The base operating system is Linux From Scratch 6.1.1. Using Linux From Scratch as a Linux distribution is a difficult way to install Linux but has a number of advantages over using a distribution such as RedHat, Debian, SuSE or Gentoo. First, the packages are build from the sources this means that they can be compiled specifically for the hardware. Secondly, only that packages that are required are installed, meaning that there is more disk space available for recorded programs or other media data. Thirdly, the system is very stable and robust.
Gentoo is a second choice for a source build and in many ways it is better than Linux From Scratch, the main reason for not using Gentoo is because some of the automatic upgrades break the system and it can take quite a while to figure out what the problem is. Once the system has been built and is stable there is no reason to upgrade the packages. Linux From Scratch is therefore the chosen system.
The computer is first booted with a Linux From Scratch LiveCD 6.1.1-4. This is the most reliable way to build the tools section of the LFS book. Once the tools section has been built then the system can be booted with a Knoppix CD which allows connection from another PC to the FFS computer.
The hard disk is partitioned into two primary partitions
/dev/sda1 swap
/dev/sda2 ext3
The computer was booted from a LFS LiveCD 6.1.1-4. The disk /dev/sda was partitioned into two partitions the fist partition is a Linux swap partition and the second partition is a Linux ext3 partition. The system was then rebooted so that Knoppix discovered the partitions and set up the /dev/sda2 partition so that it could be mounted.
The partition was mounted and the environment variable LFS was changed to /media/sda2.
The LFS book was then followed verbatim.
The standard Ncurses package is 5.4 this has been replaced by 5.5 as this version has wide character support.
The standard Grub package is 0.97 but boot once support is required for nvram_wakeup so this package has been replaced with 0.95 plus patches (from IPCOP).
Before entering this section it is now possible to reboot with the Knoppix CD, this allows the sshd to run and so the rest of the set-up can be achieved by pasting the commands from the book.
The checks performed in the testing phase had more errors than expected. Using make bootstrap instead of make reduced the errors, which are reported when trying to use precompiled headers. These errors may not be important as few, if any, packages depend on precompiled headers.
This is always the tricky part to get right.
As the system does not have a processor with either hyperthreading or a dual core the kernel has been configured for No SMP.
There are three possible network devices in the hardware. A Marvell ethernet controller, a Shuttle USB wireless LAN controller and a FireWire port that can be configured as a network controller. For installation of the system the ethernet controller is configured using DHCP client to assign the IP address. For normal usage, the wireless LAN controller is used.
When a boot script fails it halts the system, this is not a desired behaviour so the scripts are modified to remove the line that prints the failure message and pauses the system. print_error_msg in the functions script is edited to remove the lines after boot_mesg_flush.
/etc/ntp.conf needs changing to point to a real time server