Copyright © 2001-2005 BLFS Development Team
Copyright © 2001-2005, BLFS Development Team
All rights reserved.
Descriptive text is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Computer instructions are licensed under the Academic Free License v. 2.1.
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
2005-08-14
| Revision History | |
|---|---|
| Revision 6.1 | 2005-08-14 |
| Fifth Release | |
| Revision 6.0 | 2005-04-02 |
| Fourth release | |
| Revision 5.1 | 2004-06-05 |
| Third release | |
| Revision 5.0 | 2003-11-06 |
| Second release | |
| Revision 1.0 | 2003-04-25 |
| First release | |
Abstract
This book follows on from the Linux From Scratch book. It introduces and guides the reader through additions to the system including networking, graphical interfaces, sound support, and printer and scanner support.
Having helped out with Linux From Scratch for a short time, I noticed that we were getting many queries as to how to do things beyond the base LFS system. At the time, the only assistance specifically offered relating to LFS were the LFS hints (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints). Most of the LFS hints are extremely good and well written but I (and others) could still see a need for more comprehensive help to go Beyond LFS - hence BLFS.
BLFS aims to be more than the LFS-hints converted to XML although much of our work is based around the hints and indeed some authors write both hints and the relevant BLFS sections. We hope that we can provide you with enough information to not only manage to build your system up to what you want, whether it be a web server or a multimedia desktop system, but also that you will learn a lot about system configuration as you go.
Thanks as ever go to everyone in the LFS/BLFS community; especially those who have contributed instructions, written text, answered questions and generally shouted when things were wrong!
Finally, we encourage you to become involved in the community; ask questions on the mailing list or news gateway and join in the fun on #lfs at irc.linuxfromscratch.org. You can find more details about all of these in the Introduction section of the book.
Enjoy using BLFS.
Mark Hymers
markh <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (July 2001–March 2003)
I still remember how I found the BLFS project and started using the instructions that were completed at the time. I could not believe how wonderful it was to get an application up and running very quickly, with explanations as to why things were done a certain way. Unfortunately, for me, it wasn't long before I was opening applications that had nothing more than "To be done" on the page. I did what most would do, I waited for someone else to do it. It wasn't too long before I am looking through Bugzilla for something easy to do. As with any learning experience, the definition of what was easy kept changing.
We still encourage you to become involved as BLFS is never really finished. Contributing or just using, we hope you enjoy your BLFS experience.
Larry Lawrence
larry <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (March 2003–June 2004)
The BLFS project is a natural progression of LFS. Together, these projects provide a unique resource for the Open Source Community. They take the mystery out of the process of building a complete, functional software system from the source code contributed by many talented individuals throughout the world. They truly allow users to implement the slogan "Your distro, your rules."
Our goal is to continue to provide the best resource available that shows you how to integrate many significant Open Source applications. Since these applications are constantly updated and new applications are developed, this book will never be complete. Additionally, there is always room for improvement in explaining the nuances of how to install the different packages. To make these improvements, we need your feedback. I encourage you to participate on the different mailing lists, news groups, and IRC channels to help meet these goals.
Bruce Dubbs
bdubbs <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (June 2004–Present)
Version 6.0 is a major milestone in the evolution of BLFS. This version provides installation instructions for 357 packages and an additional 21 sections covering configuration and customization of different aspects of your system.
Changes and upgrades to the individual packages are detailed in the Change Log. There you will see literally hundreds of changes made since the last edition. In this change log, one name that you will see over and over is Randy McMurchy. Without his efforts this release would not have been possible. I want to take this opportunity to thank him for the hundreds of hours he has worked to produce this release. I also want to thank the other editors, both past and present, whose insight and effort have made this current version possible. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank our resident XSL wizard, Manuel Canales Esparcia, whose ability to format a complicated document such as BLFS is truly amazing.
There are two other areas of change that are worthy of note. First, the license that BLFS is released under has changed significantly. In fact, it is now released under two licenses. The first license, the Creative Commons License, covers the descriptive text in the book. The second, the Academic Free License v. 2.1, covers the instructions actually used to build and install the packages. These licenses, along with the book itself, represent our ongoing commitment to open and free software.
