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Beyond Linux From Scratch 1.0 Released 184

Posted by michael from the if-you-want-it-done-right dept.
An anonymous reader writes "DistroWatch reports about the 1.0 release of Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS), a subproject of Linux From Scratch: 'The BLFS Development team is proud to announce the release of BLFS 1.0. With this release, you can take your LFS 4.1 base beyond a development system. It can be a desktop, a firewall, a multimedia player/editor, an Apache web server or all of the above. You install only what you need. Your Distro. Your Rules. Enjoy.'" Choose the closest mirror...
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Beyond Linux From Scratch 1.0 Released More

Beyond Linux From Scratch 1.0 Released

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  • I think I'm missing something (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It can be a desktop, a firewall, a multimedia player/editor, an Apache web server or all of the above. You install only what you need. Your Distro. Your Rules.

    And that's different from LFS how?

  • How different from Gentoo? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattbee ( 17533 ) <matthew@bytemark.co.uk> on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:46AM (#5842457) Homepage
    I've recently been impressed by Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org] which lets you build your system from a BSD-style ports system: the whole thing held together by a bunch of Python scripts, but otherwise your build options, tools and so on are your own choice. If that's not Linux From Scratch I'm not sure what is :-)

    Having said that, I'm not always convinced that the way to a reliable server setup is to build everything yourself, but both LFS and Gentoo look good for the desktop.

    • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:55AM (#5842520)
      The difference is that with gentoo, you don't learn much because most things are automated. Yes, gentoo is probably a much better option for someone who just wants a customised linux distribution. LFS, though, is an outstanding educational tool, for one thing, and an invaluable resource if you want to produce a linux distribution which is radically different from the norm in any way.

      If you want to learn about how and why a linux distribution is put together, LFS is the way.

      • In Gentoo, do you have to rely on packages being created for you? That would make it useless right there. I have enough trouble finding RPMs for everything. And once I need to install something from scratch, I'm screwed. Header libraries from RPM-installed dependencies are missing, I have to re-install dependencies from scratch, RPM then breaks, and I'm in a situation much like Windows' "DLL Hell".

        I like my current Mandrake distro, and RPM works great as long as you consistently and always use RPM to insta

        • Re:Gentoo, Mandrake, Xandros and package managemen (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cide1 ( 126814 ) * on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @10:26AM (#5843326) Homepage
          There are no packages. You download the official Tarball or gzip and extract, compile with your options, and install. It is probably the absolutely most vanilla linux their is. I have to second that it is very educational. I have built LFS twice, once about 2 years ago, and once about 4 months ago. The first time a system boots where you understand every little daemon and startup script and program and it's usefullness is very rewarding. LFS is basically an instruction book on how to build all the differant programs and libraries in the right order. At first, the GNU tool chain is built statically from a differant distro, then a jailed root is used to rebuild everything dynamically with the static toolchain, so the system is self-hosted. The book explains everything very well, and only minimal knowledge is needed. I can't emphasize enough how educational it is on Linux and Unix in general.
        • urpm[i/e/q/f/whatever] is your friend.

          urpme postfix
          To satisfy dependencies, the following packages are going to be removed (9 MB):
          mutt-1.4.1i-1.1mdk
          postfix-2.0.6-1mdk

          Is this OK? (Y/n)

          There are graphical tools to manage thsi as well. Using straight RPM in Mandrake is like putting your nuts in a vice. There's no fucking point, and it's painful and stupid as all hell. :)

          Ok, there are times when using rpm is nice/required, but very very rarely since urpm(x) does dependency checking and automatic downloads
          • urpm[i/e/q/f/whatever] is your friend.

            Maybe it's your friend, but it's definitely my foe. I can't get urpmi to work.

            Example:

            % urpmi sendmail
            [...]==> RETR sendmail-8.12.7-3mdk.i586.rpm ... Installation failed, some files are missing.
            You may want to update your urpmi database.
            % urpmi.update -a
            urpmi database locked
            % kill 11724
            % urpmi.update -a
            urpmi database locked
            % kill -9 11724
            % urpmi.update -a
            ...retrieving failed: wget failed: exited with 0 or signal 2
            retrieve of source hdlist (or synthesis) failed
            no

            • I also had nothing but hell with urpmi. Essentially it would figure out that dependencies were needed and then not install stuff. Part of the fault was with broken standard rpms from mandrake from what I can tell (this was trying to upgrade Mandrake 8.0 to 8.1, using the rpms from cd, and the rpms wanted dependencies with slightly different names than what those packages were called by the 8.0 rpms).

