Copyright © 1999-2024 The BLFS Development Team
Copyright © 1999-2024, The BLFS Development Team
All rights reserved.
This book is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Computer instructions may be extracted from the book under the MIT License.
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Published 2024-04-01
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revision 12.2 | 2024-09-01 | Thirtieth Release |
| Revision 12.1 | 2024-03-01 | Twenty-ninth Release |
| Revision 12.0 | 2023-09-01 | Twenty-eighth Release |
| Revision 11.3 | 2023-03-01 | Twenty-seventh Release |
| Revision 11.2 | 2022-09-01 | Twenty-sixth Release |
| Revision 11.1 | 2022-03-01 | Twenty-fifth Release |
| Revision 11.0 | 2021-09-01 | Twenty-fourth Release |
| Revision 10.1 | 2021-03-01 | Twenty-third Release |
| Revision 10.0 | 2020-09-01 | Twenty-second Release |
| Revision 9.1 | 2020-03-01 | Twenty-first Release |
| Revision 9.0 | 2019-09-01 | Twentieth release |
| Revision 8.4 | 2019-03-01 | Nineteenth release |
| Revision 8.3 | 2018-09-01 | Eighteenth release |
| Revision 8.2 | 2018-03-02 | Seventeenth release |
| Revision 8.1 | 2017-09-01 | Sixteenth release |
| Revision 8.0 | 2017-02-25 | Fifteenth release |
| Revision 7.10 | 2016-09-07 | Fourteenth release |
| Revision 7.9 | 2016-03-08 | Thirteenth release |
| Revision 7.8 | 2015-10-01 | Twelfth release |
| Revision 7.7 | 2015-03-06 | Eleventh release |
| Revision 7.6 | 2014-09-23 | Tenth release |
| Revision 7.5 | 2014-03-05 | Ninth release |
| Revision 7.4 | 2013-09-14 | Eighth release |
| Revision 6.3 | 2008-08-24 | Seventh release |
| Revision 6.2 | 2007-02-14 | Sixth release |
| Revision 6.1 | 2005-08-14 | Fifth release |
| Revision 6.0 | 2005-04-02 | Fourth release |
| Revision 5.1 | 2004-06-05 | Third release |
| Revision 5.0 | 2003-11-06 | Second release |
| Revision 1.0 | 2003-04-25 | First release |
Abstract
This book follows on from the Linux From Scratch book. It introduces and guides the reader through additions to the system including networking, graphical interfaces, sound support, and printer and scanner support.
Having helped out with Linux From Scratch for a short time, I noticed that we were getting many queries as to how to do things beyond the base LFS system. At the time, the only assistance specifically offered relating to LFS were the LFS hints (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints). Most of the LFS hints are extremely good and well written but I (and others) could still see a need for more comprehensive help to go Beyond LFS — hence BLFS.
BLFS aims to be more than the LFS-hints converted to XML although much of our work is based around the hints and indeed some authors write both hints and the relevant BLFS sections. We hope that we can provide you with enough information to not only manage to build your system up to what you want, whether it be a web server or a multimedia desktop system, but also that you will learn a lot about system configuration as you go.
Thanks as ever go to everyone in the LFS/BLFS community; especially those who have contributed instructions, written text, answered questions and generally shouted when things were wrong!
Finally, we encourage you to become involved in the community; ask questions on the mailing list or news gateway and join in the fun on #lfs and #lfs-support at Libera. You can find more details about all of these in the Introduction section of the book.
Enjoy using BLFS.
Mark Hymers
markh <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (July 2001–March 2003)
I still remember how I found the BLFS project and started using the instructions that were completed at the time. I could not believe how wonderful it was to get an application up and running very quickly, with explanations as to why things were done a certain way. Unfortunately, for me, it wasn't long before I was opening applications that had nothing more than "To be done" on the page. I did what most would do, I waited for someone else to do it. It wasn't too long before I am looking through Bugzilla for something easy to do. As with any learning experience, the definition of what was easy kept changing.
We still encourage you to become involved as BLFS is never really finished. Contributing or just using, we hope you enjoy your BLFS experience.
Larry Lawrence
larry <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (March 2003–June 2004)
The BLFS project is a natural progression of LFS. Together, these projects provide a unique resource for the Open Source Community. They take the mystery out of the process of building a complete, functional software system from the source code contributed by many talented individuals throughout the world. They truly allow users to implement the slogan “Your distro, your rules.”
Our goal is to continue to provide the best resource available that shows you how to integrate many significant Open Source applications. Since these applications are constantly updated and new applications are developed, this book will never be complete. Additionally, there is always room for improvement in explaining the nuances of how to install the different packages. To make these improvements, we need your feedback. I encourage you to participate on the different mailing lists, news groups, and IRC channels to help meet these goals.
Bruce Dubbs
bdubbs <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (June 2004–December 2006 and February 2011–now)
My introduction to the [B]LFS project was actually by accident. I was trying to build a GNOME environment using some how-tos and other information I found on the web. A couple of times I ran into some build issues and Googling pulled up some old BLFS mailing list messages. Out for curiosity, I visited the Linux From Scratch web site and shortly thereafter was hooked. I've not used any other Linux distribution for personal use since.
I can't promise anyone will feel the sense of satisfaction I felt after building my first few systems using [B]LFS instructions, but I sincerely hope that your BLFS experience is as rewarding for you as it has been for me.
The BLFS project has grown significantly the last couple of years. There are more package instructions and related dependencies than ever before. The project requires your input for continued success. If you discover that you enjoy building BLFS, please consider helping out in any way you can. BLFS requires hundreds of hours of maintenance to keep it even semi-current. If you feel confident enough in your editing skills, please consider joining the BLFS team. Simply contributing to the mailing list discussions with sound advice and/or providing patches to the book's XML will probably result in you receiving an invitation to join the team.
Randy McMurchy
randy <at> linuxfromscratch.org
BLFS Editor (December 2006–January 2011)
This version of the book is intended to be used when building on top of a system built using the LFS book. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy and reliability of the instructions. Many people find that using the instructions in this book after building the current stable or development version of LFS provides a stable and very modern Linux system.
Enjoy!
Randy McMurchy
August 24th, 2008
This book is mainly aimed at those who have built a system based on the LFS book. It will also be useful for those who are using other distributions, and for one reason or another want to manually build software and need some assistance. Note that the material in this book, in particular the dependency listings, assumes that you are using a basic LFS system with every package listed in the LFS book already installed and configured. BLFS can be used to create a range of diverse systems and so the target audience is probably as wide as that of the LFS book. If you found LFS useful, you should also like this!
Since Release 7.4, the BLFS book version has matched the LFS book version. This book may be incompatible with a previous or later release of the LFS book.
This book is divided into the following fourteen parts.
This part contains essential information which is needed to understand the rest of the book.
Here we introduce basic configuration and security issues. We also discuss a range of text editors, file systems, and shells which aren't covered in the main LFS book.
In this section we cover libraries which are often needed throughout the book, as well as system utilities. Information on programming (including recompiling GCC to support its full range of languages) concludes this part.
Here we explain how to connect to a network when you aren't using the simple static IP setup presented in the main LFS book. Networking libraries and command-line networking tools are also covered here.
Here we show you how to set up mail and other servers (such as FTP, Apache, etc.).
This part explains how to set up a basic X Window System, along with some generic X libraries and Window managers.
This part is for those who want to use the K Desktop Environment, or parts of it.
GNOME is the main alternative to KDE in the Desktop Environment arena.
Xfce is a lightweight alternative to GNOME and KDE.
LXDE is another lightweight alternative to GNOME and KDE.
Office programs and graphical web browsers are important to most people. They, and some generic X software, can be found in this part of the book.
Here we cover multimedia libraries and drivers, along with some audio, video, and CD-writing programs.
This part covers document handling, from applications like Ghostscript, CUPS, and DocBook, all the way to texlive.
The Appendices present information which doesn't belong in the body of book; they are included as reference material. The glossary of acronyms is a handy feature.
The Beyond Linux From Scratch book is designed to carry on from where the LFS book leaves off. But unlike the LFS book, it isn't designed to be followed straight through. Reading the Which sections of the book? part of this chapter should help guide you through the book.
Please read most of this part of the book carefully as it explains quite a few of the conventions used throughout the book.
Unlike the Linux From Scratch book, BLFS isn't designed to be followed in a linear manner. LFS provides instructions on how to create a base system which can become anything from a web server to a multimedia desktop system. BLFS attempts to guide you in the process of going from the base system to your intended destination. Choice is very much involved.
