lfs-book/chapter06/glibc-inst.xml

<sect2>
<title>Installation of Glibc</title>

<para>Before starting to install glibc, you must cd into the
glibc-&glibc-version; directory and unpack glibc-linuxthreads inside
the glibc-&glibc-version; directory, not in /usr/src as you normally
would do.</para>

<para>This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default
optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Glibc is 
best left alone, so we recommend you unsetting CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and other
such variables/settings that would change the default optimization that
it comes with. Also, don't pass the --enable-kernel option to the configure
script. It's known to cause segmentation faults when other packages like
fileutils, make and tar are linked against it.</para>

<para>Basically, compiling Glibc in any other way than the book suggests
is putting your system at very high risk.</para>

<para>Install Glibc by running the following commands:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3 &amp;&amp;
touch /etc/ld.so.conf &amp;&amp;
cp malloc/Makefile malloc/Makefile.backup &amp;&amp;
sed 's%\$(PERL)%/usr/bin/perl%' malloc/Makefile.backup &gt; malloc/Makefile &amp;&amp;
cp login/Makefile login/Makefile.backup &amp;&amp;
sed 's/root/0/' login/Makefile.backup &gt; login/Makefile &amp;&amp;
mkdir ../glibc-build &amp;&amp;
cd ../glibc-build &amp;&amp;
../glibc-&glibc-version;/configure --prefix=/usr \
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;--enable-add-ons --libexecdir=/usr/bin &amp;&amp;
echo "cross-compiling = no" &gt; configparms &amp;&amp;
make &amp;&amp;
make install &amp;&amp;
make localedata/install-locales &amp;&amp;
exec /bin/bash --login</userinput></screen></para>

<para>An alternative to running <userinput>make
localedata/install-locales</userinput> is to only install those locales
which you need or want.  This can be achieved using the localedef
command.  Information on this can be found in the INSTALL
file in the glibc-&glibc-version; tree.</para>

<para>During the configure stage you will see the following warning:</para>

<blockquote><screen>configure: warning:
*** These auxiliary programs are missing or too old: msgfmt
*** some features will be disabled.
*** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.</screen></blockquote>

<para>The missing msgfmt (from the gettext package which we will install
later in this chapter) won't cause any problems. msgfmt is used to generate
the binary translation files that are used to make your system talk in a
different language. Because these translation files have already been
generated for you, there is no need for msgfmt. You'd only need msgfmt if
you change the translation source files (the <filename>*.po</filename>
files in the <filename class="directory">po</filename> subdirectory) which\
would require you to re-generate the binary files.</para>

</sect2>