Windows Environment Set-Up [June 10, 2012, 9:02 p.m.]
If you're not doing this on windows, and the version-check.sh script reports a version number for every package, then you can mark this task as completed and move on to the next one.
Cross linux from scratch can be built from just about any operating system with a working C compiler. I'll walk you through a Windows, MinGW/MSYS environment setup. It's probably easiest if you're having trouble, though, to skip this task and do this from a BSD, Mac, or a Linux computer. Linux has several LiveCD, LiveUSB, and virtualized distributions that are worth checking out. I think Linux from Scratch even has their own LiveCD made just for us. Any of these will have working c compilers and environments that will suit our needs.
I made a quick video in three parts weighing in at about half an hour helping you if you're starting out the Windows way. You might want to full screen.
One thing I neglected to mention (since I didn't realize I needed it until later), you'll also want to get the "xz" and "mingw-developer-toolkit" packages with mingw-get, in an admin shell, like this:
mingw-get install xz
mingw-get install mingw-developer-toolkit
I didn't get around to it in the next video, but you can chain configure and make together with a double-ampersand like
./configure --all-your-config-options && make
Ext2 File System
We'll be building CLFS on an ext2 filesystem. Windows doesn't have to be able to access ext2 directly, but I'll show you how if you'd like to be able to. You will need to be able to create and populate ext2 filesystems, though, and I'll show you how to do that as well.
A filesystem is a way for an operating system to store files, folders, and information about those files and folders such as security permissions and when a file was last accessed. Windows has two native filesystems, FAT and NTFS. Linux can work with both of these, but ext2 is still preferable. The advantage to using ext2 is that just about any disk repair and boot loader utility can read it. This means that if anything ever goes wrong with your computer, you can always download a LiveCD and fix any problem with your disk itself (except maybe fire and explosion ;) ). It's also easier to use Linux's native disk maintenance utilities with ext2.
If you want to be able to use ext2 drives or partitions natively from windows, there's two options available to you. I've had more luck with Ext2FsD than Ext2IFS on Windows 7 64 bit personally. If neither of these work for you you can still build CLFS on an ext2 filesystem from windows, you just won't be able to access the OS you build directly from windows. Remember to install Ext2IFS in compatibility mode for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 if you're on windows 7.
Even if neither of those are installed, you can create and populate an ext2 filesystem from windows using Cygwin. You can grab cygwin from here:
http://cygwin.com/install.html
Cygwin installation is a little involved for this tutorial (which is why I linked to the install help page instead of the download page), but make sure that these two things are true:
- You've installed cygwin to a different top-level directory from mingw/msys (in other words, something like C:\cygwin and C:\mingw would work)
- You've installed the e2fsprogs and e2fsimage packages, found under "System"
Here's a short video tutorial that will guide you through everything once you have all that set up.
Please note that, although you should be safe if you follow the instructions in the video, it contains a potentially unsafe command. The tool "dd" should always be used with care. Although it originally meant something like "duplicate disk", It has a nickname in the linux community: "destroy disk". The potentially unsafe command is optional, but you can't make a bootable OS on a USB stick without it. If you follow the instructions in the video you should be fine, the risk is minimal. However, this would be great place for me to recommend you back up any important files and have a recovery disk for your OS handy.