1. INTRODUCTION::
The scripts in this directory implement an automation of the building
of a GNU/LInux system, as described in the Linux From Scratch book series.
The name of the project is jhalfs: in that name, "alfs" stands for
"automated linux from scratch", and the initials "jh" have been kept since
the original "jhalfs-0.2" code developed by Jeremy Huntwork.
The list of supported books can be found at
http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/wiki/SupportedBooks.
The documentation is split among various README.* files. Here is a list
of what is in which:
- README (this file): instructions to use the LFS book. This should be
enough if you just want to build a base system as per the LFS book. It is
also a required reading for all the other projects.
- README.CLFS: supplementary instructions to use the CLFS book series.
- README.BLFS: instructions to install an automated build infrastructure
for the BLFS book. There are two ways to do so: (i) install the
tools at the end of an LFS build (CLFS is not supported in that case), or
(ii) install the tools on an already running system. Both methods are
described in that file.
- README.CUSTOM: instructions to run custom commands either during the xLFS
build, at the end of a xLFS build. Note that you will not find
instructions on how to write those commands, but some examples are
available.
- README.PACKAGE_MANAGEMENT: instructions to use package management during
the build (only for LFS, patches welcome for CLFS...)
- README.HLFS: very short file explaining why you cannot use HLFS with the
present tool version.
Other sources of information are the context help in the menu interface,
and the xLFS books themselves.
2. PREREQUISITES::
As said elsewhere, it is strongly advised that you first build manually
a complete system before attempting to automate the build.
Of course the "Host System Requirements" should be fulfilled. The needed
supplementary packages are detailed at the bottom of the page:
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/download.html
3. INSTALLATION::
No installation is required. You may want to move the files in this
directory to a convenient location, and then follow the instructions below.
4. CONFIGURATION::
4.1. CONFIGURATION OF THE TOOLS:
There is no configuration of the tools themselves. The various
parameters for the build are set through a menu driven interface. See
the section RUNNING below for details.
4.2. PRELIMINARY TASKS:
This tool has no support at all for creating a partition and a mount
point for the built system. You should follow the book up to the section
"Mounting the new partition". Note that the default name for the
partition mount point is "/mnt/build_dir", instead of /mnt/{c,}lfs.
You can change that default to anything you'd like in the menu, so you
may name it /mnt/lfs, or whatever you like. We'll use the name
/mnt/build_dir in the sequel.
The tool can download the needed packages for you, or you may download
them yourself. The tool may optionally use a package archive directory
where the downloaded packages are stored. That directory name may be made
available to the tool in two ways: (i) export the SRC_ARCHIVE variable,
for example SRC_ARCHIVE=/usr/src, (ii) enter the name at the "Package
Archive Directory" menu prompt. Note that the user should have write
permission to that directory. If a needed package is found in that
directory, it is copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources, if not, it is
downloaded to that directory and copied to /mnt/build_dir/sources,
except if found in /mnt/build_dir/sources, in which case, it is just
copied to $SRC_ARCHIVE. If you want the tool to download packages and you
do not want to archive them, just unset SRC_ARCHIVE, and keep the
default entry for "Package Archive Directory". If you choose to download
the packages by yourself, you should download (or copy) them to
/mnt/build_dir/sources directly.
If you want to build the kernel as part of the automated build, select
"Build the kernel" in the menu. Then, a configuration file must be
provided. In order to do so, it is recommended to download the kernel
tarball, unpack it, run <make menuconfig>, configure the kernel as per
the book, and save the resulting .config file to a location where it can
be retrieved later on (a convenient location and name is
$SRC_ARCHIVE/config-<arch>-<kernel version>-<config details>).
Another file you may provide is the fstab file. To use it, select
"Use a custom fstab file" in the menu interface, and enter the name of
the file where asked. As for the kernel configuration, this file has to
be prepared before running the menu. A convenient location and name is
$SRC_ARCHIVE/fstablfs.