The final area of change is the addition of an Index. This section of the book is still incomplete, but as the book continues to be developed, will become an excellent resource for finding programs, libraries, configuration files, and references to kernel configuration requirements. I hope you find it useful.
Bruce Dubbs
March 17, 2005
Version 6.1 is an incremental update of BLFS. This version continues the tradition of providing an extensive set of instructions for extending a basic Linux From Scratch system. The instructions in this version of BLFS are based on the LFS 6.1 Book. As usual, the list of packages that have been upgraded or added are in the Change Log.
One major accomplishment in this version of the book is the completion of the Index. This section is now a relatively complete (but not perfect) reference for the components of the various packages in the book.
In any task as large and complex as this book, there are bound to be errors. The editors of the book are dedicated to keeping the book up to date. We appreciate any feedback in helping us to make the book as accurate as possible. The best place to provide comments is via the mailing list at mailto:blfs-dev@linuxfromscratch.org.
Enjoy!
Bruce Dubbs
August 1, 2005
This book is mainly aimed at those who have built a system based on the LFS book. It will also be useful for those who are using other distributions, but for one reason or another want to manually build software and are in need of some assistance. BLFS can be used to create a range of diverse systems and so the target audience is probably nearly as wide as that of the LFS book. If you found LFS useful, you should also like this!
Since Release 5.0, the BLFS book version matches the LFS book version. This book may be incompatible with a previous or latter release of the LFS book.
This book is divided into the following parts.
This part contains information which is essential to the rest of the book.
Here we introduce basic configuration and security issues. We also discuss a range of editors, file systems, and shells which aren't covered in the main LFS book.
In this section we cover libraries which are often needed by the rest of the book as well as system utilities. Information on Programming (including recompiling GCC to support its full range of languages) concludes this part.
Here we cover how to connect to a network when you aren't using the simple static IP setup given in the main LFS book.
Networking libraries and command-line networking tools make up the bulk of this part.
Here we deal with setting up mail and other servers (such as SSH, Apache, etc.).
This part explains how to set up a basic X Window System installation along with some generic X libraries and Window managers.
For those who want to use the K Desktop Environment or some parts of it, this part covers it.
GNOME is the main alternative to KDE in the Desktop Environment arena and we cover both GNOME-1.4 and GNOME-2.10 here.
Office programs and graphical web browsers are important to most people. They, along with some generic X software can be found in this part of the book.
Here we cover setting multimedia libraries and drivers along with some audio, video and CD-writing programs.
The PST part of the book covers document handling with applications like Ghostscript, CUPS and DocBook to installing TeX.
The Appendices cover information which doesn't belong in the main book; they are mainly there as a reference.
The Beyond Linux From Scratch book is designed to carry on from where the LFS book leaves off. But unlike the LFS book, it isn't designed to be followed straight through. Reading the Which sections of the book? part of this chapter should help guide you through the book.
Please read most of this part of the book carefully as it explains quite a few of the conventions we use throughout the book.
We would like to thank the following people and organizations for their contributions toward the BLFS and LFS projects:
All those people listed on the Credits page for submitting patches, instructions and corrections to the book. The former editor would especially like to thank Bruce, Larry and Billy for their enormous inputs to the project.
Mark Stone <mstone <at> linux.com> for donating the linuxfromscratch.org servers.
Gerard Beekmans <gerard <at> linuxfromscratch.org> for starting and writing the vast majority of the LFS project.
Jesse Tie-Ten-Quee <higho <at> @linuxfromscratch.org> for answering many questions on IRC, having a great deal of patience and for not killing the former editor for the joke in the original BLFS announcement!
DREAMWVR.COM for their ongoing sponsorship by donating various resources to the LFS and related sub projects.
Robert Briggs for donating the linuxfromscratch.org and linuxfromscratch.com domain names.
Frank Skettino <bkenoah <at> oswd.org> at OSWD for coming up the initial design of the LFS and BLFS websites.
