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8 <sect1 id="ch-materials-introduction">
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11 <title>Introduction</title>
13 <para>This chapter includes a list of packages that need to be downloaded in
14 order to build a basic Linux system. The listed version numbers correspond to
15 versions of the software that are known to work, and this book is based on
16 their use. We highly recommend against using different versions, because the build
17 commands for one version may not work with a different version, unless the
18 different version is specified by an LFS erratum or security advisory.
19 The newest package versions may also have problems that require
20 work-arounds. These work-arounds will be developed and stabilized in the
21 development version of the book.</para>
23 <para>For some packages, the release tarball and the (Git or SVN)
24 repository snapshot tarball for that release may be published with
25 similar or even identical file names. But the release tarball may contain
26 some files which are essential despite not stored in the repository
27 (for example, a <command>configure</command> script generated by
28 <command>autoconf</command>), in addition to the contents of the
29 corresponding repository snapshot. The book uses release tarballs
30 whenever possible. Using a repository snapshot instead of a release
31 tarball specified by the book will cause problems.</para>
33 <para>Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download
34 location has changed since this book was published, Google (<ulink
35 url="https://www.google.com/"/>) provides a useful search engine for
36 most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the
37 alternative means of downloading at <ulink
38 url="&lfs-root;lfs/mirrors.html#files"/>. </para>
40 <para>Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stored somewhere
41 that is conveniently available throughout the entire build. A working
42 directory is also required to unpack the sources and build them.
43 <filename class="directory">$LFS/sources</filename> can be used both
44 as the place to store the tarballs and patches and as a working
45 directory. By using this directory, the required elements will be
46 located on the LFS partition and will be available during all stages
47 of the building process.</para>
49 <para>To create this directory, execute the following command, as user
50 <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem>, before starting the download
53 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>mkdir -v $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>
55 <para>Make this directory writable and sticky. <quote>Sticky</quote>
56 means that even if multiple users have write permission on a
57 directory, only the owner of a file can delete the file within a
58 sticky directory. The following command will enable the write and
61 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>chmod -v a+wt $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>
63 <para>There are several ways to obtain all the necessary packages and patches
68 <para>The files can be downloaded individually as described in the
69 next two sections.</para>
72 <para>For stable versions of the book, a tarball of all the needed files
73 can be downloaded from one of the mirror sites listed at
74 <ulink url="https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html#files"/>.</para>
77 <para>The files can be downloaded using <command>wget</command> and
78 a wget-list as described below.</para>
82 <para>To download all of the packages and patches by using
83 <ulink url="../&wget-list;">&wget-list;</ulink>
84 as an input to the <command>wget</command> command, use:</para>
86 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>wget --input-file=&wget-list; --continue --directory-prefix=$LFS/sources</userinput></screen>
89 The <filename>wget-list</filename> file mentioned above retrieves all
90 packages for both the sysV and systemd versions of LFS. There are a total
91 of five additional small packages not needed for the current book. The
92 <filename>md5sums</filename> file mentioned below is specific to the
96 <para>Additionally, starting with LFS-7.0, there is a separate file,
97 <ulink url="../md5sums">md5sums</ulink>, which can be used to verify that all
98 the correct packages are available before proceeding. Place that file in
99 <filename class="directory">$LFS/sources</filename> and run:</para>
101 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>pushd $LFS/sources
103 popd</userinput></screen>
105 <para>This check can be used after retrieving the needed files with any of the
106 methods listed above.</para>
108 <para>If the packages and patches are downloaded as a non-&root; user,
109 these files will be owned by the user. The file system records the
110 owner by its UID, and the UID of a normal user in the host distro is
111 not assigned in LFS. So the files will be left owned by an unnamed UID
112 in the final LFS system. If you won't assign the same UID for your user
113 in the LFS system, change the owners of these files to &root; now to
114 avoid this issue:</para>
116 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>chown root:root $LFS/sources/*</userinput></screen>