I just finished yet another install and I have a basic LFS system with a few extra packages (see my signature). I notice a lot of people seem to have troubles using appropriate hosts and further, a lot like me seem to be trying it in VirtualBox.

So, with that in mind I am considering putting up my latest install for people to download and use to build their first (or second, or whatever) LFS system. I'll also have the packages already on disk in the VM.

If you're interested, please post here and I'll organise a torrent file or some other method in the next couple days.

There are plenty of posts here that describe using Slackware or SalixOS as a host to build LFS as the recommended distribution.

While it's good people at least try LFS out in VBox, I would actually argue against it, as VirtualBox does significantly reduce the speed of compiling software significantly often increasing the time frames needed by 2-4 times the standard amount. VirtualBox also has several ongoign issues with Linux at the moment that haven't been resolved.

The best and recommended solution is to use a SalixOS live disk; version 13.37 still works fine, and one-shot build the bootstrap system in Chapter 5. Afterwards you can use the live disk to chroot into the bootstrap system and build the final version with ease saving a lot of diskspace. The only other issue with that is if you are using a dual-boot OS, Grub-2.00 will require installing os-prober before you install Grub-2.00. If you use a dual-disk (multi-HDD) solution, just setup LFS on one of the spare drives and use the BIOS/UEFI boot selection menu.

I dare argue, but QEmu-KVM might be a better virtual machine solution.

Thanks for your input Reaper, I was just looking to help people who were already planning on using VirtualBox but if you wish to discuss its merits (or lack thereof), sure. Why not. We can do that too.

I've personally gone through the LFS process several times now with VirtualBox so I can be reasonably certain that people shouldn't have any issues using it, that's not a guarantee of course but I think the very fact I am providing a LFS system shows that it is definitely not anywhere near a hard or impossible task to accomplish.

Further, I agree that the compilation times are obviously slower than doing it straight onto your computer but if you have anywhere remotely near a recent machine the times shouldn't really matter. I was done in about 4.5 hours in my VM on a laptop that's about 4 years old, getting close to 5.

With those concerns addressed, I think the main benefit of a VM is snapshots. Regular snapshots make it easy to recover and minimise the amount of time lost due to mistakes. It's saved me several times after making foolish mistakes. Most recently I was removing debugging symbols and somehow totally wrecked the whole LFS system. It was back to the starting board had it not been for my snapshot.

The other benefits, really vary. If you have hardware which gives you issues under linux then with VBox, that's not a problem. I use to have a modem years ago that never worked under linux so in order to play around with it I'd install VMware and full screen my linux VM and use it as if I booted straight into it. Another could be that you simply don't want to partition your drive to play around with LFS then go mucking around to remove it when done and rejoin it to your main partition/s again.

I think that we've really covers both sides of the issue, so once again. If anyone is interested in using my VM, feel free to reply and I'll organise something

One other benefit of the VBox install is the save states you can create and not do actual shutdown or reboots.

I think you should publish them.

However, one thing I would recommend is possibly using VHD virtual drives rather than the native VBox drives, VHDs can be mounted in Windows 7 or later as a real drive and Using EasyBCD, BCD can be edited to boot from that drive if it has an EasyBCD compatible boot loader.

Basica, If I am not to late and the help you can give is still relavent I would like access to your torrent.