              My boss swears by Red Carpet, and if you want RPM to work, I hear this is the way to go, but it seems ther

            • Yeah, there are times when it's pretty broken. I once upgraded a system from 8.0->9.0 using standard RPM, because urpmi broke on me. The newer versions (9.0+) haven't given me any problems though, so you might want to try and upgrade those first. of course, I think they have pretty intrusive version requirements, so you might have to upgrade everything anyway. Whee!

              use this website: http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/urpmiweb.php to find sources, I could never find an easier way to put them in, the urmpi
        • I'm at a loss here. I use SuSe Linux for my home system, which has to be the most brainless and user-friendly distribution available. With 8.2 it's pretty much 'three clicks and you're good to go', if you don't want to customize installation (which I do, heavily).

          However, I often install programs which have no RPM, just tarballs or gzipped tarballs. I don't have any problem doing this at all. If there are dependency conflicts they're usually pretty easy to work around; and if not a test or two will tel

        • Avoid package hell / parallel src installs (long!) (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @01:21PM (#5845311) Homepage
          I understand the RPM dependency hell very well. I recently did a full, clean RedHat 9 install. I then downloaded all the source RPMs from freshrpms, mostly for the multimedia capabilities. A quick 1-line bash script went through the entire batch and attempted to build them. Of course, some needed to be built and installed before others, so about 30% failed. I installed what did build, then repeated this process several more times. The mplayer package was the worst by far.

          Anyway, I don't understand how anyone has trouble installing packages from source. You just need to partition them appropriately. I wish distributions used a similar method so they could keep parallel versions of programs and libraries installed.

          Take openssh, for example:

          My typical build of openssh requires: zlib, openssl, and tcp_wrappers.

          I use a structure I call /mfs ("My File System"). I could use /usr/local for the same thing, but a customized directory will prevent collisions in /usr/local (the usual default prefix for configure scripts).

          Under /mfs I have directories "dist" (the tarballs), "src" (where I untar and build each package), and "pkg" where I install packages.

          So I start with zlib: "./configure --prefix=/mfs/pkg/zlib/1.1.4 ; make ; make test ; make install".

          I repeat with tcp_wrappers, openssl, and finally openssh. So now I have the most current versions:

          • /mfs/pkg/zlib/1.1.4
          • /mfs/pkg/tcp_wrappers/7.6
          • /mfs/pkg/openssl/0.9.7a
          • /mfs/pkg/openssh/3.6.1p1

          It should go without saying that I configure openssh to use the zlib, openssl, and wrappers libraries under /mfs, rather than the default system libraries. To the anal purists out there, I don't do this with all libraries (such as glibc), as it would drive me insane -- but it could theoretically be done.

          Here's where it gets elegant (or convoluted, depending on your tolerance for complexity). Under each package's directory, I use a symlink from the version I wish to use on a regular basis to "std".

          So, under /mfs/pkg/openssh, I may have directories 3.6.1p1, 3.0.1p1, and 2.9.9p1. Let's say that I want to use the latest sshd, so I run "cd /mfs/pkg/openssh ; ln -s 3.6.1p1 std". I then cd back up to /mfs. I then issue "lndir pkg/openssh/std". Actually, I have a script in /mfs that automatically removes all existing links under /mfs (avoiding the "pkg" dir, for obvious reasons) then re-linking every package with a "std" link. (Note I don't use a "std" link -- and thus don't lndir -- for libraries without runable binaries). If you don't know how lndir works, check it out (it's from the XFree86 distribution, though that might not be where it originated.).

          After running lndir (or my script), I now have /mfs/{bin,etc,var,lib,sbin}. I point my sshd startup script to always use /mfs/sbin/sshd, which is actually a link to /mfs/pkg/openssh/std/sbin/sshd. Since std is a symlink to the version I wish to use, I can change to a newer or older version by simply stopping sshd, changing the "std" link to point to another version, and restarting sshd.

          The beauty is that still have other versions available to me. Say the scp provided in 3.6.1p1 has an irritating bug (not the case, but just imagine). If my normal PATH has /mfs/bin, I'll get scp v3.6.1p1, but I can fall back to running /mfs/pkg/openssh/3.0.1p1/bin/scp.

          This technique is especially valuable in multi-user systems, where libraries and applications of different versions (think compilers, for example) have dedicated users who aren't ready to upgrade.

          Sorry for the really long post, but this idea works extremely well, IMHO, and I'm surprised that no distros use a similar technique for maintaining parallel versions. If RPM used this technique, you'd never run into the case where a new app needs a newer library version, but upgrading that library isn't possible since other major applications require that specific version (such as KDE needing a specific version of libpng and libcrypt).

