Glibc installation
Glibc will check for the /etc/ld.so.conf file
and abort with an error if the file is missing, so we must create it:
touch /etc/ld.so.conf
The documentation that comes with Glibc recommends to build the package
not in the source directory but in a separate, dedicated directory:
mkdir ../glibc-build &&
cd ../glibc-build
Next, prepare Glibc to be compiled:
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" \
../glibc-&glibc-version;/configure --prefix=/usr \
--disable-profile --enable-add-ons \
--libexecdir=/usr/bin \
--with-headers=/usr/include \
--mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info
The meaning of the configure options are:
--disable-profile: This disables the
building of the libraries with profiling information. Omit this option if you
plan to do profiling.
--enable-add-ons: This enables any
add-ons that we installed with Glibc, in our case Linuxthreads.
--libexecdir=/usr/bin: This will
cause the pt_chown program to be installed in the
/usr/bin directory.
During this stage you will see the following warning:
configure: warning:
*** These auxiliary programs are missing or too old: msgfmt
*** some features will be disabled.
*** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.
The missing msgfmt program (from the Gettext
package, which we'll install later) won't cause any problems. The
msgfmt is used to generate the binary translation
files that can make your system talk in a different language. Because these
translation files have already been generated for you, there is no need for
msgfmt. You'd only need the program if you change the
translation source files (the *.po files in the
po subdirectory), which
would require you to regenerate the binary files.
Because Glibc hasn't been installed yet, one of the tests that was
run by the configure script has failed. This test is supposed to test
gcc to determine whether a cross-compiler is installed.
However, Glibc needs to be already installed to run this test. Since the test
failed, the configure script assumes we have a cross-compiler. We override
that assumption by explicitly telling Glibc we're not cross-compiling.
Not doing this would have a couple of unintended side effects,
such as the timezone files not being installed.
echo "cross-compiling = no" > configparms
Continue with compiling the package:
make
We'll continue with installing the package. The Linuxthreads man
pages are not going to be installed at this point because it requires a
working Perl installation. We'll install Perl later on in this chapter,
and the man pages will be installed when Glibc is installed for the second
time at the end of this chapter.
make check
make install
The locales (used by Glibc to make your Linux system talk in a different
language) weren't installed when you ran the previous command, so we have to
do that ourselves now:
make localedata/install-locales
An alternative to running the previous command is to install only those
locales which you need or want. This can be achieved using the localedef
command. Information on this can be found in the INSTALL
file in the glibc-&glibc-version; tree.
To finish off the installation we'll reload Bash so it will use the new
libnss_* files. This will also get rid of the
I have no name! message in the command prompt:
exec /static/bin/bash --login