lfs-book/chapter03/introduction.xml

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<sect1 id="materials-introduction">
  <?dbhtml filename="introduction.html"?>

  <title>Introduction</title>

  <para>This chapter includes a list of packages that need to be downloaded for
  building a basic Linux system. The listed version numbers correspond to versions
  of the software that are known to work, and this book is based on their use. We
  highly recommend not using newer versions because the build commands for one
  version may not work with a newer version. The newest package versions may also
  have problems that require work-arounds. These work-arounds will be developed
  and stabilized in the development version of the book.</para>

  <para>Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download
  location has changed since this book was published, Google (<ulink
  url="http://www.google.com/"/>) provides a useful search engine for
  most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the
  alternative means of downloading discussed at <ulink
  url="&lfs-root;lfs/packages.html"/>.</para>

  <para>Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stored somewhere
  that is conveniently available throughout the entire build. A working
  directory is also required to unpack the sources and build them.
  <filename class="directory">$LFS/sources</filename> can be used both
  as the place to store the tarballs and patches and as a working
  directory. By using this directory, the required elements will be
  located on the LFS partition and will be available during all stages
  of the building process.</para>

  <para>To create this directory, execute, as user <systemitem
  class="username">root</systemitem>, the following command before starting
  the download session:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>mkdir -v $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>

  <para>Make this directory writable and sticky. <quote>Sticky</quote>
  means that even if multiple users have write permission on a
  directory, only the owner of a file can delete the file within a
  sticky directory. The following command will enable the write and
  sticky modes:</para>

<screen role="nodump"><userinput>chmod -v a+wt $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>

</sect1>