      • I just wasn't patient enough to love Gentoo. Is compiling the whole world with my own switches a noticeable perf improvment (on a P4, not an Athlon)?

        It seems like it takes *hours* to do gentoo truly from scratch, if you cheat and use the prebuilt Gnome, OpenOffice, X why bother? Is the ports packages richer than say Debian?
      • depends. you can learn a lot from installing gentoo, especially the newbs. How many newbs actually know what is in /etc or how to get around on the command line? even for someone who knows a bit and has been using a mainstream distro, it can be pretty enlightening to at least do an install of Gentoo. This is an opinion, ymmv, but LFS seems like a lot of work for not a great amount of return when a distro like Gentoo exists. Granted I am sure its great for some projects, but for most desktop users LFS i
        • You can learn system configuration from any distribution; I haven't seen a distribution yet where I haven't had to venture into /etc at some point. But that's not the point. LFS isn't about learning about system administration, it's abvout learning how the system is put together: what does what, how the different parts of the system interrelate, why things are done the way they are. It's not intended as a working distribution like gentoo is, except for people with particular needs. LFS is a HOWTO for bu

          • I haven't seen a distribution yet where I haven't had to venture into /etc at some point.

            You could always use the LFS instructions and then make one... :) Oh what fun it would be to ride on that particular camel my friend :).

    • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:05AM (#5842611)
      It's actually very different from Gentoo. There's
      a whole host of choices you can make when building
      a package from source. Most of these are made for
      you in the ports setup.

      For instance, I may prefer *not* to have GNU
      gettext linked into everything. Or perhaps I want
      every installed program in /bin & /sbin to be
      statically linked so I can recover if my
      libraries somehow get hosed.

      Don't get me wrong, Gentoo is good for eeking
      performance out of your dist. But you don't
      get exposed to nearly as many design decisions
      as you do when building from scratch. I recommend
      that anyone serious about *nix admin try it at
      least once.

      On your last point, I wholeheartedly agree.

      When you upgrade/install a package from source
      on a production system, you're basically trusting
      that the creator of the package you're installing
      has thouroughly tested it. This usually is not
      the case. When you install a package from your
      vendor, they've at least done some basic testing.

    • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rasta Prefect ( 250915 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:06AM (#5842615)
      Linux from Scratch is actually quite a bit different from Gentoo. Gentoo provides you with executable code, you answer some questions and you have a new install, although the process takes longer and is more configurable than say, downloading pre-built packages. Linux from Scratch, last time I checked, provides you with a document. Thats it. No packages. First you create and format your partitions (by hand, using fdsck and mkfs). Then you create your filesystem, (mkdir /usr /var /etc.....), then compile statically linked versions of them minimum utilities needed to boot and compile, then reboot, recompile libraries and dynamically linked versions, then start compiling the rest of your system software. All by hand. And you have to create your own init scripts (although examples are provided).

      Why would you want to do this? It's an excellent way to learn about Linux. You learn exactly what components make up your system, get a pretty good idea how they interact, etc.

      Would you want to run this on a system you actually use? Probably not. It's a pain in the ass. Everything has to be compiled from scratch. No package system to minimize cruft build-up. Every security patch has to be downloaded and applied by hand. It's very time consuming.
      • So, in other words, you only use this if you want to claim to be l33ter than thou...anyone with an actual life uses Gentoo.

        Okay, I can see that.

        • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:29AM (#5842765)
          So, in other words, you only use this if you want to claim to be l33ter than thou...anyone with an actual life uses Gentoo.

          People with actual lives use Mandrake or Red Hat. People with l33t tendancies but an aversion to work use Gentoo. People who want to learn stuff use LFS.

          • Hear hear. Having been through LFS myself several times, I'm now a diehard RH fan. There's simply too much work involved in producing a slick, fully functional Linux disto for me to want to do it myself. Not that I *can't* do it, I just prefer to leave it to someone else. Even at the full price of a boxed set, my time is still worth more than that (to me!).

            Now, I agree completely that you don't know much about Linux et al until you can LFS it! I just don't want to live that way... :^)
          • People with actual lives use whatever version of Windows came on the computer they ordered from Dell. They don't have a clue how it works and they don't care as long as it came loaded with IE and Outlook Express.

            IT goons who are afraid they're going to lose thier NT admin job use RedHat or Mandrake to show the boss they're learning something new.

            People who have been using linux for years, know how stuff works, and aren't interested in learning it again use Debian.

