Hello,

A few years ago (2006) I built my first LFS system. It was GREAT! LFS was by far my best linux system ever, I used the More Users package managment system and everything.

So, having one LFS system under my belt you'd think I'd know what I was doing, but the truth is I'm still an idiot, and need help with the simplest of things. Such as moving forward on a CLFS build.

I'm building a multilib system on my laptop. It has one hard drive with Windows XP on the first Partition (Wahoo, once I build this CLFS I've finally found a way to dump Windows forever), and a half built CLFS system with an XFS formatted partition on the other.

So, to recap, two partitions: One Windows xp/ntfs and the other clfs/xfs.

Since it's a multilib build, and I don't know where I can get a multilib live CD I've had to opt for the "boot" method of building my system, since the CD I'm using is only 32 bit. I've worked my way through the book (development version) to chapter "7.17. What to do next" and I am now ready to reboot and begin building the permanant system, but I can't because I need to install a bootloader to do this.

As you may know, the boot loader is one of the last things that is installed in the book. But I figured I'd just sneak Grub in now and all would be well. I really didin't want to install software packages out of the order with the book, but I figured I had no other way.

But I've found installing grub out of order is not so straight forward. You see Grub needs Bison to be installed too, which at this point in the book it is not installed either. Lilo would need bin86 to be installed first too.

So all in all, from what I can see I'd need to begin installing several packages, all out of order with the book, in get a boot loader going.

So to sum up: I need to use the boot method because there are no good multilib live cds out there. I need to have a boot loader to boot into a minimal system to build. The only bootloaders out there all require several more packages than what is on the minimal boot system to work. The way to proceed is undocumented so I'm not sure what I should do.

But like I said, idiot is my name, and I can't find anyhwere on the net where someone has posted and answer to this. Surely I'm not the first person to run into this. I'm building a multilib on an x86 duel boot system, that's got to be the profile of what . . . 60% of the folks who try to build a multilib.

Anyway, if you fine folks could point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Bob

Why can't you use the chroot method? Did you read section 6.32, specifically the second paragraph? What was the output of the commands in section 6.32? If you need a LiveCD, try using the x86_64 LFS LiveCD.

weibullguy

Thanks for the reply. Yes I did try those command in section 6.32, but 2 of them failed (the ones dealing with 64 bit programs) namely . . .

/tools/lib64/libc.so.6
/tools/bin/gcc -v

I did some reasearch on the LFS LIve CD and my understanding is that the 64 bit version won't compile 32 bit stuff, and the LFS staff never made a multilib version to compile both 64 bit and 32 bit stuff.

But heck, these's "researching" and then there's proving, so I'll download the 64 bit version and give it a try and let you know. I tried the Ubuntu 64 bit live CD and my machine wouldn't even load it.

Thanks for the idea.

Bob

Well Folks, I tried the Linux From Scratch LiveCD, and alas, It didn't recognize my hard drive. That's okay though because the Live Disk is quite old, and it reminded me that a few years ago when I'd last dappled in Linux I'd had to fill in some special boot options at the boot prompt on all Linux CDs and distribution to get them to be able to see my disk.

Wouldn't you know it, I've forgotten what those options were, and rather than look it up I decided to just install regular old LFS, that way I'll get grub working and I'll be able do a cross compile from there. LFS goes in pretty easy, and I'm already almost done.

So, just so others will learn from my experience, here is what you need to avoid.
1) Cross compiling a 64 bit CLFS from a 32 bit Linux WILL require you to opt for the minimal boot option and NOT a chroot option on CLFS.
2) this is all okay if you had a dedicated computer for this, and not a duel boot Windows machine (because you'll need a boot loader that can see a Linux partition otherwise). However, you can still make a Windows duel boot work if you use another bootloader that runs directly from a CD/DVD, but none of them out there seem to be able to see an XFS partition (they can only see ext2/3/4)

So in the end the combination of a 32 bit live CD - trying to make a duel boot Windows/CLFS machine - with CLFS installed on XFS partition cannot work. Eliminate any of those elements and you'll be sailing along just fine.

As for me, like I said, I'll just install LFS and do a cross compile later.

Thanks for all you suggestions.

Bob