LFS, patches welcome for CLFS...)
29 - README.HLFS: very short file explaining why you cannot use HLFS with the
30 present tool version.
31
32 Other sources of information are the context help in the menu interface,
33 and the xLFS books themselves.
34
352. PREREQUISITES::
36
37 As said elsewhere, it is strongly advised that you first build manually
38 a complete system before attempting to automate the build.
39
40 Of course the "Host System Requirements" should be fulfilled. The needed
41 supplementary packages are detailed at the bottom of the page:
42 http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/download.html
43
443. INSTALLATION::
45
46 No installation is required. You may want to move the files in this
47 directory to a convenient location, and then follow the instructions below.
48
494. CONFIGURATION::
50
51 4.1. CONFIGURATION OF THE TOOLS:
52 There is no configuration of the tools themselves. The various
53 parameters for the build are set through a menu driven interface. See
54 the section RUNNING below for details.
55
56 4.2. PRELIMINARY TASKS:
57 This tool has no support at all for creating a partition and a mount
58 point for the built system. You should follow the book up to the section
59 "Mounting the new partition". Note that the default name for the
60 partition mount point is "/mnt/build_dir", instead of /mnt/{c,}lfs.
61 You can change that default to anything you'd like in the menu, so you
62 may name it /mnt/lfs, or whatever you like. We'll use the name
63 /mnt/build_dir in the sequel.
64
65 The tool can download the needed packages for you, or you may download
66 them yourself. The tool may optionally use a package archive directory
67 where the downloaded packages are stored. That directory name may be made
68 available to the tool in two ways: (i) export the SRC_ARCHIVE variable,
69 for example SRC_ARCHIVE=/usr/src, (ii) enter the name at the "Package
70 Archive Directory" menu prompt. Note that the user should have write
71 permission to that directory. If a needed package is found in that
72 directory, it is copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources, if not, it is
73 downloaded to that directory and copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources,
74 except if found in /mnt/build_dir/sources, in which case, it is just
75 copied to $SRC_ARCHIVE. If you want the tool to download packages and you
76 do not want to archive them, just unset SRC_ARCHIVE, and keep the
77 default entry for "Package Archive Directory". If you choose to download
78 the packages by yourself, you should download (or copy) them to
79 /mnt/build_dir/sources directly.
80
81 If you want to build the kernel as part of the automated build, select
82 "Build the kernel" in the menu. Then, a configuration file must be
83 provided. In order to do so, it is recommended to download the kernel
84 tarball, unpack it, run <make menuconfig>, configure the kernel as per
85 the book, and save the resulting .config file to a location where it can
86 be retrieved later on (a convenient location and name is
87 $SRC_ARCHIVE/config-<arch>-<kernel version>-<config details>).
88
89 Another file you may provide is the fstab file. To use it, select
90 "Use a custom fstab file" in the menu interface, and enter the name of
91 the file where asked. As for the kernel configuration, this file has to
92 be prepared before running the menu. A convenient location and name is
93 $SRC_ARCHIVE/fstablfs.
94
95 At a more advanced level, you may want to supply custom commands
96 to be run at the end of (C)LFS build. Scripts containing those commands
97 are located in the ./custom/config directory. Examples are given in
98 ./custom/examples. A template is provided as ./custom/template. See
99 README.CUSTOM for more details.
100
1015. RUNNING::
102
103 IMPORTANT::
104 You must be logged as a normal user with sudo privileges to run
105 the Makefile. Furthermore, you are supposed to have enough privilege
106 to become any user. If you are not bothered about security issues,
107 the entry for the user "jhalfs_user" in /etc/sudoers could be
108 jhalfs_user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
109
110 The command <make> will launch a menu based configuration program. The
111 underlying menu code was borrowed from BusyBox and slightly modified for
112 our use.
113
114 Help on parameter function is available from the on-line help. Please
115 make use of that feature: it may contain additional information not
116 duplicated in this file.