            People that are used to BSD but crave the
            • People who have been using linux for years, know how stuff works, and aren't interested in learning it again use Debian.

              Until it finally annoys them for the last freakin time and they switch back to what they started with - Slackware.
          • " People with actual lives use Mandrake or Red Hat. People with l33t tendancies but an aversion to work use Gentoo. People who want to learn stuff use LFS."

            This is a blatant troll. Please tell me we have at leat a few moderators with some critical thinking skills. It makes no sense. "Linux is for people who want to work, but Linux is for lazy people who think they are l33t." is all it amounts to. If you modded this up, you're an idiot.

      • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:4, Informative)

        by horza ( 87255 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:45AM (#5842912) Homepage
        Gentoo is very simple to install. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. It teaches you a lot about Linux, not as much as LFS but enough to fascinate most techies without being *too* much like hard work.

        The real selling point of Gentoo is the portage system. Want to try a new application? Type "emerge appname", and go have a coffee whilst it fetches the sources, compiles it optimised for your system, and then configures and installs it all for you. Want to update every application on your computer to the newest version? Type "emerge -u world".

        It really is the most easy to maintain system I have ever used, and the only distro where installing and updating software is simpler than Windows. Whilst both Gentoo and LFS let you get a good look under the hood, the difference (as parent poster points out) in maintaining the systems is a gulf apart.

        Phillip.
        • Redhat is very easy to install and update software, just as Debian is very easy to install and update software. They both have versions of apt, which is a wonderful tool for install and updating software.
          For example, if you want to install mozilla:

          apt-get install mozilla ...is all that is needed. Anyway, yeah, installing and updating software for Linux is easier than doing so for Windows. Of course, then only applies as long as the software is packaged for your distro.

      • Gentoo provides you with executable code, you answer some questions and you have a new install, although the process takes longer and is more configurable than say, downloading pre-built packages. Linux from Scratch, last time I checked, provides you with a document. Thats it. No packages. First you create and format your partitions (by hand, using fdsck and mkfs). Then you create your filesystem, (mkdir /usr /var /etc.....)

        Um, did I install a different version of Gentoo to you? There was no install progr

        • That sounds bad. I should point out then that sourcemage has an excellent installer (pretty much teh best I have seen so far for experts, with options to shell out at any step in the process, for instance), and many excellent tools for configuring various things affecting the build process. It is also pretty easy to reconfigure things by hand if you prefer.

          I have not tried Gentoo. Actually since Sourceror was the first source-based distro I heard of (on /.) and Sourcemage is its decendant, I tried Source

          • Sorcerer was the first source-based distro I used, I heard of it from slashdot as well. Sourcemage is a fork. Kyle Sallee started sorcerer, and still maintains sorcerer. I still use sorcerer, never tried sourcemage (it's had over a year now forked, so it's prolly pretty different than sorcerer is now. Hell, sorcerer is pretty different than it was a few months ago. :)), and dislike Gentoo. I gave it a try like I said I eventually would, and just didn't like it.
    • Gentoo is a source-based distro built for power users. It's designed for maximum usability; most of the installation process is automated. (LiveCD, bootstrap.sh, stage tarballs... it's all there so you can get up and running in a hurry.)

      In contrast, Linux From Scratch is more designed for people who are interested in learning about the internals of a Linux system. There's no bootstrap.sh; you do everything by hand.

      If you're looking for a kickass source distro with a minimum of hassle, use Gentoo. If
    • Use FreeBSD ?
      It's a server... plus has the ports.

    • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:4, Informative)

      by rifter ( 147452 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @10:22AM (#5843290) Homepage

      All of the source based distributions are based on LFS. he whole point of LFS was to teach you how to make your own distribution. The problem was in order to teach people how to make a distribution, it was necessary to make a reference distribution (well, they referenced packages in the LFS-HOWTO, and ended up making the versions they used in making the HOWTO available, so by default this becomes a distro). It kind of grew from there. Gentoo/SourceMage/Sourcerer/etc take the LFS packages and add scripts that automate the download/compile and an installer, among other things.

      So in essence the main reason to go through the LFS and such is to learn more about how Linux works and how to make your own distro (or better understand why your distro does things the way they do). Sourcemage is my current favorite distribution, but I have ordered the new LFS book because I want to learn more. (the Howto, sources, and I think even the book are also available online).

    • Re:How different from Gentoo? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jdavidb ( 449077 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @11:11AM (#5843796) Homepage Journal

      Gentoo Linux is a distro. LFS is a "Make your own distro" HOWTO.