At a more advanced level, you may want to supply custom commands
to be run at the end of (C)LFS build. Scripts containing those commands
are located in the ./custom/config directory. Examples are given in
./custom/examples. A template is provided as ./custom/template. See
README.CUSTOM for more details.
5. RUNNING::
IMPORTANT::
You must be logged as a normal user with sudo privileges to run
the Makefile. Furthermore, you are supposed to have enough privilege
to become any user. If you are not bothered about security issues,
the entry for the user "jhalfs_user" in /etc/sudoers could be
jhalfs_user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
The command <make> will launch a menu based configuration program. The
underlying menu code was borrowed from BusyBox and slightly modified for
our use.
Help on parameter function is available from the on-line help. Please
make use of that feature: it may contain additional information not
duplicated in this file.
You should first choose which book and flavour you want to build. Note
that when you choose the BLFS book, the tool will just install the BLFS
tool to your system. You'll have to run that installed tool to build
packages in BLFS. See README.BLFS to know how. If you choose any other
book, you'll have to configure the settings and the build parameters
from the menu. Note that you may choose to install the blfs tools onto
the newly built system. It is not the same thing as choosing
the BLFS book in the menu, which will install the blfs tools on the
currently running system.
The "General Settings" menu is where the "Build Directory" name is to be
entered. Other entries in that menu select what the tool should do. The
"Run the Makefile" entry selects whether the tool will start the build
automatically after generating the needed files. The "Rebuild files" selects
whether to clean the build directory before doing anything else. To protect
against removing important files, this can only be done in an empty directory,
or a directory previously populated by the tool.
The "Build Settings" menu is where various options for the build can be
selected. Two options, "Use a custom fstab file" and "Build the kernel",
have been described above. "Do not use/display progress_bar", if set, will
prevent a progress bar to be displayed during the build. That may be useful
on slow machine. The other options should be self explanatory, using either
the online help or book reading.
The "Advanced Features" menu is for various maintenance tasks, like
testing the build instructions or reporting build statistics. One useful
option is "Optimization and parallelisation". It is not recommended to use
it for setting compiler optimization flags, although it is possible, but
if you select it, you'll be able to select the number of parallel `make'
jobs, which allows much faster builds on modern multicore CPUs.
Once you have set the parameters and saved the configuration, the script
is launched. Its aim is to extract instructions from the selected book
to generate scripts, and to generate a Makefile, which allows running
the scripts in the right order. The script verifies first that the host
can run itself and build the xLFS system, then validates the configuration
and lists the parameters. At this point, you may choose to quit or to
continue with the listed parameters. The script will then proceed to
generate the Makefile and the build scripts, optionally download
packages, and eventually verify the host prerequisite. If you have
selected "Run the makefile", the command <make> is launched in the
adequate directory, and the build begins. If not, you'll have to run
"make" manually, for example: "make -C /mnt/build_dir/jhalfs", if you
have used the default parameters (see the layout under $BUILDDIR in the
Q&A below).
NOTE::
If you run the jhalfs script directly the only function you can select
is to display the version number by running <./jhalfs -v>
6. LAYOUT::
/BLFS (see README.BLFS)
/CLFS/master.sh
/clfs.xsl
/CLFS2/master.sh
/clfs2.xsl
/CLFS3/master.sh
/clfs3.xsl
/HLFS/master.sh
/hlfs.xsl
/LFS/master.sh
/lfs.xsl
/common/common_functions
/makefile_functions
/packages.xsl
/urls.xsl
/create-sbu_du-report.sh
/progress_bar.sh
/blfs-tool-deps/9xx-*
/libs/func_*
/custom/template
/config/
/examples/*
/examples_CLFS-E/*
/extras/do_copy_files
/do_ica_prep
/do_ica_work
/optimize/opt_config
/opt_override
/optimize_functions
/opt_config.d/noOpt
/noSymbols
/O3pipe
/O3pipe_march
/defOpt_fPIC
/menu/*
README
README.BLFS
README.CLFS
README.HLFS
README.CUSTOM
TODO
LICENSE
Config.in
Makefile
jhalfs
blfs-tool
7. FAQ::
Q. "It doesn't work"
A. There are several reasons why it may be so. One possibility is the
following: jhalfs was designed to work against the development versions
of the LFS series of books. Consequently changes in a book sometimes
break older versions of jhalfs. Before you start pulling out your hair,
download the latest version of jhalfs to see if that solves your
problem. Note that it may be the other way around. If you want to build
an old version of the book, you may have to downgrade your jhalfs
version.
