I knew it was going to be difficult as I'm no expert, but is anyone else getting a little frustrated?

As I am working through the book (6.3) I never really know if the stuff I am working on will be there next time I start the machine, or am I doing this wrong - are you meant to do the whole thing in one sitting?

One more thing - on page 38 (chapter 5.3.1) there are the commands:

mkdir -v ../binutils-build
cd ../binutils-build

[***Special NOTE here***]

CC="gcc -B/usr/bin/" ../binutils-2.17/configure \
--prefix=/tools --disable-nls --disable-werror

make
make install

make -C ld clean
make -C ld LIB_PATH=/tools/lib
cp -v ld/ld-new /tools/bin

Where I wrote 'Special NOTE' above there is mention of measuring the time it takes to build the package using the commsnd - time { ./configure ... && make && make install; }, but this comment is in-between the other commands - When do I type this?

It's getting a bit confusing

Thanks for any advice

I guess the command is meant to be:
Everyone using Gentoo

You said you are using a book? Can you tell it's name? Thank you

LFS book does contain instructions on resuming after reboot. The main idea is that files are persistent and environment variables are not, and little else is set up during the LFS build.
In my own time I found LFS challenging to do without typos, read the book, understood what should be going and downloaded ALFS. jhalfs and nalfs are both rather simple to use. Then I built a lot of packages manually, and then failed to upgrade the system.. After full rebuild I constructed a perverted package system using unionfs, and after some time switched to NixOS (source-based, and no notion of package conflict - even between glibc 2.5 and glibc 2.7).
But please, do not help proliferation of Gentoo init script system if you do not like it specifically - just because it is source-based...

enlibertad, in this forum "the book" = "The Linux From Scratch Book as found on http://www.linuxfromscratch.org"

Yes, LFS building can become quite frustrating very easily, even if you follow everything as described.

I would suggest you write all building commands in a few cleanly separated shell scripts, so you can "start from scratch" again much faster for everything that worked well up to the point where the problems show their ugly face.

KDE Programs Naming Convention

Thanks!!

Not at all! I actually found it way easier than I tought! I'm still amazed how simple it is! Just follow the instructions, if you get into trouble come here @LQ, check the svn version if something does not work, check the mailing lists and google, all is there. You can stop-and-resume the build anytime.
Another good ones (next on my list) are diy-linux.org and jaguarlinux.com.
Have fun!

Thanks for all the replies - your time and effort is appreciated

About the gentoo comments - I have been using the LFS live-cd as my host (I thought it would make things run more smoothly - all the correct package versions etc), so I guess that's gentoo?

I'd probably find it much easier if I actually knew what I was doing...
Thanks again for the input.

Gentoo is the most widespread source-based distribution. It is not related to LFS.

FYI,
The above code didn't work for me. I received some errors and so I ran:

CC="gcc -B/usr/bin/"
time { ../binutils-2.17/configure ... make ... make install; }

the two above lines separately and that did the trick.

I find that if one doesn't follow the book precisely your going to encounter difficulties that you can't recover from (unless you understand the relationship between the tools). LFS is the best way of learning the toolchain.

Have fun,
Dennis.

yes I did try the command and got an error but didn't know what else to try, so I couldn't do the 'timing' by the system - I did use my stopwatch for a few commands though, and I have just realized I've messed up at bit so will have do a new post I think.

guys, i just compiled binutils today. ok, it's not explicitly clear if you are new to linux but at the beginning they mention the prerequisites. one is bacis understanding of unix/linux. sry, but you will run in a lot of problems like this if you lack it .

you only have to issue the command when you are trying to estimate the time it will take to compile the package (read 4.5 About SBU).

if you are in source/ unzipp the binutil package. cd in it. then issue the commands of the book:
then do
the '\' at the end of the line--see book--means that the shell (/bin/bash) should escape the newline character at the end of the line. normally, newline characters end a command but the command is quite long so if you copy paste--what the guys who wrote the book assume--than you'll need it.

then do the rest of the procedure...
good luck, vadkutya

No. It is exactly that challenging, as I expected it to be.

It would not be fun and experience, if it would be less challenging, than one expected.

That reminds me of the good old times, where guis were a dream of programmers experimenting with psycadelics.

;-)

I keep getting stuck around Chapter 4 and give up too easily. I guess my patients is not what it used to be.