Everyone who reads this book will want to read certain sections. The Introduction, which you are currently reading, contains generic information. Take special note of the information in Chapter 2, Important Information, as this contains comments about how to unpack software, issues related to the use of different locales, and various other considerations which apply throughout the book.
The part on Post LFS Configuration and Extra Software is where most people will want to turn next. This deals not only with configuration, but also with Security (Chapter 4, Security), File Systems (Chapter 5, File Systems and Disk Management -- including GRUB for UEFI), Text Editors (Chapter 6, Text Editors), and Shells (Chapter 7, Shells). Indeed, you may wish to reference some parts of this chapter (especially the sections on Text Editors and File Systems) while building your LFS system.
Following these basic items, most people will want to at least browse through the General Libraries and Utilities part of the book. This contains information on many items which are prerequisites for other sections of the book, as well as some items (such as Chapter 13, Programming) which are useful in their own right. You don't have to install all of the libraries and packages found in this part; each BLFS installation procedure tells you which other packages this one depends upon. You can choose the program you want to install, and see what it needs. (Don't forget to check for nested dependencies!)
Likewise, most people will probably want to look at the Networking section. It deals with connecting to the Internet or your LAN (Chapter 14, Connecting to a Network) using a variety of methods such as DHCP and PPP, and with items such as Networking Libraries (Chapter 17, Networking Libraries), plus various basic networking programs and utilities.
Once you have dealt with these basics, you may wish to configure more advanced network services. These are dealt with in the Servers part of the book. Those wanting to build servers should find a good starting point there. Note that this section also contains information on several database packages.
The next twelve chapters deal with desktop systems. This portion of the book starts with a part talking about Graphical Components. This part also deals with some generic X-based libraries (Chapter 25, Graphical Environment Libraries). After that, KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXQt are given their own parts, followed by one on X Software.
The book then moves on to deal with Multimedia packages. Note that many people may want to use the ALSA instructions from this chapter when first starting their BLFS journey; the instructions are placed here because it is the most logical place for them.
The final part of the main BLFS book deals with Printing, Scanning and Typesetting. This is useful for most people with desktop systems, but even those who are creating dedicated server systems may find it useful.
We hope you enjoy using BLFS. May you realize your dream of building the perfectly personalized Linux system!
To make things easy to follow, a number of conventions are used throughout the book. Here are some examples:
./configure --prefix=/usr
This form of text should be typed exactly as shown unless otherwise noted in the surrounding text. It is also used to identify references to specific commands.
install-info: unknown option
`--dir-file=/mnt/lfs/usr/info/dir'This form of text (fixed width font) shows screen output, probably the result of issuing a command. It is also used to show filenames such as
/boot/grub/grub.conf
Please configure your browser to display fixed-width text
with a good monospaced font, with which you can distinguish
the glyphs of Il1 or
O0 clearly.
Emphasis
This form of text is used for several purposes, but mainly to emphasize important points, or to give examples of what to type.
https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
This form of text is used for hypertext links external to the book, such as HowTos, download locations, websites, etc.
This form of text is used for links internal to the book, such as another section describing a different package.
cat > $LFS/etc/group << "EOF"
root:x:0:
bin:x:1:
......
EOF
This style is mainly used when creating configuration files. The first command (in bold) tells the system to create the file
$LFS/etc/groupfrom whatever is typed on the following lines, until the sequence EOF is encountered. Therefore, this whole section is usually typed exactly as shown. Remember, copy and paste is your friend!
<REPLACED
TEXT>
This form of text is used to encapsulate text that should be modified, and is not to be typed as shown, or copied and pasted. The angle brackets are not part of the literal text; they are part of the substitution.
root
This form of text is used to show a specific system user or group reference in the instructions.
When new packages are created, the software's authors depend on prior work. In order to build a package in BLFS, these dependencies must be built before the desired package can be compiled. For each package, prerequisites are listed in one or more separate sections: Required, Recommended, and Optional.
These dependencies are the bare minimum needed to build the package. Packages in LFS, and the required dependencies of these required packages, are omitted from this list. Always remember to check for nested dependencies. If a dependency is said to be “runtime,” it is not needed for building the package, but only to use it after installation.
These are dependencies the BLFS editors have determined are important to give the package reasonable capabilities. If a recommended dependency is not said to be “runtime,” package installation instructions assume it is installed. If it is not installed, the instructions may require modification, to accommodate the missing package. A recommended “runtime” dependency does not need to be installed before building the package, but must be built afterwards for running the package with reasonable capabilities.
These are dependencies the package may use. Integration of optional dependencies may be automatic by the package, or additional steps not presented by BLFS may be necessary. Optional dependencies are sometimes listed without explicit BLFS instructions. In this case you must determine how to perform the installation yourself.
Some packages require specific kernel configuration options. The general layout for these looks like this:
Master section ---> Subsection ---> [*] Required parameter [REQU_PAR] <*> Required parameter (not as module) [REQU_PAR_NMOD] <*/M> Required parameter (could be a module) [REQU_PAR_MOD] <M> Required parameter (as a module) [REQU_PAR_MOD_ONLY] < /*/M> Optional parameter [OPT_PAR] < /M> Optional parameter (as a module if enabled) [OPT_PAR_MOD_ONLY] [ ] Incompatible parameter [INCOMP_PAR] < > Incompatible parameter (even as module) [INCOMP_PAR_MOD]
[...] on the right gives the symbolic name of the option, so
you can easily check whether it is set in your .config file. Note that the .config file contains a CONFIG_ prefix before all symbolic names.
The meaning of the various entries is:
Master section top level menu item Subsection submenu item Required parameter the option can either be built-in, or not selected: it must be selected Required parameter (not as module) the option can be built-in, a module, or not selected (tri-state): it must be selected as built-in Required parameter (could be a module) the option can be built-in, a module, or not selected: it must be selected, either as built-in or as a module Required parameter (as a module) the option can be built-in, a module, or not selected: it must be selected as a module; selecting it as built-in may cause unwanted effects Optional parameter the option can be built-in, a module, or not selected: it may be selected as a module or built-in if you need it for driving the hardware or optional kernel features Optional parameter (as a module if enabled) the option can be built-in, a module, or not selected: it may be selected as a module if you need it for driving the hardware or optional kernel features, but selecting it as built-in may cause unwanted effects Incompatible parameter the option can either be built-in or not selected: it must not be selected Incompatible parameter (even as module) the option can be built-in, a module, or not selected: it must not be selected
Note that, depending on other selections, the angle brackets (<>) in the configuration menu may appear as braces ({}) if the option cannot be unselected, or even as dashes (-*- or -M-), when the choice is imposed. The help text describing the option specifies the other selections on which this option relies, and how those other selections are set.
The letter in blue is the hotkey for this option. If you are running make menuconfig, you can press a key to quickly traverse all the options with this key as the hotkey on the screen.
As in LFS, each package in BLFS has a build time listed in Standard Build Units (SBUs). These times are relative to the time it took to build binutils in LFS, and are intended to provide some insight into how long it will take to build a package. Most times listed are for a single processor or core to build the package. In some cases, large, long running builds tested on multi-core systems have SBU times listed with comments such as '(parallelism=4)'. These values indicate testing was done using multiple cores. Note that while this speeds up the build on systems with the appropriate hardware, the speedup is not linear and to some extent depends on the individual package and the specific hardware used.
For packages which use ninja (i.e., anything using meson) or rust, by default all cores are used; similar comments will be seen on such packages even when the build time is minimal.
Where even a parallel build takes more than 15 SBU, on certain machines the time may be considerably greater even when the build does not use swap. In particular, different micro-architectures will build some files at different relative speeds, and this can introduce delays when certain make targets wait for another file to be created. Where a large build uses a lot of C++ files, processors with Simultaneous Multi Threading will share the Floating Point Unit and can take 45% longer than when using four 'prime' cores (measured on an intel i7 using taskset and keeping the other cores idle).
Some packages do not support parallel builds; for these, the make command must specify -j1. Packages that are known to impose such limits are so marked in the text.
This is BLFS-BOOK version 12.2 dated September 1st, 2024. This is the 12.2-systemd branch of the BLFS book, currently targeting the LFS 12.2-systemd book. For development versions, if this version is older than a month, it's likely that your mirror hasn't been synchronized recently and a newer version is probably available for download or viewing. Check one of the mirror sites at https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html for an updated version.
The BLFS project has a number of mirrors set up world-wide to make it easier and more convenient for you to access the website. Please visit the https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mirrors.html website for the list of current mirrors.
