I did the make part of it ...and it went for about 20 min. and then I got an error.....it said make [World]: Error 2......I know this isn't enough information, but where can I find more information about what this error means? Anyone have any help fo rme?

Heres is the last few lines from xfree-compile.log:

xftgram.y:168.8: parse error, unexpected ":", expecting ";" or "|"
xftgram.y:169.3-6: $$ of `matrix' has no declared type
make[3]: *** [xftgram.c] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/xc/lib/Xft'
make[2]: *** [depend] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/xc/lib'
make[1]: *** [depend] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/xc'
make: *** [World] Error 2

If anyone knows what a possible solution to this could be I'd appreciate it.

Which version of XFree86 did you complile. What guide are you using to compile it with (e.g a hint, or BLFS). What commands have you run before compiling?

Also, have you tried to search the LFS archives?

Xfree86 2.4.1 using the BLFS pages. As far as which commands I've run before doing it I don't know what you mean. I followed all the instructions in the BLFS book as far as I know, unless I missed something ....but I've tried it four times now starting from fresh source. I spent quite a few hours searching around trying to find someone with a similiar problem and answer, but I couldn't find anything. I took a look at the file that it says the error is in (xftgram.y) and found the part where it says the error is, but I don't know what is wrong with it. Anyways.....hope someone has some clue, this has me stumped. Installing the LFS system has gone very good for me so far until now.

did you apply the 4.2.0 patch? did you edit the hosts.def file at all?

Yes I applied the patch.....and I edited the hosts.def patch to the best of my knowledge...

I'm thinking that something may be wrong w/ your system (just a guess... I don't know what those errors mean). Have you compiled many other things? If not, try just going through and installing some other (smaller) sources. maybe lynx or ncftp or something.

Alright, thanks for your opinion. The thought had occured to me that something was wrong as well, although, I had been going through the BLFS book installing things that I wanted/needed and I haven't any problems with anything until this. Anyways, thanks for the responses and attempted help, I'm sure that this will get resolved one way or another. It's all a learning process for me...

Well I don't know if any of this would help but it might be worth a try. The file xftgram.y is a yacc file. Yacc is hardly used anymore and on your LFS system you should have installed bison to parse these kind of files. It's possible that something went wrong with the bison install and you are only running into troubles now because this is the first time it's being used. So you could try to reinstall bison following the steps in the book and then have a retry at X. Might be wise to start with a clean source tree of X again.

Also you might want to try to compile without optimizations if you are using any to see if that makes a difference.

I just compiled X on a brand new LFS system the other day and it didn't have any problems (I did use optimizations). I was surprised how fast it managed to compile actually. But that's probably because of all the new hardware I put in the machine.

Anyways good luck on figuring out what's going wrong.

Well, I tried re-installing Bison and then re-trying X.....it didn't work....so I thought maybe something with the whole system was messed up.....I went through the whole LFS book again from a newly partitioned drive.....still didn't work.....does anyone have any thoughts that haven't already been tried?? I've been searching all over the web but haven't come up with anything yet...

You could try one of the Xfree hints instead of the BLFS book, making sure you report the error you had on the BLFS mailing lists for future reference.

I have tried the hints when the BLFS book didn't work for me (errors on mozilla compile), and they seemed to work okay, you may have problems with some installation directories but other than that it should work.

There are a few you could try. I hate it when something wont compile and there is no solution on the web. I spent all of yesterday trying to get an IRC client to install and I still can't do it! So I know how your feeling.

Thanks a lot. I'll definitely give one of the hints a try. Hopefully it'll work. This site has been the best thing during my whole linux learning experience. Every time I've had trouble I"ve searched the web only to come up empty handed (with maybe one exception).....but I have always found a solution by asking around on here. Anyways....thanks again...I'll let everyone know how it turns out....