117
118 You should first choose which book and flavour you want to build. Note
119 that when you choose the BLFS book, the tool will just install the BLFS
120 tool to your system. You'll have to run that installed tool to build
121 packages in BLFS. See README.BLFS to know how. If you choose any other
122 book, you'll have to configure the settings and the build parameters
123 from the menu. Note that you may choose to install the blfs tools onto
124 the newly built system. It is not the same thing as choosing
125 the BLFS book in the menu, which will install the blfs tools on the
126 currently running system.
127
128 The "General Settings" menu is where the "Build Directory" name is to be
129 entered. Other entries in that menu select what the tool should do. The
130 "Run the Makefile" entry selects whether the tool will start the build
131 automatically after generating the needed files. The "Rebuild files" selects
132 whether to clean the build directory before doing anything else. To protect
133 against removing important files, this can only be done in an empty directory,
134 or a directory previously populated by the tool.
135
136 The "Build Settings" menu is where various options for the build can be
137 selected. Two options, "Use a custom fstab file" and "Build the kernel",
138 have been described above. "Do not use/display progress_bar", if set, will
139 prevent a progress bar to be displayed during the build. That may be useful
140 on slow machine. The other options should be self explanatory, using either
141 the online help or book reading.
142
143 The "Advanced Features" menu is for various maintenance tasks, like
144 testing the build instructions or reporting build statistics. One useful
145 option is "Optimization and parallelisation". It is not recommended to use
146 it for setting compiler optimization flags, although it is possible, but
147 if you select it, you'll be able to select the number of parallel `make'
148 jobs, which allows much faster builds on modern multicore CPUs.
149
150 Once you have set the parameters and saved the configuration, the script
151 is launched. Its aim is to extract instructions from the selected book
152 to generate scripts, and to generate a Makefile, which allows running
153 the scripts in the right order. The script verifies first that the host
154 can run itself and build the xLFS system, then validates the configuration
155 and lists the parameters. At this point, you may choose to quit or to
156 continue with the listed parameters. The script will then proceed to
157 generate the Makefile and the build scripts, optionally download
158 packages, and eventually verify the host prerequisite. If you have
159 selected "Run the makefile", the command <make> is launched in the
160 adequate directory, and the build begins. If not, you'll have to run
161 "make" manually, for example: "make -C /mnt/build_dir/jhalfs", if you
162 have used the default parameters (see the layout under $BUILDDIR in the
163 Q&A below).
164
165 NOTE::
166 If you run the jhalfs script directly the only function you can select
167 is to display the version number by running <./jhalfs -v>
168
1696. LAYOUT::
170
171 /BLFS (see README.BLFS)
172
173 /CLFS/master.sh
174 /clfs.xsl
175
176 /CLFS2/master.sh
177 /clfs2.xsl
178
179 /CLFS3/master.sh
180 /clfs3.xsl
181
182 /HLFS/master.sh
183 /hlfs.xsl
184
185 /LFS/master.sh
186 /lfs.xsl
187
188 /common/common_functions
189 /makefile_functions
190 /packages.xsl
191 /urls.xsl
192 /create-sbu_du-report.sh
193 /progress_bar.sh
194 /blfs-tool-deps/9xx-*
195 /libs/func_*
196
197 /custom/template
198 /config/
199 /examples/*
200 /examples_CLFS-E/*
201
202 /extras/do_copy_files
203 /do_ica_prep
204 /do_ica_work
205
206 /optimize/opt_config
207 /opt_override
208 /optimize_functions
209 /opt_config.d/noOpt
210 /noSymbols
211 /O3pipe
212 /O3pipe_march
213 /defOpt_fPIC
214
215 /menu/*
216
217 README
218 README.BLFS
219 README.CLFS
220 README.HLFS
221 README.CUSTOM
222 TODO
223 LICENSE
224
225 Config.in
226 Makefile
227 jhalfs
228 blfs-tool
229
2307. FAQ::
231 Q. "It doesn't work"
232 A. There are several reasons why it may be so. One possibility is the
233 following: jhalfs was designed to work against the development versions
234 of the LFS series of books. Consequently changes in a book sometimes
235 break older versions of jhalfs. Before you start pulling out your hair,
236 download the latest version of jhalfs to see if that solves your
237 problem. Note that it may be the other way around. If you want to build
238 an old version of the book, you may have to downgrade your jhalfs
239 version.
