I've been stuck trying to configure perl-5.12.3 over the past few days. At first, I thought I had just done something wrong, so I started over. But after two or three times starting over, I am realizing that it's the configuration of perl that is problematic.

I did some searching, but I couldn't find anything that worked. I've tried using the options -Dprefix=/tools -Dstatic_ext='IO Fcntl POSIX' and answer the questions manually, but that solution didn't apply in my case. I also tried the -Dnoextensions=GDBM option, but running configure still fails.

The error goes as follows:
Any insight on how I can get this to work is greatly appreciated.

Did you install the patch 1st

Sure did. The patch returns no errors.

My guess is that you've done something wrong when you created the user lfs or not set up the environment correctly. The configure script shouldn't be finding the gdbm library on your host computer. Of course, the ld from your new toolchain can't find it in /tools so the linking fails. The question is, what did you do wrong that led Configure to look at the stuff on your host system?

I think this is the problem. When I was configuring the gcc-whatever, I saw the name of my OS scrolling along, so it is picking up things from the host machine. I'll start over again, I guess, and make sure the environment is correct.

Thanks

Maybe I was wrong. It seems that you're not the first to encounter this error. This thread found a workaround that might work for you.

I have tried this workaround before making this thread, but to no avail. Upon trying again over the weekend, I did notice that when applying the patch, there was an error:

I looked at the patch, but it was only 30 lines long. Should I try to get another patch? I didn't do anything to the patch itself, but I don't know if this is normal or not.

Out of frustration, I decided to try some different things. I tried running configure without the "-des" flag, and it made me answer tons of questions, only to fail. Then I tried without the "-des" flag and with the workaround you gave in the link above, and answered tons of questions to the best of my ability, and then it failed again. I decided to try it once more, and it worked. I followed the instructions that it gave until the end. Then I picked back up with the book, and finally made it past perl.

I don't think that I can reproduce what I did. So at the end of the chapter, I backed up all the package builds so I wouldn't have to go through that again. I don't know if it's helping, though. Somewhere in the middle of the night, when I really should have been in bed, something went wrong in Chapter 6 when I didn't get the correct output for the sanity checks. This wasn't all that alarming, as it has happened many times to me in the first few runs of Chapter 5. But I can't help but wonder if it had anything to do with the way I installed perl...