Q. "How do I specify the build location?"
A. The original LFS document worked against the well known location
/mnt/lfs. This script automates the build of all of the LFS series of
books and uses a generic location $BUILDDIR with a default value of
/mnt/build_dir. You may change this value to suit your needs.
The layout below $BUILDDIR is as follows.
$BUILDDIR/
jhalfs (Makefile, cmd scripts, logs, etc..)
sources (where packages reside)
tools (temporary bootstrap system)
cross-tools (temporary CLFS only)
...
FHS dir structure
...
blfs_root (files to use blfs-tool if selected to install it)
Q. "What is the function of the SRC_ARCHIVE variable?"
A. When jhalfs runs and packages download was selected, it creates a local
copy of the necessary packages in $BUILDDIR/sources by downloading the
files. If the variable SRC_ARCHIVE is defined the software will first
look in this location for the file and, if found, will copy it to
$BUILDDIR/sources.
If the files are not found in SRC_ARCHIVE _and_ you have write priv to
the directory any downloaded files will be mirrored there.
Q. "How do I set the SRC_ARCHIVE location?"
A. The best way to set the value of SRC_ARCHIVE is
export SRC_ARCHIVE=/wherever/you/store/downloaded/packages
or you can set the full path in the proper menu entry.
Q. "Why have 2 copies of the files?"
A. The package files must be visible during the chroot phase and this is a
simple and reliable method of doing so. This method also handles the
CLFS boot build method where the final build may be done on a separate
machine.
Q. "What is the function of "User account" and "Group account" menu
settings?"
A. If you are running jhalfs from a low or non-privileged account you may
not have the priv to create/delete the user needed to build temporary
tools.
These settings allow you to use your own user and group name to do those
build steps.
These variables are adjustable also when invoking make:
cd $BUILDDIR; make LUSER=myaccount LGROUP=mygroup
The only changes to your account will be the creation of a NEW .bashrc
after saving your original to .bashrc.XXX
Q. "When I try to build CLFS the Makefile fails at mid-point"
A. There could be numerous reasons for the failure but the most likely
reason is you are doing a cross-build using the 'chroot' method and the
target is not compatible with the host. If you choose to build using
the chroot method a test is performed at the end of the temptools
phase. If the test succeeds the build continues inside a chroot jail.
However if the test fails, it means the host and target are not
compatible an you should use the 'boot' method to create your target
code.
As an extreme example: You can build a sparc target on a x86 platform but
only the temptools phase. You must select the 'boot' method and not the
'chroot.' You must transfer the toolchain to a sparc platform, reboot the
sparc box and continue the build.
Of all the LFS series of books Cross-LFS requires the greatest
understanding of host/target hardware combination. Please read the book
carefully and don't skip the easy parts (there are none...)
Q. "How could I stop the build at a predefined chosen point?"
A. Launch the Makefile manually passing the last numbered target to be build
as the break point. For example:
make BREAKPOINT=84-bash
The build can be stopped also at the end of a top-level build phase by
calling directly the appropriate mk_* target. For example:
make mk_LUSER
See the Makefile to know the proper target names for that book build.
Authors:
George Boudreau
Manuel Canales Esparcia
Pierre Labastie