LFS is a building of a Linux system from the ground up. One must start with a working system and a working compiler. My machine is an Acer M5641, quad-core, 4 gigs on memory. LFS is written to be built on a 32-bit machine, but there are notes along the way to let you know what you must do to build it on a 64-bit machine like mine.
The Acer was originally running Centos 5.4 before I started on LFS. I just used a separate partiton to build it on. I had trouble getting it to boot off this, so I eventually moved everything over to a small disk and its first partition so the Grub2 could easily recognize it. Once that was done, I was able to proceed.
A second problem I had was getting the USB ports on the Acer to work. Not surprised I've had numerous compatibility problems with the Acer. I originally purchased it to run Solaris on. The built in SATA controller gave me problems. Solaris didn't see the drives. I had other issues in trying to set up a ROCKs Cluster when using it as a frontend. So in the end I just put Centos on it.
To get around the USB port problem, I installed SSH and DHCP. I had a small wireless router that could dish out address, so I used it. I brought up another box running Fedora 12 and from it ssh'ed into the LFS box so that I could proceed with BLFS.
LFS consists of 59 packages, download in the form of tarballs. Any of the packages that require a patch has the necessary patch listed with the instructions to compile the package. Packages for LFS are compiled and installed in the order that they are needed. If the order is followed all the requirements to install a package will be in place. The building of LFS is a three pass operation. The first pass uses the existing system to build enough of an OS that a chrooted environment can be created. Once the first pass is created, the chroot takes place and then each previous package is recompiled so the it cab be linked the the libraries in the chrooted system. Additional packages are made during the second pass. Finally boot scripts are installed and the actual system is booted up. The last item is some housekeeping to make it a usable, bare bone system without a lot of the software you might not use in an off the shelf distributuion.
BLFS allows one to customize your system so that it can be a web server or maybe just a desktop linux machine.
The Acer was originally running Centos 5.4 before I started on LFS. I just used a separate partiton to build it on. I had trouble getting it to boot off this, so I eventually moved everything over to a small disk and its first partition so the Grub2 could easily recognize it. Once that was done, I was able to proceed.
A second problem I had was getting the USB ports on the Acer to work. Not surprised I've had numerous compatibility problems with the Acer. I originally purchased it to run Solaris on. The built in SATA controller gave me problems. Solaris didn't see the drives. I had other issues in trying to set up a ROCKs Cluster when using it as a frontend. So in the end I just put Centos on it.
To get around the USB port problem, I installed SSH and DHCP. I had a small wireless router that could dish out address, so I used it. I brought up another box running Fedora 12 and from it ssh'ed into the LFS box so that I could proceed with BLFS.
LFS consists of 59 packages, download in the form of tarballs. Any of the packages that require a patch has the necessary patch listed with the instructions to compile the package. Packages for LFS are compiled and installed in the order that they are needed. If the order is followed all the requirements to install a package will be in place. The building of LFS is a three pass operation. The first pass uses the existing system to build enough of an OS that a chrooted environment can be created. Once the first pass is created, the chroot takes place and then each previous package is recompiled so the it cab be linked the the libraries in the chrooted system. Additional packages are made during the second pass. Finally boot scripts are installed and the actual system is booted up. The last item is some housekeeping to make it a usable, bare bone system without a lot of the software you might not use in an off the shelf distributuion.
BLFS allows one to customize your system so that it can be a web server or maybe just a desktop linux machine.