      Suppose there were no Gentoo, and you wanted to make your own distro with the design goals of Gentoo. You'd install some other distro like RedHat or Debian (or perhaps even a completely different OS; anyone ever bootstrap Linux from FreeDOS?) and slowly compile your own packages. You might choose to use rpm, dpkg, your own, or no packaging system. You'd have a bit of dependency hell while trying to figure out what order to compile everything in (and make sure that you didn't wind up with library dependencies on the original distro). Finally, you'd want to repeat the process from within your new distro; after all, you want it to be self-hosting rather than having to install RedHat each time you build a new version.

      Mastering LFS trains you to do all this. Does everyone need to know how to do this? No. Do we really need any new distros? Probably not. But people who have said, "Yes we do" have often brought us much better systems (like your beloved Gentoo). Plus, I found learning this material to be intensely interesting and right up my alley.

  • It is not a distro (Score:5, Informative)

    by AccUser ( 191555 ) <mhg@t a o se.co.uk> on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @08:57AM (#5842539) Homepage
    Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] [linuxfromscratch.org] is not a disto, but a set of instructions for building a GNU/Linux system from little more than an existing distro. The Beyond Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] [linuxfromscratch.org] project builds on this tradition, providing instructions for installing a number of other packages.

    Having said that, I would recommend that anyone serious about furthering their knowledge of Linux, and at least 750MB of free hard disk space should give it a go. I got into Linux back in '93, and knew quite a lot. Then I stumbled across Linux From Scratch (LFS) - I didn't realise how much I didn't know until finishing my first complete build.

    I now run an number of LFS-based systems at home and at work, and have never looked back.

    BTW, I am typing this on my Gentoo [gentoo.org] [gentoo.org], 1.4_rc4 build. :-)

  • LFS is great... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... to learn a lot about linux.

    Thx to all the guys (and girls) who contributed to LFS

    Grtz

  • predates gentoo (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    LFS has been around for a lot longer than Gentoo, and is a different approach. Rather than hold your hand and let all the scripts do the work, LFS tells you how to do it and gives you commands but also the options for how to do it. It is more a teach-yourself-linux distro, in that you learn about interdependencies, the order which certain packages must be installed, and what each package does. Every single file created on the system can be accounted for this way. LFS is just the base system, and BLFS is see

  • LFS is not Gentoo (Score:5, Informative)

    by jgardn ( 539054 ) <jgardn@alumni.washington.edu> on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:00AM (#5842569) Homepage Journal
    I've installed LFS before. LFS is just the instructions on how to install Linux from scratch (hence the name, Linux From Scratch). They supply a few pieces of software conveniently in one place so you don't have to spend hours finding it on your own and figuring out what version goes with what. It is just enough to get an OS that works, but not enough to do much except put more software on it.

    BLFS is a collection of instructions for installing various bits of popular software like Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, and more.

    I would like to point out that LFS is not Gentoo. LFS is literally Linux From Scratch. There are no installation scripts. There are no system management tools. There is no pretty interface, or simple instructions. It is a book, not a piece of software.

    You literally go through each piece of software and configure, compile, and install it. It is pretty cool because they describe what each piece of software is for, and you can see how one piece builds on another. You'll certainly never look at your system the same again, because you'll know what each bit does.

    I wouldn't suggest trying LFS unless you are interested in what exactly goes on under the hood, or you are building your own distro from scratch.
    • BLFS is a collection of instructions for installing various bits of popular software like Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, and more.

      Although I agree building these from scratch is a great learning (and waiting) experience, I do recommend things like Garnome [gnome.org] or Konstruct [kde.org] to build those. They worked a treat when I set up my LFS box (which is now a gentoo box again though).

      Of course, when I want to finish off a machine quickly, I just use FreeBSD and be done with it :)

  • The real benefit of LFS and Gentoo... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MaxBlue ( 538700 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:01AM (#5842585) Journal
    is that it is a good learning experiance.

    When I first started using Linux I did the usual, RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, blah blah blah. I ran the nice little installer, opened my desktop, ran a few programs, but I couldn't tell you what was where or how to effectively fix broke things.

    Then I tried Gentoo and now I feel like I have learned something about Linux. I found out where configuration files went because I had to. I learned how to compile the kernal because I had to. I learned how to install freaking network cards because I had to.

