source: chapter03/introduction.xml@ 78db8f55

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<sect1 id="materials-introduction">
<title>Introduction</title>
<?dbhtml filename="introduction.html"?>

<para>Below is a list of packages that need to be download for building a
basic Linux system. The listed version numbers correspond to versions
of the software that are known to work, and this book is based on
their use. We highly recommend not using newer versions, as the build
commands for one version may not work with a newer version. The newest
package versions may also have problems that work-arounds have
not been developed for yet.</para>

<para>All the URLs, when possible, refer to the package's information
page at <ulink url="http://www.freshmeat.net/"/>. The Freshmeat pages
provide easy access to official download sites, as well as project
websites, mailing lists, FAQs, changelogs, and more.</para>

<para>Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download
location has changed since this book was published, Google (<ulink
url="http://www.google.com"/>) provides a useful search engine for
most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the
alternative means of downloading discussed at <ulink
url="&lfs-root;lfs/packages.html"/>.</para>

<para>Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stores somewhere
that is conveniently available throughout the entire build. A working
directory is also required to unpack the sources and build them.
<filename class="directory">$LFS/sources</filename> can be used both
as the place to store the tarballs and patches and as a working
directory. By using this directory, the required elements will be
located on the LFS partition and will be available during all stages
of the building process.</para>

<para>To create this directory, execute, as user
<emphasis>root</emphasis>, the following command before starting the
download session:</para>

<screen><userinput>mkdir $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>

<para>Make this directory writable (and sticky -- which basically
means that eventhough a user may have write permissions on a
directory, the sticky tag prevents users from removing files they do
not own as normally write permission on a directory means the owner of
the directory can remove all files in it, even if he does not own the
file) for your normal user -- as you won't do the downloading as root, we
guess:</para>

<screen><userinput>chmod a+wt $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>

</sect1>