Within the BLFS instructions, each package has two references for finding the source files for the package—an HTTP link and an FTP link (some packages may only list one of these links). Every effort has been made to ensure that these links are accurate. However, the World Wide Web is in continuous flux. Packages are sometimes moved or updated and the exact URL specified is not always available.
To overcome this problem, the BLFS Team, with the assistance of Oregon State University Open Source Lab, has made an HTTP/FTP site available through world wide mirrors. See https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/download.html#sources for a list. These sites have all the sources of the exact versions of the packages used in BLFS. If you can't find the BLFS package you need at the listed addresses, get it from these sites.
We would like to ask a favor, however. Although this is a public resource for you to use, please do not abuse it. We have already had one unthinking individual download over 3 GB of data, including multiple copies of the same files that are placed at different locations (via symlinks) to make finding the right package easier. This person clearly did not know what files he needed and downloaded everything. The best place to download files is the site or sites set up by the source code developer. Please try there first.
Current release: 12.2 – September 1st, 2024
Changelog Entries:
September 1st, 2024
[bdubbs] - Release of BLFS-12.2.
August 30th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to libreoffice-24.8.0.3. Fixes #20263.
August 27th, 2024
[renodr] - Fix building Brasero with GCC-14. Fixes #20278.
[renodr] - Restore libgedit-gtksourceview as it's needed by gedit.
[renodr] - Update to pipewire-1.2.3. Fixes #20264.
[bdubbs] - Update to kde-gear-24.08.0. Includes falkon, kate, and k3b. Fixes 19954.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-desktop-44.1. Fixes #20255.
August 26th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Archive libquicktime and transcode.
[bdubbs] - Update to mlt-7.26.0. Fixes 20272.
August 25th, 2024
August 23th, 2024
August 23rd, 2024
August 21st, 2024
August 20th, 2024
[renodr] - Fix three security vulnerabilities in p7zip. Fixes #20251.
August 19th, 2024
August 18th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to dtc-1.7.1. Fixes #20245.
[renodr] - Update to pax-20240817. Fixes #20244.
[renodr] - Update to vulkan-headers and vulkan-loader 1.3.293. Fixes #20242.
[renodr] - Update to gtk-4.14.5. Fixes #20243.
[renodr] - Fix a segmentation fault in Libreoffice caused by the Boost patch. Fixes #20229.
August 17th, 2024
August 16th, 2024
[renodr] - Fix a regression in WebKitGTK that causes crashes when rendering some websites. Fixes #20235.
[renodr] - Update to asymptote-2.91. Fixes #20239.
[renodr] - Update cups-browsed and cups-filters to 2.0.1. Fixes #20233.
[renodr] - Update to dovecot-2.3.17.1 (Security Update). Fixes #20231.
[renodr] - Update to enchant-2.8.2. Fixes #20230.
[renodr] - Fix building Libreoffice with boost-1.86.0.
[renodr] - Update to boost-1.86.0. Fixes #20229.
[bdubbs] - Update to unbound-1.21.0. Fixes #20238.
[bdubbs] - Update to btrfs-progs-6.10.1. Fixes #20237.
[bdubbs] - Update to gnutls-3.8.7.1. Fixes #20236.
August 15th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to sentry_sdk-2.13.0 (Python Module). Fixes #20062.
[renodr] - Update to x265-3.6. Fixes #20234.
[bdubbs] - Update to xfce4-notifyd-0.9.6. Fixes #20227.
[bdubbs] - Update to sqlite-autoconf-3460100. Fixes #20226.
[bdubbs] - Update to freetype-2.13.3. Fixes #20223.
[bdubbs] - Update to python3-3.12.5. Fixes #20202.
August 12th, 2024
August 12th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to x265-20240812. Fixes #20221.
[renodr] - Update to x264-20240812. Fixes #20221.
[renodr] - Update to ImageMagick-7.1.1-36. Fixes #20222.
[renodr] - Update python module dependencies for BLFS 12.2. This includes alabaster-1.0.0, attrs-24.2.0, babel-2.16.0, certifi-2024.7.4, chardet-5.2.0, charset-normalizer-3.3.2, idna-3.7, markdown-3.6, msgpack-1.0.8, sphinxcontrib-devhelp-2.0.0, sphinxcontrib-qthelp-2.0.0, sphinxcontrib-serializinghtml-2.0.0, and urllib3-2.2.2. Note that urllib3 and idna are security updates. Fixes #20220.
[renodr] - Update perl module dependencies for BLFS 12.2. This includes Alien-Build-2.83, Business-ISBN-Data-20240807.001, DateTime-Locale-1.43, HTTP-Message-6.46, Path-Tiny-0.146, Term-Table-0.022, Test-Without-Module-0.23, Test2-Plugin-NoWarnings-0.10, and Text-CSV_XS-1.56. Fixes #20219.
[renodr] - Replace Test2-Suite with Test-Simple. Fixes #20219.
[renodr] - Update to lxml-5.3.0 (Python Module). Fixes #20215.
[renodr] - Update to NetworkManager-1.48.8. Fixes #20212.
[renodr] - Update to sentry_sdk-2.12.0 (Python Module). Fixes #20062.
[bdubbs] - Update to vim-9.1.0660 (sync with LFS). Addresses #12241.
[bdubbs] - Update to highlight-4.13. Fixes #20218.
[bdubbs] - Update to graphviz-12.1.0. Fixes #20217.
[xry111] - Update to cbindgen-0.27.0. Fixes #20214.
[thomas] - Update to vte-0.76.4. Fixes #20213.
August 11th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to kwayland, libkscreen, and layer-shell-qt 6.1.4 (for lxqt). Fixes #19973.
[bdubbs] - Update to kconfig, kidletime, kwindowsystem, and solid 6.5.0 (for lxqt). Fixes #19922.
[bdubbs] - Update to plasma-6.1.4. Fixes #19973.
[bdubbs] - Add new package pulseaudio-qt-1.5.0 in support of the plasma-pa-6.1.4 package in the plasma-6.1.4 suite.
[rahul] - Update to protobuf-27.3. Fixes #20163.
[rahul] - Update to pipewire-1.2.2. Fixes #20165.
[bdubbs] - Update to kirigami-addons-1.4.0. Fixes #20131.
[bdubbs] - Update to kf6-6.5.0. Includes extra-cmake-modules, and breeze-icons. Fixes #19921.
August 9th, 2024
August 8th, 2024
August 7th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gnome-online-accounts-3.50.4. Fixes #20200.
[renodr] - Update evolution and evolution-data-server to 3.52.4. Fixes #20199.
[renodr] - Update to samba-4.20.4. Fixes #20196.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-control-center-46.4. Fixes #20193.
[renodr] - Update to pavucontrol-6.1. Fixes #20185.
[renodr] - Update to thunderbird-128.1.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #20153.
[renodr] - Update to firefox-128.1.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #20194.
[renodr] - Update to spidermonkey-115.14.0 (Security Update). Fixes #20195.
August 6th, 2024
August 5th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gnome-user-docs-46.4. Fixes #20191.
[renodr] - Update to mutter-46.4. Fixes #20189.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-shell-46.4. Fixes #20188.
[renodr] - Update to ffmpeg-7.0.2. Fixes #20184.
[renodr] - Update to epiphany-46.3. Fixes #20183.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-bluetooth-46.1. Fixes #20182.
[renodr] - Update to cmake-3.30.2. Fixes #20180.
August 4th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to sysmon-qt-2.0.1.
[bdubbs] - Update to cracklib-2.10.2. Fixes #20187.
August 3rd, 2024
August 2nd, 2024
[renodr] - Update to c-ares-1.33.0. Fixes #20178.
[renodr] - Update to samba-4.20.3. Fixes #20177.
[renodr] - Update to lcms2-2.16. Fixes #20175.
[renodr] - Update to eog-45.4. Fixes #20173.
[renodr] - Update to libshumate-1.2.3. Fixes #20173.
[bdubbs] - Update to libFS-1.0.10, libXfont2-2.0.7, and libXtst-1.2.5 (Xorg libraries). Fixes #20172.
[bdubbs] - Update to poppler-24.08.0. Fixes #20169.
[bdubbs] - Update to gcc-14.2.0. Fixes #20166.
[renodr] - Update to php-8.3.10. Fixes #20171.
[renodr] - Update to mercurial-6.8.1. Fixes #20170.
[renodr] - Update to abseil-cpp-20240722.0. Fixes #20168.
August 1st, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to btrfs-progs-v6.10. Fixes #20155.
[bdubbs] - Update to sphinx-8.0.2. Also updated to sphinxcontrib-applehelp-2.0.0. Fixes #20117.