240
241 Q. "How do I specify the build location?"
242 A. The original LFS document worked against the well known location
243 /mnt/lfs. This script automates the build of all of the LFS series of
244 books and uses a generic location $BUILDDIR with a default value of
245 /mnt/build_dir. You may change this value to suit your needs.
246
247 The layout below $BUILDDIR is as follows.
248 $BUILDDIR/
249 jhalfs (Makefile, cmd scripts, logs, etc..)
250 sources (where packages reside)
251 tools (temporary bootstrap system)
252 cross-tools (temporary CLFS only)
253 ...
254 FHS dir structure
255 ...
256 blfs_root (files to use blfs-tool if selected to install it)
257
258 Q. "What is the function of the SRC_ARCHIVE variable?"
259 A. When jhalfs runs and packages download was selected, it creates a local
260 copy of the necessary packages in $BUILDDIR/sources by downloading the
261 files. If the variable SRC_ARCHIVE is defined the software will first
262 look in this location for the file and, if found, will copy it to
263 $BUILDDIR/sources.
264 If the files are not found in SRC_ARCHIVE _and_ you have write priv to
265 the directory any downloaded files will be mirrored there.
266
267 Q. "How do I set the SRC_ARCHIVE location?"
268 A. The best way to set the value of SRC_ARCHIVE is
269
270 export SRC_ARCHIVE=/wherever/you/store/downloaded/packages
271
272 or you can set the full path in the proper menu entry.
273
274 Q. "Why have 2 copies of the files?"
275 A. The package files must be visible during the chroot phase and this is a
276 simple and reliable method of doing so. This method also handles the
277 CLFS boot build method where the final build may be done on a separate
278 machine.
279
280 Q. "What is the function of "User account" and "Group account" menu
281 settings?"
282 A. If you are running jhalfs from a low or non-privileged account you may
283 not have the priv to create/delete the user needed to build temporary
284 tools.
285 These settings allow you to use your own user and group name to do those
286 build steps.
287
288 These variables are adjustable also when invoking make:
289
290 cd $BUILDDIR; make LUSER=myaccount LGROUP=mygroup
291
292 The only changes to your account will be the creation of a NEW .bashrc
293 after saving your original to .bashrc.XXX
294
295 Q. "When I try to build CLFS the Makefile fails at mid-point"
296 A. There could be numerous reasons for the failure but the most likely
297 reason is you are doing a cross-build using the 'chroot' method and the
298 target is not compatible with the host. If you choose to build using
299 the chroot method a test is performed at the end of the temptools
300 phase. If the test succeeds the build continues inside a chroot jail.
301 However if the test fails, it means the host and target are not
302 compatible an you should use the 'boot' method to create your target
303 code.
304 As an extreme example: You can build a sparc target on a x86 platform but
305 only the temptools phase. You must select the 'boot' method and not the
306 'chroot.' You must transfer the toolchain to a sparc platform, reboot the
307 sparc box and continue the build.
308 Of all the LFS series of books Cross-LFS requires the greatest
309 understanding of host/target hardware combination. Please read the book
310 carefully and don't skip the easy parts (there are none...)
311
312 Q. "How could I stop the build at a predefined chosen point?"
313 A. Launch the Makefile manually passing the last numbered target to be build
314 as the break point. For example:
315
316 make BREAKPOINT=84-bash
317
318 The build can be stopped also at the end of a top-level build phase by
319 calling directly the appropriate mk_* target. For example:
320
321 make mk_LUSER
322
323 See the Makefile to know the proper target names for that book build.
324
325Authors:
326 George Boudreau
327 Manuel Canales Esparcia
328 Pierre Labastie
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