%general-entities; ]> First, remove the currently installed documentation to prevent them from ending up in the final system, and to save about 35 MB: rm -rf /usr/share/{info,man,doc}/* Second, the libtool .la files are only useful when linking with static libraries. They are unneeded and potentially harmful when using dynamic shared libraries, specially when using non-autotools build systems. While still on the target machine, remove those files now: find /usr/{lib,libexec} -name \*.la -delete The current system size is now about 3 GB, however the /tools directory is no longer needed. It uses about 1 GB of disk space. Delete it now: rm -rf /tools At this point the essential programs and libraries have been created and your current LFS system is in a good state. Your system can now be backed up for later reuse. In case of fatal failures in the subsequent chapters, it often turns out that removing everything and starting over (more carefully) is the best option to recover. Unfortunately, all the temporary files will be removed, too. To avoid spending extra time to redo something which has been built successfully, creating a backup of the current LFS system may prove useful. All the remaining steps in this section are optional. Nevertheless, as soon as you begin installing packages in , the temporary files will be overwritten. So it may be a good idea to do a backup of the current system as described below. If you are making a backup, mount the partition for backup: mount -v /dev/sda4 /mnt Make sure you have at least 1 GB free disk space (the source tarballs will be included in the backup archive) in the partition prepared for backup. Note that the instructions below specify the home directory of the host system's root user, which is typically found on the root filesystem. Replace $HOME by a directory of your choice if you do not want to have the backup stored in root's home directory. Create the backup archive by running the following command: Because the backup archive is compressed, it takes a relatively long time (over 10 minutes) even on a resonably fast system. cd / tar -cJpf /mnt/lfs-temp-tools-&version;.tar.xz . \ --exclude="dev/*" --exclude="proc/*" --exclude="sys/*" --exclude="run/*" --exclude="mnt/*" Unmount the partition containing the backup: umount /mnt If continuing to chapter 8, don't forget to reenter the chroot environment as explained in the Important box below. In case some mistakes have been made and you need to start over, you can use this backup to restore the system and save some recovery time. Since the sources are included in the backup archive as well, so they do not need to be downloaded again. Power off the target system and reconnect the disk containing LFS temporary system to the host for restoring the backup. It's necessary to avoid overwriting some binaries being used. Because the package providing shutdown command is not built yet, the system can't be shut down cleanly. Issue sync to ensure all filesystem writes cached in memory to be really written into the disk, then power off the system physically (for example, unplug the AC cord). Mount the LFS partition and the backup partition on the host system: mkdir -pv /mnt/lfs-{target,backup} mount -v -t ext4 /dev/sdx3 /mnt/lfs-target mount -v -t ext4 /dev/sdx4 /mnt/lfs-backup The following commands are extremely dangerous. If you run rm -rf ./* as the root user and you do not change to the lfs-target directory, it will destroy your entire host system. YOU ARE WARNED. cd /mnt/lfs-target rm -rf ./* tar -xpf /mnt/lfs-backup/lfs-temp-tools-&version;.tar.xz Again, unmount the two partitions, reconnect the device to the target machine, boot it and continue building the rest of system: umount /mnt/lfs-{target,backup} If you reboot your target machine and restart building using a restore, remount the virtual filesystems now as described in and re-enter the build environment (see ) before continuing.