> I like the idea behind LFS and would like to explore all of the > options. LFS offers better control over the process.
LFS is an excellent project and I think it will suit your needs as a starting point; as Ken Moffat points out, you will have some further work to do on cross-platform development. I started by following the 6.4 book instructions manually, with one slight modification -- I used the "next to existing systems" hint, which includes a special "pre-init" program that does a chroot early in the boot process. Thus, after building LFS I could boot either my regular system or test the system built in /LFS (my LFS build location) without changing any disk partitions. [http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/lfs_next_to_existing_systems.txt] Be sure to read the errata list for the manual -- there are a few fixes. [http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/errata/stable/] I also wanted to add an application and make a live CD, so once I had the base LFS working I started looking at the LFS Live CD project. The build structure for the live CD has a Makefile that automatically fetches sources via "wget" and builds everything with a single "make", all the way to generating an .iso file. It seemed ideal for my purposes. Alas, that project is a little behind the times -- LFS itself was at 6.4, but the LFS Live CD project is at 6.3. I upgraded the packages I needed and hacked up the Makefile to add my application. Of course, now I'm behind too because 6.5 is about to come out. My particular interest was to build a demo of a "minimum system" including only components necessary to run the application (Pvote). So my build has an additional step that leaves out some libraries and most of /usr/bin. However, I left the regular "iso" target intact and after building my demo a "make iso" works to build the regular LFS. I did *not* bring all the additional BLFS components up to date because I was only aiming at a minimal system. My "build LFS" tar ball (that is, the updated makefiles, my notes, etc.) might be a helpful base for you. You can fetch it from http://msbit.com/osdv/osdvlfs.tgz Nowadays, because I'm building a live CD, I test by booting the .iso in a VMWare virtual machine. That works well. I have also gotten KGDB to work via a virtual serial port. I retested my build just last week and found that a couple of sourceforge links had changed (e2fsprogs and tcl), so I made a patch to fix that. After installing the tar ball, "cd /mnt/newlfs/newlfs-livecd; patch -p0 < lfs-sourceforge-patch" Also, see the note I posted last week: http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/lfs-support/2009-July/036151.html lfs-sourceforge-patch --------------------- diff -Naur packages/e2fsprogs/Makefile updated-packages/e2fsprogs/Makefile --- packages/e2fsprogs/Makefile 2009-04-14 21:57:02.000000000 -0700 +++ updated-packages/e2fsprogs/Makefile 2009-07-29 08:56:46.000000000 -0700 @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ DIR= $(NM)-$(VRS) FILE= $(DIR).tar.gz -URL-$(FILE)= http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/e2fsprogs/$(FILE) +URL-$(FILE)= http://softlayer.dl.sourceforge.net/project/e2fsprogs/e2fsprogs/$(VRS)/$(FILE) SHA-$(FILE)= d85f05b7bcef1adf8306a789f3ac0325c3c67e8d # Targets diff -Naur packages/tcl/Makefile updated-packages/tcl/Makefile --- packages/tcl/Makefile 2009-04-14 21:45:51.000000000 -0700 +++ updated-packages/tcl/Makefile 2009-07-29 08:56:18.000000000 -0700 @@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ DIR= $(NM)$(VRS) FILE= $(DIR)-src.tar.gz -URL-$(FILE)= http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/tcl/$(FILE) +URL-$(FILE)= http://softlayer.dl.sourceforge.net/project/tcl/Tcl/$(VRS)/$(FILE) SHA-$(FILE)= af0433feaa7be1da945a1f414c4b10485ffbd386 # Targets -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