Garrett LeSage <garrett <at> linux.com> for creating the LFS banner
Jeff Bauman (former co-editor of the book) for his assistance with getting BLFS off the ground.
Countless other people on the various LFS and BLFS mailing lists who are making this book happen by giving their suggestions, testing the book and submitting bug reports.
Many people have contributed both directly and indirectly to BLFS. This page lists all of those we can think of. We may well have left people out and if you feel this is the case, drop us line. Many thanks to all of the LFS community for their assistance with this project. If you are in the list and wish to have your email address included, again please drop us a line to bdubbs@linuxfromscratch.org and we'll be happy to add it. We don't include email addresses by default so if you want it included, please state so when you contact us.
Editor: Bruce Dubbs <bdubbs@linuxfromscratch.org>
Co-Editors: Randy McMurchy, Larry Lawrence, Igor Zivkovic, DJ Lucas, Tushar Teredesai, David Jensen, Manuel Canales Esparcia, and Richard Downing.
Chapter 01. Based on the LFS introductory text by Gerard Beekmans, modified by Mark Hymers for BLFS.
Chapter 02: The /usr versus /usr/local debate: Andrew McMurry.
Chapter 02: Going beyond BLFS: Tushar Teredesai.
Chapter 02: Package Management: Tushar Teredesai.
Chapter 03: /etc/inputrc: Chris Lynn.
Chapter 03: Customizing your logon & vimrc: Mark Hymers.
Chapter 03: /etc/shells: Igor Zivkovic.
Chapter 03: Random number script Larry Lawrence.
Chapter 03: Creating a Custom Boot Device Bruce Dubbs.
Chapter 03: The Bash Shell Startup Files James Robertson revised by Bruce Dubbs.
Chapter 03: Compressed docs Olivier Peres.
Chapter 04: Firewalling: Henning Rohde with thanks to Jeff Bauman. Revised by Bruce Dubbs.
Chapter 11: Which Mark Hymers with many thanks to Seth Klein and Jesse Tie-Ten-Quee.
Chapter 25: X Window System Environment: Bruce Dubbs.
Chapter 27: Intro to Window Managers: Bruce Dubbs.
Chapters 28 and 29: KDE: Bruce Dubbs.
Chapters 30, 31, and 32: GNOME: Larry Lawrence.
aalib, Alsa, ffmpeg, gocr, MPlayer, opendivx, transcode, xvid and xsane: Alex Kloss
AbiWord, at-spi, ATK, audiofile, avifile, bc, bonobo-activation, bug-buddy, cdrdao, cdrtools, cpio, curl, dhcp, enlightenment, eog, esound, fcron, fluxbox, FNLIB, gail, galeon, gconf-editor, gdbm, gedit, gimp, GLib2, gmp, gnet, gnome-applets, gnome-desktop, gnome-games, gnome-icon-theme, gnome-libs, gnome-media, gnome-mime-data, gnome-panel, gnome-session, gnome-system-monitor, gnome-terminal, gnome-themes, gnome-utils, gnome-vfs, gnome2-user-docs, gnumeric, GTK+2, gtk-doc, gtk-engines, gtk-thinice-engine, eel, imlib, intltool, lame, libao, libart_lgpl, libbonobo, libbonoboui, libgail-gnome, libglade2, libgnome, libgnomecanvas, libgnomeprint, libgnomeprintui, libgnomeui, libgsf, libgtkhtml, libgtop, libIDL, libogg, librep, librsvg, libvorbis, libwnck, libxml2, libxslt, linc, LPRng, Linux_PAM, metacity, MIT Kerberos 5,MPlayer, mutt, nautilus, nautilus-media, oaf, OpenJade, OpenSP, OpenSSH, ORBit, ORBit2, pan, Pango, pccts, pcre, pkgconfig, postfix, procmail, Python, QT, rep-gtk, ruby, sawfish, scrollkeeper, sgml-common, sgml-dtd, shadow, startup-notification, unzip, vorbis-tools, vte, wget, XFce, xine, xml-dtd, yelp and zip: Larry Lawrence
