source: chapter05/hostreqs.xml@ 1375d26

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE section [
  <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent">
  %general-entities;
]>
<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/docbook-ng"
         xml:id="ch-tools-hostreqs">
<title>Host system requirements</title>
<?dbhtml filename="hostreqs.html"?>

<para>Due to the experimental nature of the current book, the host must be
running at <emphasis>least</emphasis> a 2.6.2 kernel compiled with GCC-3.0 or
higher. There are two main reasons for the high requirement.  Firstly, we make
use of the Native Posix Threading Library (NPTL) whose testsuite will segfault
if the host's kernel hasn't been compiled with GCC-3.0 or later.  Secondly, the
2.6.2 or later version of the kernel is required for the use of Udev. Udev
creates devices dynamically by reading from the
<systemitem class="filesystem">sysfs</systemitem> file system. Only very
recently has support for this file system been implemented in most of the kernel
drivers, however. We must be sure that all the critical system devices get
created properly.</para>

<para>In order to check that your host kernel meets the requirements outlined
above, you can run the following command:</para>

<screen><userinput>cat /proc/version</userinput></screen>

<para>This will produce output similar to:</para>

<blockquote><info/><screen><computeroutput>Linux version 2.6.2 (user@host) (gcc version 3.4.0) #1 Tue Apr 20 21:22:18 GMT 2004</computeroutput></screen></blockquote>

<para>If the results of the above command state that your host kernel wasn't
compiled using a GCC-3.0 (or later) compiler, you will need to compile one
yourself, and reboot your host to use the newly compiled kernel. Instructions
for compiling the kernel and configuring the bootloader (assuming your host uses
GRUB) are given in <xref linkend="chapter-bootable"/>.</para>

</section>