[bdubbs] - Update to gstreamer, gst-plugins-base, gst-plugins-good, gst-plugins-bad, gst-plugins-ugly, and gst-libav versions 1.24.6. Fixes #19984.
[thomas] - Update to ISC Kea-dhcpd-2.6.1. Fixes #20164.
[renodr] - Update to SPIRV-LLVM-Translator-18.1.3. Fixes #20162.
July 31st, 2024
[renodr] - Update to mesa-24.1.5. Fixes #20159.
[renodr] - Update to HTML-Parser-3.83 (Perl Module). Fixes #20157.
[renodr] - Update to libavif-1.1.1. Fixes #20156.
[renodr] - Update to cryptsetup-2.7.4. Fixes #20154.
[renodr] - Update to curl-8.9.1 (Security Update). Fixes #20160.
[thomas] - Update to thunar-4.18.11. Fixes #20158.
[renodr] - Update to systemd-256.4 (sync with LFS). Fixes #20084.
July 30th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to git-2.46.0. Fixes #20152.
July 29th, 2024
July 27th, 2024
July 26th, 2024
July 25th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to tigervnc-1.14.0. Fixes #20140.
[bdubbs] - Update to mupdf-1.24.8. Fixes #20142.
[bdubbs] - Update to nss-3.102.1. Fixes #20135.
[thomas] - Update to c-ares-1.32.3. Fixes #20136.
[renodr] - Update to dvisvgm-3.4. Fixes #20141.
[renodr] - Update to libtirpc-1.3.5. Fixes #20139.
[renodr] - Update to libxml2-2.13.3 (Security Update). Fixes #20136.
[renodr] - Update to node.js-20.16.0. Fixes #20137.
[renodr] - Update to OpenJDK-22.0.2 (Security Update). Fixes #20101.
July 24th, 2024
July 23rd, 2024
July 22nd, 2024
[renodr] - Update to fetchmail-6.4.39. Fixes #20119.
[renodr] - Fix CVE-2023-43361 in vorbis-tools (Security Update). Fixes #20125.
[renodr] - Fix building compface with GCC 14. Fixes #20126.
[renodr] - Adapt QtWebEngine to use system ffmpeg. Fixes #20102.
[bdubbs] - Update to intel-media-24.2.5/intel-gmmlib-22.4.1. Fixes #20124.
[bdubbs] - Update to numpy-2.0.1 (Python module). Fixes #20123.
July 21st, 2024
July 20th, 2024
July 18th, 2024
July 18th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to httpd-2.4.62 (Security Update). Fixes #20103.
[bdubbs] - Update to cmake-3.30.1. Fixes #20106.
[bdubbs] - Update to mesa-24.1.4. Fixes #20104.
[bdubbs] - Archive gtk2. Fixes #18531. Also archive pygtk, mplayer, gtk-engines, hexchat, and pidgin.
[bdubbs] - Archive python2. Fixes #11549.
[bdubbs] - Update to gimp-20240711 (gimp-3.0 snapshot). Fixes #19886.
July 17th, 2024
July 16th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gsettings-desktop-schemas-46.1. Fixes #20097.
[renodr] - Update to python-dbusmock-0.32.1 (Python Module). Fixes #20093.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-keyring-46.2. Fixes #20085.
[renodr] - Update to gvfs-1.54.2. Fixes #20075.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-online-accounts-3.50.3. Fixes #20074.
[xry111] - Update to hatchling-1.25.0 (Python dependency). Addresses #18562.
[xry111] - Update to trove_classifiers-2024.7.2 (Python dependency). Addresses #18562.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-3.52.3. Fixes #20073.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-data-server-3.52.3. Fixes #20073.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-control-center-46.3. Fixes #20036.
[renodr] - Update to epiphany-46.2. Fixes #20024.
[renodr] - Update to mutter-46.3.1. Fixes #20023.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-shell-46.3.1. Fixes #20022.
[renodr] - Update to gexiv2-0.14.3. Fixes #20017.
[renodr] - Update to mercurial-6.8. Fixes #20060.
[renodr] - Archive telepathy-glib because nothing uses it anymore.
[renodr] - Add gnome-connections to the book. Fixes #19960.
[renodr] - Archive Vinagre. This is a part of #19960.
[renodr] - Add FreeRDP to the book in support of gnome-connections. This is a part of #19960.
[renodr] - Update to Thunderbird-128.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #19717.
[xry111] - Archive typing_extensions (Python dependency).
[xry111] - Update to setuptools_scm-8.1.0 (Python dependency). Addresses #18562.
[bdubbs] - Update to c-ares-1.32.2. Fixes #20096.
[bdubbs] - Update to sphinx-7.4.4 (Python module). Fixes #20095.
[bdubbs] - Update to babel-2.15.0 (Python module). Needed by sphinx-7.4.4.
July 15th, 2024
July 14th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Add konversation to the kf6 applications in the book.
[rahul] - Update to nodejs-20.15.1. Fixes #19983.
[rahul] - Update to bluez-5.77. Fixes #20058.
[rahul] - Update to nss-3.102. Fixes #20012.
[bdubbs] - Update to SDL2-2.30.5. Fixes #20091.
[bdubbs] - Update to make-ca-1.14. Fixes #20090.
[bdubbs] - Update to cracklib-2.10.0. Fixes #20089.
[bdubbs] - Update to Vulkan-Headers and Vulkan-Loader 1.3.290. Fixes #20087.
[bdubbs] - Update to imlib2-1.12.3. Fixes #20088.
July 13th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libreoffice-24.2.5.2. Fixes #20078.
[bdubbs] - Update to pipewire-1.2.1. Fixes #20086.
[bdubbs] - Update to librsvg-2.58.2. Fixes #20083.
[bdubbs] - Update to LVM2.2.03.25. Fixes #20082.
[bdubbs] - Update to libavif-1.1.0. Fixes #20080.
[bdubbs] - Update to gdb-15.1. Fixes #20054.
July 12th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to mupdf-1.24.6. Fixes #20069.
[bdubbs] - Update to xwayland-24.1.1. Fixes #20067.
[bdubbs] - Update to wireshark-4.2.6. Fixes #20065.
[bdubbs] - Update to c-ares-1.32.1. Fixes #20064.
[bdubbs] - Update to unix-tree-2.1.3. Fixes #20063.
[renodr] - Update to firefox-128.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #20056.
[renodr] - Update to mozjs-115.13.0. Fixes #20076.
[renodr] - Update to gtk+-3.24.43 (Security Update). Fixes #20068.
[renodr] - Update to ruby-3.3.4. Fixes #20061.
[renodr] - Update to NetworkManager-1.48.4. Fixes #20052.
[renodr] - Fix building libgsf with libxml2-2.13. Fixes #20071.
[renodr] - Update to asymptote-2.90. Fixes #19989.
[renodr] - Update to libwacom-2.12.2. Fixes #19987.
[renodr] - Update to systemd-256.1. Fixes #19967.
[ken] - Patch gimp-2.10.38 to build with gcc14. Fixes 19886.
[thomas] - Upgrade to nano-8.1. Fixes 20081.
[thomas] - Upgrade to xterm-393. Fixes 20079.
[ken] - Patch gtk+-2.24.33 to build with gcc14.. Fixes 19887.
July 11th, 2024
July 8th, 2024
[rahul] - Update to mesa-24.1.3. Fixes #20041.
[rahul] - Update to php-8.3.9. Fixes #20049.
[rahul] - Update to libxslt-1.1.42. Fixes #20046.
[rahul] - Update to graphviz-12.0.0. Fixes #20047.
[rahul] - Update to p11-kit-0.25.5. Fixes #20044.
[rahul] - Update to libxml2-2.13.2. Fixes #20045.
[rahul] - Update to gnutls-3.8.6. Fixes #20038.
[rahul] - Update to c-ares-1.32.0. Fixes #20050.
July 6th, 2024
July 5th, 2024
July 4th, 2024
[timtas] - Update to httpd-2.4.61 (Security Update). Fixes #20031.
July 3rd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libass-0.17.3. Fixes #20037.
[bdubbs] - Update to libva-2.22.0. Fixes #20034.
[bdubbs] - Update to libplacebo-7.349.0 (note unusual version number change). Fixes #20033.
[bdubbs] - Update to p11-kit-0.25.4. Fixes #20032.
[bdubbs] - Update to unix-tree-2.1.2. Fixes #20030.
[bdubbs] - Update to libqalculate-5.2.0. Fixes #20029.
[bdubbs] - Update to fmt-11.0.0. Fixes #20028.