CDParanoia, mpg123, SDL and XMMS: Jeroen Coumans
alsa, cvs, dhcpcd, gpm, hdparm, libjpeg, libmng, libpng, libtiff, libungif, giflib, links, lynx, openssl, tcsh, which, zsch, zlib: Mark Hymers
traceroute: Jeff Bauman
db and lcms: Jeremy Jones and Mark Hymers
aspell, balsa, bind, bonobo, bonobo-conf, cvs server, db-3.3.11, db-3.1.17, emacs, evolution, exim, expat, gal, gnome-print, GnuCash, gtkhtml, guppi, guile, guppi, g-wrap, leafnode, lesstif, libcapplet, libesmtp, libfam, libghttp, libglade, pine, portmap, PostgreSQL, pspell, qpopper, readline, reiserfs, Samba, sendmail, slrn, soup, tex, tcp-wrappers, and xinetd: Billy O'Connor
ProFTPD and rsync: Daniel Baumann
ESP Ghostscript: Matt Rogers
ALSA Tools, Apache Ant, Cyrus-SASL, DejaGnu, desktop-file-utils, DocBook DSSSL Stylesheets, DocBook-utils, Ethereal, Evolution Data Server, Exim (many additions), Expect, FOP, FreeTTS, FriBidi, gnome-audio, gnome-backgrounds, gnome-menus, GNOME Doc Utils, GnuCash (many additions), Heimdal, HTML Tidy, JadeTeX, Java Access Bridge, LessTif (rewrite), libexif, libgail-gnome, libgnomecups, MPlayer (extensive overhaul), Other Programming Tools, PDL, Perl Modules, pilot-link, Samba 3 (many additions), Shadow (rewrite), SANE (original instructions by Alex Kloss), SLIB, Stunnel, Sysstat and system-tools-backends: Randy McMurchy
Screen: Andreas Pedersen
PHP: Jeremy Utley
Gimp-Print and libusb: Alexander E. Patrakov
Fetchmail and WvDial: Paul Campbell
UDFtools, Perl modules (initial version) and Bluefish: Richard Downing
Epiphany, FLAC, File Roller, GNOME Magnifier, GNOME Netstatus, GNOME Speech, GOK, GPdf, GnomeMeeting, Gnopernicus, Imlib2, LZO, MC, NASM, Nautilus CD Burner, OpenQuicktime, Speex, XScreenSaver, Zenity, compface, freeglut, gcalctool, gucharmap, id3lib, kde-i18n, kdeaccessibility, kdebindings, kdesdk, kdevelop, kdewebdev, libFAME, liba52, libdv, libdvdcss, libdvdread, libmad, libmikmod and libmpeg3: Igor Zivkovic
tripwire: Manfred Glombowski
ALSA Firmware, ALSA OSS, inetutils, gdk, GLib, GTK+, libxml and vim: James Iwanek
iptables: Henning Rohde
joe, nano, nmap, slang, w3m and whois: Timothy Bauscher
MySQL: Jesse Tie-Ten-Quee
fontconfig, gcc, gcc2, jdk, mozilla, nas, openoffice, ispell, nail, ImageMagick, hd2u, STLport, tcl, tk and bind-utils: Tushar Teredesai
cracklib, libpcap, ncpfs, netfs, ppp(update), RP-PPPoE, Samba-3 and Subversion: DJ Lucas
ntp: Eric Konopka
nfs-utils: Reinhard
Fernando Arbeiza for doing great quality assurance on Shadow utilizing PAM. The machine access he saved may have been yours.
Archaic for trouble shooting the mozilla section by performing multiple builds and for providing a description of the various mozilla extensions.
Gerard Beekmans for generally putting up with us and for running the whole LFS project.
Oliver Brakmann for developing the dhcpcd patch for FHS compliance.
Ian Chilton for writing the nfs hint.
Nathan Coulson for writing the new network bootscripts.
Nathan Coulson, DJ Lucas and Zack Winkles for reworking the bootscripts used throughout the book.
Jim Harris for writing the dig-nslookup-host.txt hint on which the bind-utils instructions are based.
