lfs-book/chapter05/bash-inst.xml

<sect2>
<title>Installation of Bash</title>

<para>Before you attempt to install Bash, you have to check to make sure
your distribution has the <filename>/usr/lib/libcurses.a</filename> and
<filename>/usr/lib/libncurses.a</filename> files. If your host
distribution is an LFS system, all files will be present if you followed
the instructions of the book version you read exactly.</para>

<para>If both of the files are missing, you have to install the ncurses 
development package. This package is often called something like 
<emphasis>ncurses-dev</emphasis>. If this package is already installed, 
or you just installed it, check for the two files again. Often the 
<filename>libcurses.a</filename> file is (still) missing. If so, then 
create <filename>libcurses.a</filename> as a symlink by running the 
following commands as user root:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>ln -s libncurses.a /usr/lib/libcurses.a</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Now we can continue. Install Bash by running the following 
commands:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>./configure --enable-static-link \
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;--prefix=$LFS/usr --bindir=$LFS/bin --with-curses &amp;&amp;
make &amp;&amp;
make install &amp;&amp;
ln -sf bash $LFS/bin/sh</userinput></screen></para>

<para>If the make install phase ends with something along the lines of</para>

<blockquote><screen>install-info: unknown option `--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir' 
usage: install-info [--version] [--help] [--debug] [--maxwidth=nnn] 
	[--section regexp title] [--infodir=xxx] [--align=nnn] 
	[--calign=nnn] [--quiet] [--menuentry=xxx]
	[--info-dir=xxx] 
	[--keep-old] [--description=xxx] [--test]
	[--remove] [--] filename 
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1 
make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/lfs/usr/src/bash-&bash-version;/doc' 
make: [install] Error 2 (ignored)</screen></blockquote>

<para>then that means that you are probably using Debian, and that you have an
old version of the texinfo package. This error is not severe by any means: the
info pages will be installed when we recompile bash dynamically in
chapter 6, so you can ignore it.</para>

<para>When we tested it with the latest Debian version, the last two
commands were executed because the install process didn't return with a
value larger than 0. But you would do good to check if you have the
<filename class="symlink">$LFS/bin/sh</filename> symlink on your LFS
partition. If not, run the last two commands manually now.</para>

</sect2>