lfs-book/chapter05/hostreqs.xml

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  <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent">
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<sect1 id="ch-tools-hostreqs">
<title>Host system requirements</title>
<?dbhtml filename="hostreqs.html"?>

<para>Due to the experimental nature of BE-LFS, the host must be running at
<emphasis>least</emphasis> a 2.6.2 kernel. The reasons for this high requirement
is the use of NPTL, but more importantly the use of udev. Udev creates devices
dynamically by reading from the sysfs file system. Only very recently has
support for this file system been implemented in most of the kernel drivers,
however. We must be sure that all the critical system devices get created
properly.</para>

<para>As for obtaining such a kernel, let's hope you distributor has provided
a 2.6 kernel package for you. If so, install it. If not, you'll have to compile
it yourself. If you're forced into a situation where you need to compile it
yourself, it is highly recommended that you compile your kernel in a monolithic
manner, as you probably don't want to go fiddling with your hosts module
utilities. Supposing you don't want to listen, open up the module-init-tools
tarball and check out the README on how to get module support for 2.6.</para>

</sect1>