Starting Tips

#!/usr/bin/perl

## ----------------------------------------------------------------------

## Welcome to my Linux From Scratch blog! This blog is formatted 

## completely in perl (or other system-friendly scripting languages). 

## This blog recounts my experience in attempting to put together a

## Linux From Scratch (LFS) distribution. This is primarily a learning 

## experience. 

##

## Getting Started

## ---------------

## You need a "host" system. A host system is a Linux-based system from 

## which the developer can build an LFS system. On the LFS website they 

## do not endorse any particular distro of Linux; it can be anything 

## (RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.). This statement isn't misleading but 

## the choice of the host system is important. Ask yourself, "How much 

## pain do I want to put myself through?" If your answer is "Very Little"

## then choose a mainstream distro as Googling for answers will make it

## much easier. 

##

## The distro I chose was Debian. The reasons being:

##

## 1) Debian is very stable (2 releases per year).

## 2) Debian's net installer is VERY thin, which is great if you can 

##    work from command line and have no need of a graphical 

##    environment.

## 3) The tools are (almost) all there from the beginning.  

##

## Other distro's are good too, it just comes down to what you the 

## developer feel comfortable with. 

##

## *** Do your work in a virtual machine! I can't say enough about this 

## approach! Using a product like VirtualBox to learn how to put together

## an LFS distro is invaluable because you can use snapshot's to bookmark

## your progress before stepping into a risky set of steps (i.e. building

## gcc). Another suggestion in this regard is to just load from ISO file;

## it seems to go faster this way.

##

## 

## Really Getting Started

## ----------------------

## So you've got your host system distro chosen and VirtualBox is ready

## to go. You start the machine up... now what? Time to set up your 

## host system. If you're like me you go through the distro wizards to

## set up the host system: Language, hostname, auto-prepare 

## the hard drive... WRONG!

##

## Do not let the host distro auto-prepare your drive! Let it set it up

## to the extent you leave a large amount of free space in the file system.

## When I say free space I mean "unpartitioned" space. I typically give

## the host system very little space (10G) and leave the remainder 

## of the space open for LFS. 

##

## Example of Finished Partitioning (on Debian):

##

## SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 33.1 GB ATA VBOX HARDDISK

##      #1  primary   10.5 GB   B    ext4

##          pri/log   22.0 GB        FREE SPACE  <---- 

##      #5  logical  534.8 MB      F swap         swap

##

## Now just let the host system continue on with the setup wizard. 

## Your Host VBox setup is now complete!