July 1st, 2024
June 29th, 2024
June 28th, 2024
June 27th, 2024
[rahul] - Update to wireplumber-0.5.4. Fixes #20004.
[rahul] - Update to pipewire-1.2.0. Fixes #20005.
[bdubbs] - Update to kirigami-addons-1.3.0. Fixes #20002.
[bdubbs] - Update to btrfs-progs-v6.9.2. Fixes #20001.
[bdubbs] - Update to xmlto-0.0.29. Fixes #20006.
[bdubbs] - Update to krb5-1.21.3 (Security Update). Fixes #20000.
[bdubbs] - Update to libdrm-2.4.122. Fixes #20003.
[bdubbs] - Update to glslang-14.3.0. Fixes #19999.
[bdubbs] - Update to lua-5.4.7. Fixes #19998.
[bdubbs] - Update to protobuf-27.2. Fixes #19997.
June 25th, 2024
June 23rd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to guile-3.0.10. Fixes #19992.
June 22nd, 2024
June 21st, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libdisplay-info-0.2.0. Fixes #19982.
June 20th, 2024
June 19th, 2024
[xry111] - Remove qtlocation from qt5 and qt5-components. Addresses #19442.
[bdubbs] - Update to uhttpmock-0.11.0. Fixes #19972.
[bdubbs] - Update to psutil-6.0.0 (Python module). Fixes #19971.
[bdubbs] - Update to c-ares-1.31.0. Fixes #19969.
[bdubbs] - Update to libassuan-3.0.0. Fixes #19966.
[bdubbs] - Update to qt6-6.7.2 and qtwebengine-6.7.2. Fixes #19970.
[timtas] - Update to cups-2.4.10. Fixes #19974.
June 18th, 2024
[rahul] - Update to cryptsetup-2.7.3 (Security Update). Fixes #19964.
June 17th, 2024
June 15th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libinput-1.26.0 (Xorg input driver). Fixes #19905.
[bdubbs] - Update to SDL2-2.30.3. Fixes #19904.
[bdubbs] - Update to protobuf-27.1. Fixes #19902.
[bdubbs] - Update Vulkan-Headers and Vulkan-Loader to version 1.3.288. Fixes #19957.
[bdubbs] - Update to enchant-2.8.1. Fixes #19952.
[bdubbs] - Update to freeglut-3.6.0. Fixes #19949.
[bdubbs] - Update to mercurial-6.7.4. Fixes #19948.
[ken] - Patch OpenSP to compile with gcc-14. Fixes #19956.
June 14th, 2024
[xry111] - Update to systemd-256. Fixes #19940.
[xry111] - Patch libxml2-2.13.0 to fix several issues breaking various downstream packages. Fixes #19955.
[bdubbs] - Update to audacious/audacious-plugins-4.4. Fixes #19950.
[bdubbs] - Update to libxslt-1.1.40. Fixes #19946.
[bdubbs] - Update to tcsh-6.24.13. Fixes #19945.
[bdubbs] - Update to Python3-3.12.4 (Security Update). Fixes #19909.
[xry111] - Update to rustc-1.79.0. Fixes #19953.
June 12th, 2024
June 11th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to Spidermonkey-115.12.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19933.
[renodr] - Update to firefox-115.12.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #19934.
[renodr] - Update to cups-2.4.9 (Security Update). Fixes #19937.
[renodr] - Update to mesa-24.1.1. Includes adding the Ply python module, rust-bindgen, SPIRV-LLVM-Translator, and the libclc packages. Fixes #19832.
[bdubbs] - Update to qemu-9.0.1. Fixes #19926.
[bdubbs] - Update to glib-2.80.3. Fixes #19932.
[bdubbs] - Update to libaom-3.9.1 (Security update). Fixes #19935.
[renodr] - Update to xfce4-settings-4.18.6. Fixes #19936.
[renodr] - Archive telepathy-mission-control since it is not needed by any other packages.
[bdubbs] - Update to btrfs-progs-v6.9. Fixes #19915.
June 10th, 2024
June 9th, 2024
June 8th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to nss-3.101. Fixes #19923.
[bdubbs] - Update to xkeyboard-config-2.42. Fixes #19920.
[bdubbs] - Update to c-ares-1.30.0. Fixes #19919.
[bdubbs] - Update to qpdf-11.9.1. Fixes #19918.
[bdubbs] - Update to fribidi-1.0.15. Fixes #19917.
[bdubbs] - Update to pcre2-10.44. Fixes #19916.
June 7th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update Vulkan-Headers and Vulkan-Loader to version 1.3.287. Fixes #19879.
[bdubbs] - Update to llvm-18.1.7. Fixes #19903.
[bdubbs] - Update to mupdf-1.24.3. Fixes #19914.
[bdubbs] - Update to icewm-3.5.1. Fixes #19911.
[renodr] - Update to libreoffice-24.2.4.2 (Security Update). Fixes #19912.
[renodr] - Update to php-8.3.8 (Security Update). Fixes #19908.
[renodr] - Update to vlc-3.0.21 (Security Update). Fixes #19913.
[renodr] - Update to libwacom-2.12.0. Fixes #19906.
[renodr] - Update to cmake-3.29.5. Fixes #19907.
June 5th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Archive gstreamer-vaapi. Fixes #19899.
[bdubbs] - Update to sentry_sdk-2.4.0 (Python module). Fixes #19901.
[bdubbs] - Update to pytest-8.2.2 (Python module). Fixes #19900.
[bdubbs] - Update to cmake-3.29.4. Fixes #19898.
[bdubbs] - Update to poppler-24.06.0. Fixes #19896.
[bdubbs] - Update to opencv and opencv_contrib-4.10.0. Fixes #19895.
[renodr] - Update to vte-0.76.3 (Security Update). Fixes #19897.
[renodr] - Update to wireplumber-0.5.3. Fixes #19894.
[renodr] - Update to NetworkManager-1.48.0. Fixes #19876.
[renodr] - Update to procmail-3.24. Fixes #19891.
[renodr] - Fix building ncftp-3.2.7 with gcc-14. Fixes #19889.
[renodr] - Fix building libgee-0.20.6 with gcc-14. Fixes #19884.
June 4th, 2024
June 2nd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to logrotate-3.22.0. Fixes #19892.
[bdubbs] - Update to highway-1.2.0. Fixes #19881.
[bdubbs] - Update xorg-server tearfree patch for gcc13.
[bdubbs] - Update to libevdev-1.13.2. Fixes #19878.
[bdubbs] - Update to libdrm-2.4.121. Fixes #19893.
[thomas] - Fix a gcc14 issue in cyrus-sasl. Fixes #19890.
June 1st, 2024
May 31st, 2024
[renodr] - Update to epiphany-46.1. Fixes #19872.
[renodr] - Update to gtksourceview-5.12.1. Fixes #19871.
[renodr] - Update to gucharmap-15.1.5. Fixes #19856.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-terminal-3.52.2. Fixes #19855.
[renodr] - Update to nautilus-46.2. Fixes #19852.
[renodr] - Update to libshumate-1.2.2. Fixes #19850.
[renodr] - Update to transmission-4.0.6. Fixes #19867.
[bdubbs] - Update to libvpx-1.14.1. Fixes #19873.
[bdubbs] - Update to ruby-3.3.2. Fixes #19870.
[bdubbs] - Update to wayland-1.23.0. Fixes #19869.
[bdubbs] - Update to libcap-2.70. Fixes #19814.
[renodr] - Update to gdm-46.2. Fixes #19868.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-control-center-46.2. Fixes #19860.
[renodr] - Update to xdg-desktop-portal-gnome-46.2. Fixes #19854.
[renodr] - Update to mutter-46.2. Fixes #19851.
[renodr] - Update gnome-shell and gnome-shell-extensions to 46.2. Fixes #19849.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-online-accounts-3.50.2. Fixes #19848.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-data-server and evolution 3.52.2. Fixes #19842.
[bdubbs] - Restore PyYAML.
May 30th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to firefox-115.11.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #19792.
[renodr] - Disable the sandbox in Firefox on i686 due to issues with system call filtering. Fixes #19775.
[renodr] - Update to spidermonkey-115.11.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19787.
[renodr] - Update to thunderbird-115.11.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19798.
[bdubbs] - Update to gstreamer-1.24.4 and associated plugins. Fixes #19864.
[bdubbs] - Update to mariadb-10.11.8 (Security Update). Fixes #19865.
[bdubbs] - Update to requests-2.32.3 (Python module). Fixes #19866.
May 29th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to OpenJDK-22.0.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19508.
