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- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
- <!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.3//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.3/docbookx.dtd" [
- <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../general.ent">
- %general-entities;
- ]>
- <sect1 id="ch-tools-hostreqs">
- <title>Host system requirements</title>
- <?dbhtml filename="hostreqs.html"?>
- <para>Due to the experimental nature of the current book, the host must be
- running at <emphasis>least</emphasis> a 2.6.2 kernel compiled with GCC-3.0 or
- higher. There are two main reasons for the high requirement. Firstly, we make
- use of the Native Posix Threading Library (NPTL) whose testsuite will segfault
- if the host's kernel hasn't been compiled with GCC-3.0 or later. Secondly, the
- 2.6.2 or later version of the kernel is required for the use of Udev. Udev
- creates devices dynamically by reading from the
- <systemitem class="filesystem">sysfs</systemitem> 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>In order to check that your host kernel meets the requirements outlined
- above, you can run the following command:</para>
- <screen><userinput>cat /proc/version</userinput></screen>
- <para>This will produce output similar to:</para>
- <blockquote><screen><computeroutput>Linux version 2.6.2 (user@host) (gcc version 3.4.0) #1 Tue Apr 20 21:22:18 GMT 2004</computeroutput></screen></blockquote>
- <para>If the results of the above command state that your host kernel wasn't
- compiled using a GCC-3.0 (or later) compiler, you will need to compile one
- yourself, and reboot your host to use the newly compiled kernel. Instructions
- for compiling the kernel and configuring the bootloader (assuming your host uses
- GRUB) are given in <xref linkend="chapter-bootable"/>.</para>
- </sect1>
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