Now, this is my problem. I've gotten to chapter 6, where the building of the real system begins, and it tells you to adopt a package management system. The best one seems to be the "fakeroot" approach, described here. But I've stumped on the details on how to use it. The text does a general description, but it doesn't point out the specific methods and steps to implement it.

So does anybody know some step-by-step tutorial for just one installation, to help me understand the procedures and advantages/disavdantages of this approach? I know that I'm supposed to do my own research, but Google hasn't been helpful so far and I don't have a clue on how to do this.

Did you read the fakeroot hint?

Yes, sorry, the "described here" was meant to be a link. I read it, and though it describes the general picture, I've no idea on how to implement this.

What, exactly, do you not understand? The steps for this method are described near the middle of the hint. Look for the paragraph beginning with, "The steps to installing a package with this approach are as follows."

The hint says to do "the appropiate maintenance" and "post install configuration". On what cases would this be needed?
It also says that the method is good for cases when a package would collide with something already installed. But how would I know if it does?

Take a look at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs...r/postfix.html. The stuff about /etc/aliases would be post install configuration.

After you install the package in your fakeroot, you can see what files are installed. Compare this to existing files. If there are files installed in the same directory with the same name as files already installed, you can move them, rename them, whatever you need while they are in your fakeroot and before you create a tarball. Then, when you unpack the tarball into /, the existing files won't be overwritten. This would be appropriate maintenance.

Thanks for the advice. I understand the uses of post-installation configuration, but just one thing: I don't understand why the fakeroot system would make this any easier. It doesn't put a magical "Configure me" button on packages.