    I don't know if my machine is "leaner and meaner" but you know, I had a lot more fun doing building it.
    • I do not think that the good learning experience is the real benefit of LFS. I think it's the incentive. I installed my first LFS (a pre 3.0) for two reasons :
      - learning
      - there was no distro with what I needed !
      I have had a hard time with distros. I started with Linux on 1999 only, and for 2 years, I stumbled upon a lot of issues, only to see that they were solved already, but not in distros.
      So I installed my first LFS near the end of 2000. Yes, the worst thing about LFS is that it's time consuming. Actual

  • Great news! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QwkHyenA ( 207573 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:04AM (#5842604) Homepage
    I personally did the LFS (2.4 & 3.0 ver.) serveral times one summer for the experience and was extremely impressed with the documentation that walked you through the whole thing. Problem was, after I was done, the boxes were only really suitable for servers/firewalls/routers as I had no idea what was needed to install X Windows and other things like gnome & KDE (far more dependent on libraries and I had no clue where to start!) Now, I can hand tailor my own desktop client systems and take LFS to the next step! Thanks BLFS team!

    BTW, if you want to do the LFS part, I'd expect it to take a few weeks for a novice linux user (that's about what I averaged all three times.)

    • ...after I was done, the boxes were only really suitable for servers/firewalls/routers...

      I'm not totally convinced of this even... For example, why would you want a complete GCC compiler on a router or firewall ? At least with a RedHat or other distro, you can install a minimal system with iptables, no compiler or source code hanging around.

      moog
      • err... may i suggest `man rm` to you? (after you check out `tar --help` of course...) becuase that is effectively what redhat's package management is doing. you dont need gcc lying around if you dont use anything else! (ok, granted you probably need cpp around if you install X, as it uses the cpp to preprocess a lot of its runtime configs... but cpp is tiny). you can have a web/email server running in less than 20MB; can you do THAT with redhat? (more importantly... would you want to? disk space nowadays is

  • Very important to GNU/Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jocks ( 56885 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:05AM (#5842610) Homepage
    Linux from scratch is critical to the future of GNU/linux. It stops the corporates from stealing all the limelight (yes I mean SuSE, Redhat et al) and is the ultimate counter measure to the "Linux will fragment like UNIX did" naysayers.

    For all Linux users, building from scratch is like the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, it is something that you should do at least once in your life. I for one support this and will do my bit to ensure continuing freedom.
  • For labs/installations of many machines, or people who are dolts - um I mean newbies, I always recommend whatever the local flavour of Redhat/Suse/Mandrake/whatever.

    However, for a few choice machines, machines that you spend more time with then should be legally allowed, I always recommend slackware (for a non high bandwidth connection) or gentoo (with high bandwidth). The flexibility of these last too is very rewarding for anyone who wants an uber customized Linux box.

    And especially with slackware, you g

  • LFS Hints (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:10AM (#5842640)
    Beond Linux From Scratch is a great resource for expanding an LFS system, but don't forget about the LFS hints! http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org

    There is lots of valuable information in the form of hints that is not available in BLFS

    • Re:LFS Hints (Score:2, Interesting)

      by samhalliday ( 653858 )
      yes, but unfortunately a lot of people are concentrating on the BLFS book now and neglecting the the hints.

      i have been part of the LFS community for a few years now, just helping out on the lists and writing a few hints. The sad thing is not that BLFS exists, but that it has become more of a 'copy and paste the commands' textbook for building a system. the hints were more of a walkthrough which taught you what you were doing at each step and explained in some detail setups for larger programs. dont get me w

  • Has anyone compared this against other OS's? FreeBSD or OpenBSD or something else?

    (Windows doesn't count)

    A.
    • Compared what? The 'distro' of Linux someone put on their box by compiling it from scratch and deciding exactly what they wanted on that box? Your question makes no sense, as this is not a standard distribution. Everyone who does this is going to have a different outcome, so there's no basis for comparison.
      • > Compared what? The 'distro' of Linux someone put >on their box by compiling it from scratch and >deciding exactly what they wanted on that box? Your >question makes no sense, as this is not a standard >distribution.

        Actually, I would like to see how much difference optimization makes. I believe Slackware is compiled by default for i386 (feel free to correct me). If I recompile it for i686, and run it on my PII/266, will Mozilla load in a reasonable length of time?

  • Excellent News! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:19AM (#5842701)
    This is excellent news. Linux has enjoyed widespread publicity and use, but unfortunately, I think that most people who use Linux (and are new to "alternative" operating systems) are using Red Hat or one of the larger distros and don't really understand its ins-and-outs. For many people, this is perfectly acceptable because all they care about is reading their email and word processing anyway. For them, DOS 2.0 with some kind of quick GUI would be more than enough, let alone Windows XP LX SE 2010. Putting together your own distribution with step-by-step instructions will probably make anybody a better user, admin, developer, etc. And with a book to show you how to build a usable distro, you simply can't go wrong. I think I'm going to dig some junk out of my computer graveyard and try this one out tonight... it'll be a long night!

