source: prologue/hostreqs.xml@ 0b37960

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
  "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd" [
  <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent">
  %general-entities;
]>

<sect1 id="pre-hostreqs">
  <?dbhtml filename="hostreqs.html"?>

  <title>Host System Requirements</title>

    <para>Your host system should have the following software with the
    minimum versions indicated. This should not be an issue for most
    modern Linux distributions. Also note that many distributions will
    place software headers into separate packages, often in the form of
    <quote>&lt;package-name&gt;-devel</quote> or
    <quote>&lt;package-name&gt;-dev</quote>. Be sure to install those if
    your distribution provides them.</para>

  <itemizedlist spacing="compact">

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Bash-2.05a</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Binutils-2.12</emphasis> (Versions
      greater than &binutils-version; are not recommended as they have
      not been tested)</para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Bzip2-1.0.2</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Coreutils-5.0</emphasis> (or Sh-Utils-2.0,
      Textutils-2.0, and Fileutils-4.1)</para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Diffutils-2.8</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Findutils-4.1.20</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Gawk-3.0</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Gcc-2.95.3</emphasis> (Versions
      greater than &gcc-version; are not recommended as they have not
      been tested)</para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Glibc-2.2.5</emphasis> (Versions
      greater than &glibc-version; are not recommended as they have
      not been tested)</para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Grep-2.5</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Gzip-1.2.4</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Linux Kernel-2.6.x</emphasis>
      (having been compiled with GCC-3.0 or greater)</para>

      <para>The reason for the kernel version requirement is that thread-local
      storage support in Binutils will not be built and the Native POSIX
      Threading Library (NPTL) test suite will segfault if the host's kernel
      isn't at least a 2.6.x version compiled with a 3.0 or later release of
      GCC.</para>

      <para>If the host kernel is either 2.6.x, or it was not compiled using
      a GCC-3.0 (or later) compiler, you will have to replace the kernel with
      one adhering to the specifications. There are two methods you can take
      to solve this. First, see if your Linux vendor provides a 2.6 kernel
      package. If so, you may wish to install it. If your vendor doesn't offer
      a 2.6 kernel package, or you would prefer not to install it, then you
      can compile a 2.6 kernel yourself. Instructions for compiling the kernel
      and configuring the boot loader (assuming the host uses GRUB) are located
      in <xref linkend="chapter-bootable"/>.</para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Make-3.79.1</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Patch-2.5.4</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Sed-3.0.2</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

    <listitem>
      <para><emphasis role="strong">Tar-1.14</emphasis></para>
    </listitem>

  </itemizedlist>

  <para>To see whether your host system has all the appropriate versions, run the following:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>cat &gt; version-check.sh &lt;&lt; "EOF"
<literal>#!/bin/bash

# Simple script to list version numbers of critical development tools

bash --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f2-4
echo -n "Binutils: "; ld --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f3-4
bzip2 --version 2&gt;&amp;1 &lt; /dev/null | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1,6-
echo -n "Coreutils: "; chown --version | head -n1 | cut -d")" -f2
diff --version | head -n1
find --version | head -n1
gawk --version | head -n1
gcc --version | head -n1
/lib/libc.so.6 | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1-7
grep --version | head -n1
gzip --version | head -n1
cat /proc/version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1-3,5-7
make --version | head -n1
patch --version | head -n1
sed --version | head -n1
tar --version | head -n1</literal>

EOF

bash version-check.sh</userinput></screen>

</sect1>