Lee Harris for writing the gpm.txt hint on which our gpm instructions are based.
Marc Heerdink for creating patches for tcp_wrappers and portmap and for writing the gpm2.txt hint on which our gpm instruction are based.
Mark Hymers for initiating the BLFS project and writing many of the initial chapters of the book.
J_Man for submitting a gpm-1.19.3.diff file on which our gpm instructions are based.
Jeremy Jones (otherwise known as mca) for hacking Makefiles and general assistance.
Steffen Knollmann for revising the JadeTeX instructions to work with Tex-3.0.
Eric Konopka for writing the ntp.txt hint on which the ntp section is based.
Scot McPherson for writing the gnome-1.4.txt hint from which was gathered useful information and for warning us that GNOME Version 2.0 may not be ready to put in the book.
Alexander E. Patrakov for patches and suggestions to improve the book content, assistance with alsa dev.d helpers, and increasing the l10n awareness.
Ted Riley for writing the Linux-PAM + CrackLib + Shadow hint on which reinstalling Shadow to use PAM is based.
Unlike the Linux From Scratch book, BLFS isn't designed to be followed in a linear manner. This is because LFS provides instructions on how to create a base system which is capable of turning into anything from a web server to a multimedia desktop system. BLFS is where we try to guide you in the process of going from the base system to your intended destination. Choice is very much involved.
Everyone who reads the book will want to read certain sections. The Introduction part–which you are currently reading–contains generic information. Especially take note of the information in Important Information (Chapter 2, Important Information), as this contains comments about how to unpack software and various other aspects which apply throughout the book.
The part on Post LFS Configuration and Extra Software is where most people will want to turn next. This deals with not just configuration but also Security (Chapter 4, Security), File Systems (Chapter 5, File Systems), Editors (Chapter 6, Editors) and Shells (Chapter 7, Shells). Indeed, you may wish to reference certain parts of this chapter (especially the sections on Editors and File Systems) while building your LFS system.
Following these basic items, most people will want to at least browse through the General Libraries and Utilities part of the book. This part contains information on many items which are prerequisites for other sections of the book as well as some items (such as Programming (Chapter 12, Programming) which are useful in their own right. Note that you don't have to install all of these libraries and packages found in this part to start with, each BLFS install procedure tells you which packages it depends upon so you can choose the program you want to install and see what it needs.
Likewise, most people will probably want to look at the Connecting to a Network and Basic Networking parts. The first of these deals with connecting to the Internet or your LAN using a variety of methods such as DHCP (Chapter 14, DHCP Clients) and Dial-Up Connections (Chapter 13, Dial-up Networking). The second of these parts deals with items such as Networking Libraries (Chapter 16, Networking Libraries) and various basic networking programs and utilities.
Once you have dealt with these basics, you may wish to configure more advanced network services. These are dealt with in the Servers part of the book. Those wanting to build servers should find a good starting point there. Note that Servers also contains information on various database packages.
The next parts of the book principally deal with desktop systems. This portion of the book starts with a part talking about X and Window Managers. This part also deals with some generic X-based libraries (Chapter 26, X Libraries). After this, KDE and GNOME are given their own parts which are followed by one on X Software.
The book then moves on to deal with Multimedia packages. Note that many people may want to use the ALSA-1.0.9 instructions from this chapter quite near the start of their BLFS journey; they are placed here simply because it is the most logical place for them.
The final part of the main BLFS book deals with Printing, Scanning and Typesetting. This is useful for most people with desktop systems and even those who are creating mainly server systems will find it useful.
We hope you enjoy using BLFS and find it useful.
To make things easy to follow, there are a number of conventions used throughout the book. Following are some examples:
./configure --prefix=/usr
This form of text is designed to be typed exactly as seen unless otherwise noted in the surrounding text. It is also used to identify references to specific commands.
install-info: unknown option `--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir'
This form of text (fixed width text) is showing screen output, probably as the result of commands issued and is also used to show filenames such as /boot/grub/grub.conf
Emphasis
This form of text is used for several purposes in the book but mainly to emphasize important points or to give examples as to what to type.