1. INTRODUCTION:: The scripts in this directory implement an automation of the building of a GNU/LInux system, as described in the Linux From Scratch book series. The name of the project is jhalfs: in that name, "alfs" stands for "automated linux from scratch", and the initials "jh" have been kept since the original "jhalfs-0.2" code developed by Jeremy Huntwork. The list of supported books can be found at http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/wiki/SupportedBooks. The documentation is split among various README.* files. Here is a list of what is in which: - README (this file): instructions to use the LFS book. This should be enough if you just want to build a base system as per the LFS book. It is also a required reading for all the other projects. - README.CLFS: supplementary instructions to use the CLFS book series. - README.BLFS: instructions to install an automated build infrastructure for the BLFS book. There are two ways to do so: (i) install the tools at the end of an LFS build (CLFS is not supported in that case), or (ii) install the tools on an already running system. Both methods are described in that file. - README.CUSTOM: instructions to run custom commands either during the xLFS build, at the end of a xLFS build. Note that you will not find instructions on how to write those commands, but some examples are available. - README.PACKAGE_MANAGEMENT: instructions to use package management during the build (only for LFS, patches welcome for CLFS...) - README.HLFS: very short file explaining why you cannot use HLFS with the present tool version. Other sources of information are the context help in the menu interface, and the xLFS books themselves. 2. PREREQUISITES:: As said elsewhere, it is strongly advised that you first build manually a complete system before attempting to automate the build. Of course the "Host System Requirements" should be fulfilled. The needed supplementary packages are detailed at the bottom of the page: https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/download.html. In short, you need wget, sudo, libxml2, libxslt, docbook-4.5-xml, and docbook-xsl-nons. 3. INSTALLATION:: No installation is required. You may want to move the files in this directory to a convenient location, and then follow the instructions below. 4. CONFIGURATION:: 4.1. CONFIGURATION OF THE TOOLS: There is no configuration of the tools themselves. The various parameters for the build are set through a menu driven interface. See the section RUNNING below for details. 4.2. PRELIMINARY TASKS: This tool has no support at all for creating a partition and a mount point for the built system. You should follow the book up to the section "Mounting the new partition". Note that the default name for the partition mount point is "/mnt/build_dir", instead of /mnt/{c,}lfs. You can change that default to anything you'd like in the menu, so you may name it /mnt/lfs, or whatever you like. We'll use the name /mnt/build_dir in the sequel. The tool can download the needed packages for you, or you may download them yourself. The tool may optionally use a package archive directory where the downloaded packages are stored. That directory name may be made available to the tool in two ways: (i) export the SRC_ARCHIVE variable, for example SRC_ARCHIVE=/usr/src, (ii) enter the name at the "Package Archive Directory" menu prompt. Note that the user should have write permission to that directory. If a needed package is found in that directory, it is copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources, if not, it is downloaded to that directory and copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources, except if found in /mnt/build_dir/sources, in which case, it is just copied to $SRC_ARCHIVE. If you want the tool to download packages and you do not want to archive them, just unset SRC_ARCHIVE, and keep the default entry for "Package Archive Directory". If you choose to download the packages by yourself, you should download (or copy) them to /mnt/build_dir/sources directly. If you want to build the kernel as part of the automated build, select "Build the kernel" in the menu. Then, a configuration file must be provided. In order to do so, it is recommended to download the kernel tarball, unpack it, run (or any other *config), configure the kernel as per the book, and save the resulting .config file to a location where it can be retrieved later on (a convenient location and name is $SRC_ARCHIVE/config---). Another file you may provide is the fstab file. To use it, select "Use a custom fstab file" in the menu interface, and enter the name of the file where asked. As for the kernel configuration, this file has to be prepared before running the menu. A convenient location and name is $SRC_ARCHIVE/fstablfs. At a more advanced level, you may want to supply custom commands to be run at the end of (C)LFS build. Scripts containing those commands are located in the ./custom/config directory. Examples are given in ./custom/examples. A template is provided as ./custom/template. See README.CUSTOM for more details. 5. RUNNING:: IMPORTANT:: You must be logged as a normal user with sudo privileges to run the Makefile. Furthermore, you are supposed to have enough privilege to become any user. If you are not bothered about security issues, the entry for the user "jhalfs_user" in /etc/sudoers could be jhalfs_user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL The command will launch a menu based configuration program. The underlying menu code was borrowed from BusyBox and slightly modified for our use. Help on parameter function is available from the on-line help. Please make use of that feature: it may contain additional information not duplicated in this file. You should first choose which book and flavour you want to build. Note that when you choose the BLFS book, the tool will just install the BLFS tool to your system. You'll have to run that installed tool to build packages in BLFS. See README.BLFS to know how. If you choose any other book, you'll have to configure the settings and the build parameters from the menu. Note that you may choose to install the blfs tools onto the newly built system. It is not the same thing as choosing the BLFS book in the menu, which will install the blfs tools on the currently running system. The "General Settings" menu is where the "Build Directory" name is to be entered. Other entries in that menu select what the tool should do. The "Run the Makefile" entry selects whether the tool will start the build automatically after generating the needed files. The "Rebuild files" selects whether to clean the build directory before doing anything else. To protect against removing