I am trying to build an LFS system using Arch Linux as a base system....

I am quite a newbie to advanced distros, but willing to learn.

I followed the LFS book to the letter, except for...

1. Mounting a boot and home partition that will be shared between Arch Linux, Gentoo linux, and an LFS system if I'm successful.

2. Downloading the latest available version of kernel 2.6.27 instead of the version that is mentioned in the book.

3. creating a subdirectory named lfs in the mnt/lfs/sources and keeping all the downloaded tar and patch files in it.

When I got to the stage of compiling the first package, binutils I ran into this error.

I suspect the problem is that I did not successfully apply the patch file for getting over the texinfo 4.9 problem to the binutils file.
I had indeed applied the patch, but I got an error saying

What went wrong here. The output of the script for checking requirements in the host system, seems Ok, except that host binutils version is 2.19 and greater than the recommended 2.18

How did you apply the patch? You don't apply the patch to the binutils tarball. You unpack the tarball, change into the binutils source tree, then apply the patch.

I am such an ignoramus

I was indeed applying it to the tarred directory instead of applying it to the untarred configure file. This time I corrected the error. And the compile went just fine.

thank you weibullguy....

To help all noobs like me who have trouble patching, here is how i did it.

1. unzipped the binutils tar file that i want to patch

tar -xvjf filename (if its a tar.bz2 file)
tar -zxvf filename (if it is a tar.gz file)

2. This created a directory of the same name as the file. And I copied the patch file into this directory

3. i applied the patch by copying out the command from The Book, into the newly created binutils folder. That way, it won't even ask for a file name,provided you do the patching from within the binutils folder by "cd"ing there. if it does, the name of the file can be seen in the console output.

weibullguy, could you have a look at this thread please..?

sorry to have double-posted the same message

Actually if you are using a version of tar that meets the minimum requirements of LFS, you don't need the j or z; tar is smart enough to figure it out on its own.

You don't copy the patch into the source tree. If you read the book and follow its instructions, you download all of the source tarballs and patches to $LFS/sources. Unpack the tarball, cd into the top of the source tree (binutils-2.18 in this case) and apply the patch with command in the book.

You'll notice that each patch is applied patch -Np1 -i ../laladada.patch. The ../ means the patch is up one directory level.

alright, here is something that WILL help every ignorant Linux Newbie like me...!

.. see those two dots? in a cd command they mean - "not whatever your directory is" as I so mistakenly assumed.

They mean "cd to the parent directory" which as weibullguy pointed out, mean a directory just above where you are.

I must say that if I had learnt this before embarking on this arduous mission, I would not have wasted a lot of time typing out long path names and also ending up with a wrongly adjusted toolchain...!

According to the book, "Building an LFS system is not a simple task. It requires a certain level of existing knowledge of Unix system administration in order to resolve problems, and correctly execute the commands listed. In particular, as an absolute minimum, the reader should already have the ability to use the command line (shell) to copy or move files and directories, list directory and file contents, and change the current directory. It is also expected that the reader has a reasonable knowledge of using and installing Linux software."