  • Coming soon... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:21AM (#5842709)
    Developments are already underway for the sequel, "Return to the Gates of LFS". "LFS 3D" is planned in Q4 2004. It is rumored "LFS: Vice City" will follow.
  • Install slackware as a base system, binutils and gcc and the other 'required stuff'.

    Recompile and reinstall your kernel, glibc, etc, etc..

    You get all the benefits of LFS with less headaches.

    Of course this is really only useful on an x86 box, but for those wanting a completely tweaked/unique linux box on their desktop, this is no doubt an easier route to take.

    Just getting linux to boot from scratch is the time consuming part, customizing it from there on in is the fun stuff (IMO). So skip the gruntwork

  • Please have mercy on my server guys =D (Score:3, Informative)

    by HIghoS ( 177655 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:23AM (#5842724) Homepage
    Sigh... /. editors, I love you for causing an absurd amount of trouble for me. I thank you for promoting our projects, I just wish you guys would have contacted us before linking to the main websites.

    We've had hosting issues ever since our main server was taken off the VA network last October, and since then things have been hosted on my personal server. Anyways, I just wanted to rant little, considering i'm at the other end of this slashdotting.. (not like it's my first time, more like 8th now ;p)

    At least use the mirrors guys.. please :)
    • It is a lot easier to use mirrors if you tell us what they are. As stands, to find a mirror, I would look it up on your site, which rather defeats the purpose.
    • Here's a tip... when you want someone to use mirrors for a site and you post on Slashdot saying so, POST THE LINKS TOO! That way we don't have to go the heavily shashdotted servers to find the list of mirrors. ;) I figure I'd toss these here in case your main server gets chewed up and spit out.

      Is this called karma whoring?

      http://beyond.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/intro.sht m l http://blfs.learnbyexample.com/blfs/intro.shtml http://beyond.lfs.130th.net/blfs/intro.shtml http://beyond.ca.linuxfromscrat

      • No because you get -1 DidNotPostLinksCorrectly :P

        Here [linuxfromscratch.org]
        are [learnbyexample.com]
        the [130th.net]
        mirrors [linuxfromscratch.org]
        for [linuxfromscratch.org]
        your [linuxfromscratch.org]
        enjoyment [linuxfromscratch.org],
        mein [linuxfromscratch.org]
        gut [rave.org]
        freund [netservice-neuss.de] :) [linuxfromscratch.org].

        Since /. purposefully screws up any url you post in the text, it helps people very much if you make real links. :P

        Also I find it ironic that VA would boot the LFS project off their servers and then /. the new server. That is kind of funny, in a perverse sort of way.

    • --well, that sucks. I promise to not link over-for awhile anyway, not today for sure.

      As a noob I've been looking at this or that way too really learn linux. Although I run it, I really don't know much about it.

      Perhaps ya'all should use that new bitorrent file distribution technique?

  • my kinda EULA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:27AM (#5842752)
    You install only what you need. Your Distro. Your Rules. Enjoy

  • Can we please shift PRIORITIES?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <{moc.sja} {ta} {sja}> on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:27AM (#5842754) Homepage Journal
    Instead of inventing YET ANOTHER WEB SERVER DISTRO (yes, I've been tempted too), can we please focus our efforts on the things that are wrong, broken and unusuable in EVERY DISTRO ON THE PLANET?