important files, this can only be done in an empty directory, or a directory previously populated by the tool. The "Build Settings" menu is where various options for the build can be selected. Two options, "Use a custom fstab file" and "Build the kernel", have been described above. "Do not use/display progress_bar", if set, will prevent a progress bar to be displayed during the build. That may be useful on slow machine. The other options should be self explanatory, using either the online help or book reading. The "Advanced Features" menu is for various maintenance tasks, like testing the build instructions or reporting build statistics. One useful option is "Optimization and parallelisation". It is not recommended to use it for setting compiler optimization flags, although it is possible, but if you select it, you'll be able to select the number of parallel `make' jobs, which allows much faster builds on modern multicore CPUs. Once you have set the parameters and saved the configuration, the script is launched. Its aim is to extract instructions from the selected book to generate scripts, and to generate a Makefile, which allows running the scripts in the right order. The script verifies first that the host can run itself and build the xLFS system, then validates the configuration and lists the parameters. At this point, you may choose to quit or to continue with the listed parameters. The script will then proceed to generate the Makefile and the build scripts, optionally download packages, and eventually verify the host prerequisite. If you have selected "Run the makefile", the command is launched in the adequate directory, and the build begins. If not, you'll have to run "make" manually, for example: "make -C /mnt/build_dir/jhalfs", if you have used the default parameters (see the layout under $BUILDDIR in the Q&A below). NOTE:: If you run the jhalfs script directly the only function you can select is to display the version number by running <./jhalfs -v> 6. LAYOUT:: /BLFS (see README.BLFS) /CLFS/master.sh /clfs.xsl /CLFS2/master.sh /clfs2.xsl /CLFS3/master.sh /clfs3.xsl /HLFS/master.sh /hlfs.xsl /LFS/master.sh /lfs.xsl /common/common_functions /makefile_functions /packages.xsl /urls.xsl /create-sbu_du-report.sh /progress_bar.sh /blfs-tool-deps/9xx-* /libs/func_* /custom/template /config/ /examples/* /examples_CLFS-E/* /extras/do_copy_files /do_ica_prep /do_ica_work /optimize/opt_config /opt_override /optimize_functions /opt_config.d/noOpt /noSymbols /O3pipe /O3pipe_march /defOpt_fPIC /menu/* README README.BLFS README.CLFS README.HLFS README.CUSTOM TODO LICENSE Config.in Makefile jhalfs blfs-tool 7. FAQ:: Q. "It doesn't work" A. There are several reasons why it may be so. One possibility is the following: jhalfs was designed to work against the development versions of the LFS series of books. Consequently changes in a book sometimes break older versions of jhalfs. Before you start pulling out your hair, download the latest version of jhalfs to see if that solves your problem. Note that it may be the other way around. If you want to build an old version of the book, you may have to downgrade your jhalfs version. Q. "How do I specify the build location?" A. The original LFS document worked against the well known location /mnt/lfs. This script automates the build of all of the LFS series of books and uses a generic location $BUILDDIR with a default value of /mnt/build_dir. You may change this value to suit your needs. The layout below $BUILDDIR is as follows. $BUILDDIR/ jhalfs (Makefile, cmd scripts, logs, etc..) sources (where packages reside) tools (temporary bootstrap system) cross-tools (temporary CLFS only) ... FHS dir structure ... blfs_root (files to use blfs-tool if selected to install it) Q. "What is the function of the SRC_ARCHIVE variable?" A. When jhalfs runs and packages download was selected, it creates a local copy of the necessary packages in $BUILDDIR/sources by downloading the files. If the variable SRC_ARCHIVE is defined the software will first look in this location for the file and, if found, will copy it to $BUILDDIR/sources. If the files are not found in SRC_ARCHIVE _and_ you have write priv to the directory any downloaded files will be mirrored there. Q. "How do I set the SRC_ARCHIVE location?" A. The best way to set the value of SRC_ARCHIVE is export SRC_ARCHIVE=/wherever/you/store/downloaded/packages or you can set the full path in the proper menu entry. Q. "Why have 2 copies of the files?" A. The package files must be visible during the chroot phase and this is a simple and reliable method of doing so. This method also handles the CLFS boot build method where the final build may be done on a separate machine. Q. "What is the function of "User account" and "Group account" menu settings?" A. If you are running jhalfs from a low or non-privileged account you may not have the priv to create/delete the user needed to build temporary tools. These settings allow you to use your own user and group name to do those build steps. These variables are adjustable also when invoking make: cd $BUILDDIR; make LUSER=myaccount LGROUP=mygroup The only changes to your account will be the creation of a NEW .bashrc after saving your original to .bashrc.XXX Q. "When I try to build CLFS the Makefile fails at mid-point" A. There could be numerous reasons for the failure but the most likely reason is you are doing a cross-build using the 'chroot' method and the target is not compatible with the host. If you choose to build using the chroot method a test is performed at the end of the temptools phase. If the test succeeds the build continues inside a chroot jail. However if the test fails, it means the host and target are not compatible an you should use the 'boot' method to create your target code. As an extreme example: You can build a sparc target on a x86 platform but only the temptools phase. You must select the 'boot' method and not the 'chroot.' You must transfer the toolchain to a sparc platform, reboot the sparc box and continue the build. Of all the LFS series of books Cross-LFS requires the greatest understanding of host/target hardware combination. Please read the book carefully and don't skip the easy parts (there are none...) Q. "How could I stop the build at a predefined chosen point?" A. Launch the Makefile manually passing the last numbered target to be build as the break point. For example: make BREAKPOINT=84-bash The build can be stopped also at the end of a top-level build phase by calling directly the appropriate mk_* target. For example: make mk_LUSER See the Makefile to know the proper target names for that book build. Authors: George Boudreau Manuel Canales Esparcia Pierre Labastie