The EGLIBC package contains the main C library. This library provides the basic routines for allocating memory, searching directories, opening and closing files, reading and writing files, string handling, pattern matching, arithmetic, and so on.
Some packages outside of CLFS suggest installing GNU libiconv in
order to translate data from one encoding to another. The
project's home page (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/)
says “This library provides an
iconv() implementation, for use on
systems which don't have one, or whose implementation cannot
convert from/to Unicode.” EGLIBC provides an
iconv() implementation and can
convert from/to Unicode, therefore libiconv is not required on a
CLFS system.
At the end of the installation, the build system will run a sanity test to make sure everything installed properly. This script will attempt to test for a library that is only used in the test suite and is never installed. Prevent the script from testing for this library with the following command:
sed -i 's/\(&& $name ne\) "db1"/ & 1円 "nss_test1"/' scripts/test-installation.pl
This same script performs its tests by attempting to compile test programs against certain libraries. However it does not specify the ld.so, and our toolchain is still configured to use the one in /tools. The following set of commands will force the script to use the complete path of the new ld.so that was just installed:
LINKER=$(readelf -l /tools/bin/bash | sed -n 's@.*interpret.*/tools\(.*\)]$@1円@p')
sed -i "s|libs -o|libs -L/usr/lib -Wl,-dynamic-linker=${LINKER} -o|" \
scripts/test-installation.pl
unset LINKER
The following patch fixes an issue that can cause ALSA to crash:
patch -Np1 -i ../eglibc-2.15-fixes-1.patch
The EGLIBC build system is self-contained and will install
perfectly, even though the compiler specs file and linker are still
pointing at /tools. The specs and
linker cannot be adjusted before the EGLIBC install because the
EGLIBC Autoconf tests would give false results and defeat the goal
of achieving a clean build.
The EGLIBC documentation recommends building EGLIBC outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:
mkdir -v ../eglibc-build cd ../eglibc-build
Prepare EGLIBC for compilation:
../eglibc-2.15/configure --prefix=/usr \ --disable-profile --enable-kernel=2.6.32 --libexecdir=/usr/lib/eglibc
The meaning of the new configure option:
--libexecdir=/usr/lib/eglibc
This changes the location of the pt_chown program from its
default of /usr/libexec to
/usr/lib/eglibc.
Compile the package:
make
The test suite for EGLIBC is considered critical. Do not skip it under any circumstance.
Before running the tests, copy a file from the source tree into our build tree to prevent a couple of test failures, then run the tests:
cp -v ../eglibc-2.15/iconvdata/gconv-modules iconvdata make -k check 2>&1 | tee eglibc-check-log; grep Error eglibc-check-log
The EGLIBC test suite is highly dependent on certain functions of
the host system, in particular the kernel. The posix/annexc test
normally fails and you should see Error 1
(ignored) in the output. Apart from this, the EGLIBC test
suite is always expected to pass. However, in certain
circumstances, some failures are unavoidable. If a test fails
because of a missing program (or missing symbolic link), or a
segfault, you will see an error code greater than 127 and the
details will be in the log. More commonly, tests will fail with
Error 2 - for these, the contents of
the corresponding .out file, e.g.
posix/annexc.out may be informative.
Here is a list of the most common issues:
The math tests sometimes fail. Certain optimization settings are known to be a factor here.
If you have mounted the CLFS partition with the noatime option, the
atime test will fail.
As mentioned in Section 2.4,
“Mounting the New Partition”, do not use the
noatime option while
building CLFS.
When running on older and slower hardware, some tests can fail because of test timeouts being exceeded.