    Here are some suggestions for your distro-crafting efforts (no implied priorities):
    • There should be a way to say "fetch documentation for x" where x is a path name to any non-user file (and a few user files). man is the "right place" to do this, although if you wanted to take the time to re-engineer info so that it could take any program name or path name as an argument and find the right documentation AND had an initial dir.info that wasn't so geard toward "so you've installed EMACS and the GNU tools on an existing UNIX" then it might be a useable replacement for man (and info has the benefit of being a bit easier to convert into other forms like GUI-viewer, print and HTML-based representations because it's based on a more generalized markup language (texi) which is in turn based on a more powerful typesetter (\TeX). I'm a long time (15ish years) user of UNIX and UNIX-like systems, and I still want this!
    • A set of management tools for pam that runs the spectrum from adding a user to choosing a password hashing format to setting up an LDAP server based on an existing source (local files, an external database, etc). In the UNIX tradition (and for good and valid reasons that you can find by searching USENET, and I won't go into here) it should be command-line driven, but I would not complain at all about a GUI tool
    • A heirarchical installation model that allows for a /usr, /opt and /usr/local which are applied to all system paths and configurations in reverse order (e.g. default paths all start with /usr/local/bin) and which package maintainers have well defined conventions for using according to historical precident (/usr is for distribution-native packages, /opt is for third-party packages and /usr/local is for site-local items that are created and installed by the maintainer of the system). If I put GNOME3.0pre-alpha97 into my /etc/apt/sources or whatever the equivalent is, and install it, it should go into /opt so that un-installing it puts my system back where it started. If I hack my own copy of Perl and install it, it should go into /usr/local so that it's clear that this is my hacked version and not something installed from the official distribution.
    • sudo, ssh, and pam all have different views on what it means to authenticate. These views need to be merged at the distribution level into a single means of authenticating. This is a hairy problem, and may involve feeding back into all three projects, but if I don't have a password because I use a pam-based smart card and ssh-agent for remote key exchange then I can't use sudo (which requires a password). sudo is well within its rights to require periodic re-authentication, but that needs a mechansism (through support in it and the infrastructure of the os including pam and ssh) to feed that re-authentication request all the way back to my smart-card interface....
    So, if distributions are seeking to solve problems like these, great. If they're not, and they're just another way to customize Red Hat or Debian or install from source or put your files on an FTP server, then I have to ask if the authors of these tools are even scratching their own itch?!
    • READ THE ARTICLE!

      LFS is a set of instructions for creating a Linux installation to do, well, whatever. If you want these features, you can go ahead and implement them yourself, because that's what LFS is for.

    • then I have to ask if the authors of these tools are even scratching their own itch?

      I have to ask if you've been close enough to them to know exactly where their itches are. Ewww...

    • A bunch of folks got me wrong here, and I just want to clarify:

      There are two classes of people that one can address in relation to this article: the people who put LFS together (LFS is a documentation set on how to build a Linux system from scratch) and the people who use LFS to build their own systems.

      What I was trying to suggest (and apparently didn't do a good job of) was that that SECOND class of people would do much better for themselves by taking joe random distribution (let's say Red Hat, just beca
  • Yeah, I've looked through the LFS and BLFS online documentation, and I was curious... are there any directions out there on how to make it a usable/deployable distrobution?? I guess I could use g4u [feyrer.de] to copy the harddrive image to iso.. but i would rather not.
  • LFS looks like an interesting way to learn Linux from the ground up, but the .pdf says you have to do it from an existing Linux box. Is there a way to go through these steps from a Windows machine? (Cygwin or something like that maybe?)
    • Knoppix actually works quite well. You won't be able to do the lilo setup, but grub works just fine -- I'd highly reccomend it over trying to set things up with cygwin, which is sometimes a bit funky about gcc and glibc versions.
    • The best idea would probably be to install a temporary linux distribution. You'll need to repartition your drive any way. You could also look in the hints [linuxfromscratch.org] section - a couple of these might be helpful to you.
  • I'd like to point out the LFS and BLFS stuff works on PPC platforms as well.

    You have to grab the PPC kernel and one of a couple other utilities to work with the Mac's ROM, but if you're doing LFS that shouldn't be a problem.

    Lots of people are happy with OS X, but it runs poorly, if at all, on older PowerMacs. My 9600MP/200 (200MHz dual-proc Mac from back-in-the-day) would probably stand up and slap me for even putting the OS X 10.2 CD from my wife's iBook in its CD drive. But the LFS style system I built
  • Its a roll-your-own manual process.. Not a packaged 'distro'..

    Sure its *great* for learning the internals and doing it YOUR way.. but calling it a distro, with no install scripts, etc is a bit of a stretch..

  • LFS 4.1 Book (Score:2, Informative)

    by Namaseit ( 668654 )
    I just got my LFS 4.1 book in the mail a few days ago. I like it even better now that i have a hard copy of it. I just wish BLFS came in hardcopy....or maybe it does, i'll have to check.

  • Even if not using LFS/BLFS. (Score:3, Informative)

    by HuguesT ( 84078 ) on Wednesday April 30, 2003 @09:00PM (#5849823)
    There are huge benefits from this effort.

    First of all they tell you how to fetch, recompile and configure a whole lot of standard packages. Want to enhance your RH9 distribution with ALSA? head for these guys' documentation and you'll be home and dry in no time.

    Second of all this documentation covers a lot of things in a very tight format. Want to configure an anonymous CVS server? there you go.

    Finally this effort frees the whole community from the grips of the distribution vendors. If all goes to hell in a handbasket and your favourite distro turns its back on you, you can still survive, fix, patch and generally maintain what you've got, or start from scratch.

    Thanks B/LFS!

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