[renodr] - Update to webkitgtk-2.44.2 (Security Update). Fixes #19805.
[renodr] - Update to postgresql-16.3 (Security Update). Fixes #19779.
[bdubbs] - Update to node-20.14.0. Fixes #19862.
[bdubbs] - Add dolphin and dolphin-plugins to KDE applications.
[thomas] - Update to ISC Kea-2.6.0. Fixes #19863.
May 28th, 2024
May 27th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Add a correction to xine-lib to handle ffmpeg-7. Fixes #19718.
[bdubbs] - Add patches to vlc to handle ffmpeg-7 and gcc-14. Addresses #19718.
[bdubbs] - Update to protobuf-27.0. Fixes #19834.
[bdubbs] - Update to libadwaita-1.5.1. Fixes #19841.
[bdubbs] - Update to librsvg-2.58.1. Fixes #19838.
[bdubbs] - Update to plasma-wayland-protocols-1.13.0. Fixes #19837.
[bdubbs] - Update to sentry_sdk-2.3.1 (Python module). Fixes #19835.
[thomas] - Update to evince-46.3. Fixes #19844.
May 26th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to kf6 and plasma packages used by lxqt. Fixes #19781.
[bdubbs] - Update to plasma-6.0.5. Fixes #19680.
[timtas] - Update to vte-0.76.2. Fixes #19853.
[timtas] - Update to gvfs-1.54.1. Fixes #19843.
[bdubbs] - Update to kde-gear-24.05.0 including falkon and kate. Fixes #19833.
[thomas] - Update to ntp-4.2.8p18. Fixes #19847.
May 25th, 2024
May 23rd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to xterm-392. Fixes #19831.
[bdubbs] - Update to pavucontrol-6.0. Fixes #19830.
[bdubbs] - Update to curl-8.8.0. Fixes #19829.
[bdubbs] - Update to umockdev-0.18.3. Fixes #19825.
[bdubbs] - Update to qt6-6.7.1 and qtwebengine-6.7.1. Fixes #19822.
[bdubbs] - Update latest Intel microcode version (Security Update). Fixes #19797.
May 22nd, 2024
[renodr] - Update to SPIRV-Headers and SPIRV-Tools 1.3.283.0. Fixes #19795.
[renodr] - Update Vulkan-Headers and Vulkan-Loader to 1.3.285. Fixes #19760.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-maps-46.11. Fixes #19785.
[renodr] - Update to file-roller-44.3. Fixes #19770.
[renodr] - Update to snapshot-46.3. Fixes #19759.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-calculator-46.1. Fixes #19758.
[renodr] - Fix a regression in gnome-shell that appears when using glib-2.80.2.
[renodr] - Update to glib-2.80.2 (Security Update). Fixes #19764.
[bdubbs] - Update to icewm-3.5.0. Fixes #19824.
[bdubbs] - Update to hicolor-icon-theme-0.18. Fixes #19823.
[bdubbs] - Update to libass-0.17.2. Fixes #19817.
[rahul] - Update to nodejs-20.13.1. Fixes #19765.
[rahul] - Update to mesa-24.0.8. Fixes #19767.
[rahul] - Update to harfbuzz-8.5.0. Fixes #19789.
[rahul] - Update to bluez-5.76. Fixes #19806.
[rahul] - Update to pipewire-1.0.6. Fixes #19782.
[bdubbs] - Update to requests-2.32.2 (Python module). Fixes #19821.
[bdubbs] - Update to gi_docgen-2024.1 (Python module). Fixes #19820.
[bdubbs] - Update to Mako-1.3.5 (Python module). Fixes #19790.
[bdubbs] - Update to lxml-5.2.2 (Python module). Fixes #19783.
[bdubbs] - Update to sentry_sdk-2.2.1 (Python module). Fixes #19826.
[timtas] - Update to openldap-2.6.8. Fixes #19827.
May 21st, 2024
May 20th, 2024
May 19th, 2024
May 18th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to iw-6.9. Fixes #19811.
[bdubbs] - Update to asciidoctor-2.0.23. Fixes #19810.
[bdubbs] - Update to sentry_sdk-2.2.0 (Python module). Fixes #19807.
[bdubbs] - Update to lxqt-openssh-askpass-2.0.1. Fixes #19786.
[bdubbs] - Update to qtermwidget and qterminal-2.0.0. Fixes #19812.
[bdubbs] - Update to kirigami-addons-1.2.1. Fixes #19776.
[bdubbs] - Update to gcc-14.1. Fixes #19762.
[bdubbs] - Update to lxqt-panel-2.0.1. Fixes #19772.
[bdubbs] - Update to libfm-qt-2.0.2. Fixes #19771.
[bdubbs] - Update to unbound-1.20.0. Fixes #19769.
[timtas] - Update to gtk+3-3.24.42. Fixes #19804.
May 16th, 2024
May 15th, 2024
May 14th, 2024
[renodr] - Fix building Inkscape with poppler-24.05.0. Fixes #19794.
[renodr] - Fix building gst-libav with ffmpeg-7.
May 13th, 2024
[renodr] - Fix building sphinx_rtd_theme with docutils-0.21.x. This fixes an error about incompatible versions, but upstream has changed the version range so that it's compatible.
[timtas] - Update to samba-4.20.1. Fixes #19768.
May 11th, 2024
[thomas] - Update to nss-3.100. Fixes #19763.
May 10th, 2024
[thomas] - Update to cmake-3.29.3. Fixes #19766.
May 6th, 2024
May 6th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to lxml-5.2.1 (Python module). Fixes #19068.
[bdubbs] - Update to sphinx-7.3.7 (Python module). Fixes #19676.
[bdubbs] - Update to sphinxcontrib_applehelp-1.0.8 (Python module).
[bdubbs] - Update to alabaster-0.7.16 (Python module).
[bdubbs] - Update to Cython-3.0.10 (Python module). Fixes #18303.
[bdubbs] - Archive PyYaml. Addresses #18303.
May 5th, 2024
[xry111] - Update to rustc-1.78.0. Fixes #19557.
[bdubbs] - Update to libfm-qt-2.0.1, lximage-qt-2.0.1, and lxqt-notificationd-2.0.1. Fixes #19753.
[bdubbs] - Update to xdg-desktop-portal-lxqt-1.0.2. Fixes #19754.
[bdubbs] - Update to pygments-2.18.0 (Python module). Fixes #19752.
[bdubbs] - Update to enchant-2.7.3. Fixes #19751.
[xry111] - Update Python dependencies: attrs-23.2.0, meson_python-0.16.0, and pyproject-metadata-0.8.0. Add hatch-fancy-pypi-readme-24.1.0 to support attrs-23.2.0. Addresses #18562.
[xry111] - Update Python dependencies: editables-0.5, hatchling-1.24.2, hatch-vcs-0.4.0, pathspec-0.12.1, pluggy-1.5.0, setuptools_scm-8.0.4, and typing_extensions-4.11.0. Add trove-classifiers-2024.4.10 to support hatchling-1.24.2. Addresses #18562.
May 4th, 2024
[xry111] - Archive py which is no longer needed by pytest.
May 3rd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libnvme-1.9. Fixes #19749.
[bdubbs] - Update to hwdata-0.382. Fixes #19750.
[bdubbs] - Update to libreoffice-24.2.3.2. Fixes #19745.
[bdubbs] - Update to ibus-1.5.30. Fixes #19747.
[bdubbs] - Update to lynx2.9.1. Fixes #19748.
[thomas] - Update to btrfs-progs-6.8.1. Fixes #19742.
May 2nd, 2024
[renodr] - Update to Net-DNS-1.45 (Perl Module). Fixes #19743.
[renodr] - Update to glslang-14.2.0. Fixes #19744.
[renodr] - Update to gtk4-4.14.4. Fixes #19746.
[renodr] - Update to tracker and tracker-miners 3.7.3. Fixes #19716.
[bdubbs] - Update to poppler-24.05.0. Fixes #19741.
[bdubbs] - Update to nano-8.0. Fixes #19740.
May 1st, 2024
[timtas] - Update to cups-2.4.8. Fixes #19729.
April 30th, 2024
April 29th, 2024
April 28th, 2024
April 27th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to valgrind-3.23.0. Fixes #19727.
[bdubbs] - Update to libarchive-3.7.4 (Security Update). Fixes #19724.
[bdubbs] - Update to AppStream-1.0.3. Fixes #19714.
[bdubbs] - Update to pytest-8.2.0 (Python module). Fixes #19726.
[bdubbs] - Update to wayland-protocols-1.36. Fixes #19725.