Though it is a harmless message, the install stage of EGLIBC will
complain about the absence of /etc/ld.so.conf. Prevent this warning with:
touch /etc/ld.so.conf
Install the package:
make install
Install NIS and RPC related headers that are not installed by default.
cp -v ../eglibc-2.15/sunrpc/rpc/*.h /usr/include/rpc cp -v ../eglibc-2.15/sunrpc/rpcsvc/*.h /usr/include/rpcsvc cp -v ../eglibc-2.15/nis/rpcsvc/*.h /usr/include/rpcsvc
The locales that can make the system respond in a different language were not installed by the above command. Install them with:
make localedata/install-locales
To save time, an alternative to running the previous command (which
generates and installs every locale listed in the eglibc-2.15/localedata/SUPPORTED file) is to
install only those locales that are wanted and needed. This can be
achieved by using the localedef command. Information on
this command is located in the INSTALL file in the EGLIBC source. However, there
are a number of locales that are essential in order for the tests
of future packages to pass, in particular, the libstdc++ tests from GCC. The following
instructions, instead of the install-locales target used above,
will install the minimum set of locales necessary for the tests to
run successfully:
mkdir -pv /usr/lib/locale localedef -i cs_CZ -f UTF-8 cs_CZ.UTF-8 localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro localedef -i en_HK -f ISO-8859-1 en_HK localedef -i en_PH -f ISO-8859-1 en_PH localedef -i en_US -f ISO-8859-1 en_US localedef -i es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX localedef -i fa_IR -f UTF-8 fa_IR localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP
Some locales installed by the make localedata/install-locales command above are not properly supported by some applications that are in CLFS and CBLFS. Because of the various problems that arise due to application programmers making assumptions that break in such locales, CLFS should not be used in locales that utilize multibyte character sets (including UTF-8) or right-to-left writing order. Numerous unofficial and unstable patches are required to fix these problems, and it has been decided by the CLFS developers not to support such complex locales at this time. This applies to the ja_JP and fa_IR locales as well—they have been installed only for GCC and Gettext tests to pass, and the watch program (part of the Procps package) does not work properly in them. Various attempts to circumvent these restrictions are documented in internationalization-related hints.
The /etc/nsswitch.conf file needs to
be created because, although EGLIBC provides defaults when this
file is missing or corrupt, the EGLIBC defaults do not work well in
a networked environment. The time zone also needs to be configured.
Create a new file /etc/nsswitch.conf
by running the following:
cat > /etc/nsswitch.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/nsswitch.conf
passwd: files
group: files
shadow: files
hosts: files dns
networks: files
protocols: files
services: files
ethers: files
rpc: files
# End /etc/nsswitch.conf
EOF
To determine the local time zone, run the following script:
tzselect
After answering a few questions about the location, the script will
output the name of the time zone (e.g., EST5EDT or Canada/Eastern). Then create the
/etc/localtime file by running:
cp -v --remove-destination /usr/share/zoneinfo/[xxx] \
/etc/localtime
Replace [xxx] with the
name of the time zone that tzselect provided (e.g.,
Canada/Eastern).
The meaning of the cp option:
--remove-destination
This is needed to force removal of the already existing
symbolic link. The reason for copying the file instead of
using a symlink is to cover the situation where /usr is on a separate partition. This could
be important when booted into single user mode.
By default, the dynamic loader (/lib/ld-linux.so.2) searches through /lib and /usr/lib
for dynamic libraries that are needed by programs as they are run.
However, if there are libraries in directories other than
/lib and /usr/lib, these need to be added to the
/etc/ld.so.conf file in order for the
dynamic loader to find them. Two directories that are commonly
known to contain additional libraries are /usr/local/lib and /opt/lib, so add those directories to the dynamic
loader's search path.
Create a new file /etc/ld.so.conf by
running the following:
cat > /etc/ld.so.conf << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/ld.so.conf
/usr/local/lib
/opt/lib
# End /etc/ld.so.conf
EOF
A helper program for grantpt to set the owner, group and access permissions of a slave pseudo terminal
Asks the user about the location of the system and reports the corresponding time zone description
Provides the portability needed in order to run certain Berkey Software Distribution (BSD) programs under Linux
Used internally by EGLIBC for handling internationalized
domain names in the getaddrinfo() function
Used by memusage (included in EGLIBC, but not built in a base CLFS system as it has additional dependencies) to help collect information about the memory usage of a program
The Name Service Switch libraries, containing functions for resolving host names, user names, group names, aliases, services, protocols, etc.
Contains profiling functions used to track the amount of CPU time spent in specific source code lines
Contains functions for creating, sending, and interpreting packets to the Internet domain name servers
Contains functions providing most of the interfaces specified by the POSIX.1b Realtime Extension