i want to build an lfs system in a vmware machine....ive read the book on linuxfromscratch.org and you need to be inside of a temporary shell to create the filesystem and format it and load packages and what not....how can i make a bootable shell cd? i tried reading this http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/bootlfscd.txt
and still for that i need 2 LFS systems, please help! thanks

please please please please use useful thread titles...... please!

lol extremely sorry...lemme try an change it

You don't need two LFS systems perse. You can simply build one LFS system in /mnt/lfs for example and write all of /mnt/lfs to a CDROM and make it bootable.

I can't include an attachment to this reply so download my bootcd.tar.bz2 file from http://linuxfromscratch.org/~gerard/bootcd.tar.bz2 - it's about 16 KB in size and contains my bootcd creation scripts. Unpack it, cd into the "bootcd" directory and mount your LFS system at the cdtree directory like so:

mount --bind /mnt/lfs cdtree

(--bind simply makes a directory available someplace else as well. Doesn't have to be a partition perse, you could type mount --bind /bin cdtree too. It's pretty much like creating a symlink).

Then simply run the ./build.sh script and it'll create an ISO in /usr/misc/iso/bootcd.iso (change this path of course to match a suitable location on your own system) which contains your newly compiled LFS system and it'll be bootable as well.

The build.sh script expects a $LFS/boot/kernel-image file rather than boot/lfskernel (as is the name of the file used in Chapter 8 of the LFS book - this diff. name is simply because of the fact that I also create non-LFS CDs so "kernel-image" is more generic than "lfskernel").

Have fun with it.

woooof thats way over my head...first of all im on windows now..but im dual booting with red hat 9...and i dont get what you mean by build an lfs system in /mnt/lfs

You posted in the LFS forum so I assume you know how to build an Linux From Scratch system. If you read the book you know what /mnt/lfs is about. Maybe you should read the book first.

i am...ive never built and lfs system b4...but i realy want to do it...and hopefully build my own distro one day...ive read the book but the book assumes you have a shell on the system your going to build...i was inquiring how they got that shell?

Ok I understand now.

What you need to install LFS is an already existing Linux distribution. This can be one on your harddisk like RedHat or something, or a bootable CDROM that contains all. I recommend using a normal harddisk based distribution if it's your first time. Get a copy of Redhat or Mandrake or whatever you want, install it and then install LFS afterwards. It's by far the easiest way.

Another option would be to use a Live Linux CDROM (such as Knoppix ). You can use Knoppix to boot and partition/format a pristine, new drive and compile your static partition. It would work just as well with drives that have stuff already on it too obviously.

However, if that's not an option either, then you'll have to do some searching for a suitable distribution. There are some distros that will install into an existing Windows filesystem (at least, that was the impression I got), but I can't remember any of their names off-hand. You could do some snooping around at www.linuxiso.org.

I would have to imagine running Linux from within a FAT/VFAT/NTFS partition would be horribly slow, nasty, and (in general) just plain BAD. If it's the only option you've got, then it's better than nothing I guess.

thank you guys very much...a cd based distro sounds like a good idea...i think i have an iso of demolinux somewhere...but il try out knoppix..i have linux on the dualboot..but ill just use knoppix thru vmware...thanks guys

Knoppix will work. I myself still prefer a Live LFS CDROM instead of course. There is a pre-made ISO you can download from http://www.stockwith.co.uk/iso. This'll save the hassle of creating your own, especially if you don't have some kind of Linux installed yet.

im going to give the LFS cd a whirl...i just finished dling all 100 packages...i just noticed the iso is in .bz2 format...i hope winRAR can handle that...

lfs cd is good