[bdubbs] - Update to unrar-7.0.8. Fixes #19722.
[bdubbs] - Update to fribidi-1.0.14. Fixes #19721.
[bdubbs] - Update to enchant-2.7.2. Fixes #19719.
[bdubbs] - Update to libgpg-error-1.49. Fixes #19720.
[bdubbs] - Update to ed-1.20.2. Fixes #19713.
[bdubbs] - Update to libaom-3.9.0. Fixes #19712.
April 26th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to docutils-0.21.2 (Python module). Fixes #19710.
April 25th, 2024
April 24th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to ruby-3.3.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19711.
April 23rd, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gnome-control-center-46.1. Fixes #19708.
[renodr] - Update to xdg-desktop-portal-gnome-46.1. Fixes #19702.
[renodr] - Update to nautilus-46.1. Fixes #19701.
[renodr] - Update to mutter-46.1. Fixes #19700.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-user-docs-46.1. Fixes #19699.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-shell-extensions-46.1. Fixes #19698.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-shell-46.1. Fixes #19698.
[renodr] - Update to gucharmap-15.1.4. Fixes #19696.
[renodr] - Update to wireplumber-0.5.2. Fixes #19709.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-terminal-3.52.1. Fixes #19695.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-maps-46.10. Fixes #19694.
[renodr] - Update to vte-0.76.1. Fixes #19693.
[renodr] - Update to libshumate-1.2.1. Fixes #19692.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-3.52.1. Fixes #19690.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-data-server-3.52.1. Fixes #19690.
[renodr] - Update Vulkan-Headers and Vulkan-Loader to 1.3.283. Fixes #19689.
[bdubbs] - Update to nmap-7.95. Fixes #19707.
[bdubbs] - Update to libxmlb-0.3.19. Fixes #19706.
[bdubbs] - Update to libgusb-0.4.9. Fixes #19705.
April 22nd, 2024
April 21st, 2024
April 20th, 2024
April 19th, 2024
April 18th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to mpv-0.38.0. Fixes #19682.
[bdubbs] - Update to icu-75.1. Fixes #19674.
[bdubbs] - Update to wayland-protocols-1.35. Fixes #19675.
[bdubbs] - Update to glibmm-2.66.7. Fixes #19673.
[thomas] - Update to bind-9.18.26, bind-utils-9.18.26. Fixes #19679.
[thomas] - Update to xfsprogs-6.7.0. Fixes #19677.
[thomas] - Update to NASM-2.16.03. Fixes #19678.
April 17th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to Vulkan-Loader-1.3.282. Fixes #19670.
[bdubbs] - Update to util-macros-1.20.1. Fixes #19669.
[bdubbs] - Update to libXmu-1.2.1 (Xorg library). Fixes #19668.
[renodr] - Update to thunderbird-115.10.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19671.
[renodr] - Update to firefox-115.10.0esr (Security Update). Fixes #19664.
[renodr] - Update to spidermonkey-115.10.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19666.
[renodr] - Update to pipewire-1.0.5. Fixes #19665.
April 16th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to php-8.3.6 (security update). Fixes #19645.
[bdubbs] - Update to sqlite-autoconf-3450300 (3.45.3). Fixes #19662.
[bdubbs] - Update to boost-1.85.0. Fixes #19660.
[ken] - Change details for KDE in tuning fontconfig and note much earlier that the settings for fontconfig may be ignored by applications and desktop environments. Fixes #19667.
[renodr] - Update to xf86-input-wacom-1.2.2. Fixes #19663.
[renodr] - Update to libwacom-2.11.0. Fixes #19661.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-system-monitor-46.0. Fixes #19606.
[renodr] - Add gtkmm-4.14.0 to the book. Fixes #14443.
[renodr] - Add atkmm-2.36.3 to the book. Fixes #14406.
[renodr] - Add pangomm-2.52.0 to the book. Fixes #14405.
[renodr] - Add cairomm-1.18.0 to the book. Fixes #14172.
[renodr] - Add glibmm-2.80.0 to the book. Fixes #14403.
[renodr] - Add libsigc++3 to the book. Fixes #16086.
[bdubbs] - Update to bluez-5.75. Fixes #19655.
[bdubbs] - Fix a build problem for sphinx-7.2.6. Fixes #19659.
[bdubbs] - Update to elogind-255.4-r2. Fixes #19298.
April 15th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gucharmap-15.1.3. Fixes #19477.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-terminal-3.52.0. Fixes #19476.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-logs-45.0. Fixes #19603.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-disk-utility-46.0. Fixes #19602.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-calculator-46.0. Fixes #19599.
[renodr] - Update to file-roller-44.1. Fixes #19598.
[renodr] - Update to evince-46.0. Fixes #19490.
[renodr] - Update to dvisvgm-3.3. Fixes #19642.
[renodr] - Update to asymptote-2.89. Fixes #19543.
[renodr] - Fix bugs in latex2e and dvipdfm-x in texlive. Fixes #19571.
[renodr] - Update to EOG-45.3. Fixes #19475.
[renodr] - Update to baobab-46.0. Fixes #19601.
[renodr] - Update to simple-scan-46.0. Fixes #19620.
[bdubbs] - Update to Python3-3.12.3. Fixes #19633.
[renodr] - Fix CVE-2024-25081 and CVE-2024-25082 in FontForge. Fixes #19545.
[renodr] - Update to libxcb-1.17.0. Fixes #19658.
[renodr] - Update to xcb-proto-1.17.0. Fixes #19657.
[renodr] - Update to vulkan-headers-1.3.282. Fixes #19656.
[renodr] - Update to gtk-4.14.2. Fixes #19583.
April 14th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update the gstreamer stack to 1.24.2. Fixes #19634.
[bdubbs] - Remove overwriting of terminfo data in xterm. Fixes #19611.
[bdubbs] - Update to lxqt-qtplugin-1.4.1. Fixes #19652.
[bdubbs] - Update to plasma-6.0.3. Fixes #19733.
[thomas] - Update to libwebp-1.4.0. Fixes #19654.
[thomas] - Update to opus-1.5.2. Fixes #19653.
April 12th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to kf6-6.1.0. Fixes #19649.
April 12th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gnome-user-docs-46.0. Fixes #19497.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-tweaks-46.0. Fixes #19496.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-session-46.0. Fixes #19504.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-shell-extensions-46.0. Fixes #19472.
[bdubbs] - Update to cmake-3.29.2. Fixes #19644.
[bdubbs] - Update to cryptsetup-2.7.2. Fixes #19630.
[renodr] - Update to gdm-46.0. Fixes #19505.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-shell-46.0. Fixes #19472.
[renodr] - Update to mutter-46.0. Fixes #19473.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-control-center-46.0.1. Fixes #19502.
[renodr] - Update to tecla-46.0. Fixes #19486.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-settings-daemon-46.0. Fixes #19485.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-bluetooth-46.0. Fixes #19503.
[renodr] - Update to nautilus-46.0. Fixes #19501.
[bdubbs] - Update to libxmlb-0.3.18. Fixes #19631.
[bdubbs] - Update to taglib-2.0.1. Fixes #19635.
[bdubbs] - Update to sentry-sdk-1.45.0 (Python module). Fixes #19640.
[bdubbs] - Update to xorg-server-21.1.13. Fixes #19650.
[bdubbs] - Update to xwayland-23.2.6. Fixes #19623.
[renodr] - Update to snapshot-46.2. Fixes #19648.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-online-accounts-3.50.1. Fixes #19647.
[renodr] - Update to gcr4-4.3.0. Fixes #19646.
[renodr] - Update to libgtop-2.41.3. Fixes #19627.
[renodr] - Update to epiphany-46.0. Fixes #19491.
[renodr] - Update to WebKitGTK-2.44.1. Fixes #19622.
[bdubbs] - Update to docutils-0.21.1 (Python module). Fixes #19632.
[bdubbs] - Update to Mako-1.3.3 (Python module). Fixes #19639.
April 11th, 2024
April 10th, 2024
April 9th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to xdg-desktop-portal-gnome-46.0. Fixes #19624.
[bdubbs] - Update to qt6-6.7.0 and qtwebengine-6.7.0. Fixes #19575.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-backgrounds-46.0. Fixes #19625.
[renodr] - Update to tracker-miners-3.7.1. Fixes #19482.
[renodr] - Update to tracker-3.7.1. Fixes #19482.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-3.52.0. Fixes #19481.
[renodr] - Update to evolution-data-server-3.52.0. Fixes #19481.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-maps-46.0. Fixes #19506.
