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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 newer versions because the build
17 commands for one version may not work with a newer version. The newest package
18 versions may also have problems that require work-arounds. These work-arounds
19 will be developed and stabilized in the development version of the
22 <para>Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download
23 location has changed since this book was published, Google (<ulink
24 url="http://www.google.com/"/>) provides a useful search engine for
25 most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the
26 alternative means of downloading discussed at <ulink
27 url="&lfs-root;lfs/packages.html#packages"/>. </para>
29 <para>Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stored somewhere
30 that is conveniently available throughout the entire build. A working
31 directory is also required to unpack the sources and build them.
32 <filename class="directory">$LFS/sources</filename> can be used both
33 as the place to store the tarballs and patches and as a working
34 directory. By using this directory, the required elements will be
35 located on the LFS partition and will be available during all stages
36 of the building process.</para>
38 <para>To create this directory, execute the following command, as user
39 <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem>, before starting the download
42 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>mkdir -v $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>
44 <para>Make this directory writable and sticky. <quote>Sticky</quote>
45 means that even if multiple users have write permission on a
46 directory, only the owner of a file can delete the file within a
47 sticky directory. The following command will enable the write and
50 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>chmod -v a+wt $LFS/sources</userinput></screen>
52 <para>There are several ways to optain all the necessary packages and patches
57 <para>The files can be downloaded individually as described in the
58 next two sections.</para>
61 <para>For stable versions of the book, a tarball of all the needed files
62 can be downloaded from one of the LFS files mirrors listed at
63 <ulink url="http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html#files"/>.</para>
66 <para>The files can be downloaded using <command>wget</command> and
67 a wget-list as described below.</para>
71 <para>To download all of the packages and patches by using
72 <ulink url="../wget-list">wget-list</ulink> as an input to the
73 <command>wget</command> command, use:</para>
75 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>wget --input-file=wget-list --continue --directory-prefix=$LFS/sources</userinput></screen>
77 <para>Additionally, starting with LFS-7.0, there is a separate file,
78 <ulink url="../md5sums">md5sums</ulink>, which can be used to verify that all
79 the correct packages are available before proceeding. Place that file in
80 <filename class="directory">$LFS/sources</filename> and run:</para>
82 <screen role="nodump"><userinput>pushd $LFS/sources
84 popd</userinput></screen>
86 <para>This check can be used after retrieving the needed files with any of the
87 methods listed above.</para>