[renodr] - Update to libshumate-1.2.0. Fixes #19492.
[renodr] - Add abseil-cpp, protobuf, and protobuf-c in support of libshumate and other packages. Part of #19492.
April 8th, 2024
[renodr] - Update TigerVNC to use xorg-server-21.1.12. This protects Xvnc against the security vulnerabilities fixed in that update.
[bdubbs] - Update to httpd-2.4.59 (Security Update). Fixes #19507.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-online-accounts-3.50.0. Fixes #19480.
[renodr] - Update to pygobject-3.48.2 (Python Module). Fixes #19613.
[renodr] - Archive gnome-video-effects. Fixes #19488.
[renodr] - Update to gtksourceview-5.12.0. Fixes #19590.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-keyring-46.1. Fixes #19484.
[bdubbs] - Update to xwayland-23.2.5 (Security Update). Fixes #19579.
[bdubbs] - Update to xorg-server-21.1.12 (Security Update). Addresses #19579.
[bdubbs] - Update to nghttp2-1.61.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19596.
April 7th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libX11-1.8.9 (Xorg library). Fixes #19610.
[bdubbs] - Update to mtdev-1.1.7. Fixes #19608.
[bdubbs] - Update to tcsh-6.24.12. Fixes #19607.
[bdubbs] - Update to tepl-6.9.0. Fixes #19591.
[bdubbs] - Update to libgedit-gtksourceview-299.1.0. Fixes #19515.
[rahul] - Update to nodejs-20.12.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19552.
[rahul] - Update to samba-4.20.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19554.
[rahul] - Update to mesa-24.0.4. Fixes #19556.
April 6th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Move luit from xorg apps to it's own page. Fixes #19578.
[bdubbs] - Update to gnutls-3.8.5. Fixes #19592.
[bdubbs] - Update to enchant-2.6.9. Fixes #19593.
[bdubbs] - Update to hwdata-0.381. Fixes #19594.
[bdubbs] - Update to at-spi2-core-2.52.0. Fixes #19587.
[bdubbs] - Update to sentry-sdk-1.44.1. Fixes #19582.
[bdubbs] - Move libwnck from gnome section to xfce section. Fixes #19577.
[thomas] - Update to pciutils-3.12.0. Fixes #19609.
April 5th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libxmlb-0.3.17. Fixes #19580.
[thomas] - Update to gtkmm-3.24.9. Fixes #19589.
[thomas] - Update to cairomm-1.14.5. Fixes #19588.
[thomas] - Update to poppler-24.04.0. Fixes #19574.
[thomas] - Update to mupdf-1.24.1. Fixes #19576.
[thomas] - Update to mpg123-1.32.6. Fixes #19605.
[thomas] - Update to nasm-2.16.02. Fixes #19595.
[xry111] - Update to LLVM-18.1.2. Addresses #19438.
April 4th, 2024
[renodr] - Update to gnome-weather-46.0. Fixes #19586.
[renodr] - Update to libgweather-4.4.2. Fixes #19522.
[renodr] - Adapt Firefox to use Google's Location Service by removing our MLS API key. Fixes #19541.
[renodr] - Adapt Geoclue to use Google's Location Service due to the Mozilla Location Service shutdown. Fixes #19541.
[renodr] - Update to gjs-1.80.2. Fixes #19487.
[renodr] - Update to snapshot-46.1. Fixes #19507.
[renodr] - Update to wireplumber-0.5.1. Fixes #19567.
[thomas] - Update to pango-1.52.2. Fixes #19585.
[thomas] - Update to cmake-3.29.1. Fixes #19584.
April 3rd, 2024
April 2nd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to libreoffice-24.2.2.2. Fixes #19559.
[bdubbs] - Update to kirigami-addons-1.1.0. Fixes #19573.
[bdubbs] - Update to gobject-introspection-1.80.1. Fixes #19572.
[ken] - Update to biber-2.20 with biblatex-3.20 and update related perl items: Module-Build-0.4234 (Perl Module), Alien-Build-2.80, B-Hooks-EndOfScope-0.28, CPAN-Meta-Check-0.18, DateTime-1.65, DateTime-Locale-1.40, DateTime-TimeZone=2.62, Devel-StackTrace-2.05, Exporter-Tiny-1.006002, File-Listing-6.16, HTML-Tagset-3.24, HTTP-Cookies-6.11, HTTP-Date-6.06, HTTP-Message-6.45, Net-SSLeay-1.94, Test-Warnings-0.033, Tie-Cycle-1.228, Variable-Magic-0.64, XML-LibXML-2.0210 (Perl Dependent Modules). Archive: Importer, Module-Pluggable, Sub-Info (Perl Dependent Modules). Thanks to Stephen Berman for reporting Net-SSLeay no-longer passed its tests, and to Bruce for diagnosing this. Fixes #19528.
April 1st, 2024
[thomas] - Upgrade c-ares-1.28.1. Fixes #19566.
[renodr] - Fix building Inkscape with poppler-24.03.0. Fixes #19570.
[bdubbs] - Update to libical-3.0.18. Fixes #19568.
[bdubbs] - Update to jasper-4.2.3. Fixes #19565.
[bdubbs] - Update to soundtouch-2.3.3. Fixes #19564.
[bdubbs] - Update to mercurial-6.7.2. Fixes #19562.
[bdubbs] - Update to harfbuzz-8.4.0. Fixes #19561.
March 31st, 2024
[renodr] - Update to librsvg-2.58.0. Fixes #19433.
March 30th, 2024
March 29th, 2024
[thomas] - Update to shadow-4.15.1. Fixes #19532.
March 28th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to qt6-6.6.3 and qtwebengine-6.6.3. Fixes #19551.
March 28th, 2024
[timtas] - Update to libva-2.21.0. Fixes #19546.
[bdubbs] - Update to bubblewrap-0.9.0. Fixes #19549.
[bdubbs] - Update to URI-5.28 (Perl Module). Fixes #19550.
[bdubbs] - Update to libblockdev-3.1.1. Fixes #19548.
[bdubbs] - Update to btrfs-progs-v6.8. Fixes #19547.
[bdubbs] - Update to xorgproto-2024.1. Fixes #19544.
March 27th, 2024
[timtas] - Update to cURL-8.7.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19553.
[thomas] - Fix a misconfiguration in LibreOffice on i686 systems.
[timtas] - Force vlc to compile against lua52.
March 26th, 2024
March 25th, 2024
March 24th, 2024
March 24th, 2024
March 23rd, 2024
March 22nd, 2024
[rahul] - Update to cmake-3.29.0. Fixes #19525.
[rahul] - Update to gtk4-4.14.1. Fixes #19464.
[rahul] - Update to pipewire-1.0.4. Fixes #19462.
[renodr] - Update to spidermonkey-115.9.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19500.
[ken] - Update to firefox-115.9.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19529.
[bdubbs] - Update to mercurial-6.7.1. Fixes #19526.
March 21st, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to bind utilities/bind-9.18.25. Fixes #19521.
[bdubbs] - Update to wayland-protocols-1.34. Fixes #19520.
[bdubbs] - Update to libcloudproviders-0.3.6. Fixes #19519.
[bdubbs] - Update to SPIRV-Headers-1.3.280.0. Fixes #19518.
[bdubbs] - Update to mupdf-1.24.0. Fixes #19516.
[bdubbs] - Update to adwaita-icon-theme-46.0. Fixes #19514.
[bdubbs] - Update to pinentry-1.3.0. Fixes #19513.
[bdubbs] - Update to glad-2.0.6. Fixes #19512.
March 20th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to elogind-252.23. Fixes #19509.
[bdubbs] - Update to harfbuzz-8.3.1. Fixes #19494.
[bdubbs] - Update to mercurial-6.7. Fixes #19469.
[ken] - Update to texlive 2024. Fixes #19463.
[ken] - Remove old ConTeXt fixes from texlive source. Fixes #18349.
[timtas] - Update to vte-0.76.0. Fixes #19474.
[renodr] - Adapt rsync to LZ4 now being in LFS.
[bdubbs] - Update to bluefish-2.2.15. Fixes #19493.
[bdubbs] - Update to wireplumber-0.5.0. Fixes #19089.
[timtas] - Update to thunderbird-115.9.0. Fixes #19515.
[thomas] - Update to libpaper-2.2.5. Fixes #19511.
March 19th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to tk8.6.14. Fixes #19498.
[bdubbs] - Update to SCons-4.7.0. Fixes #19495.
[bdubbs] - Update to glib-networking-2.80.0. Fixes #19470.
[ken] - Update to firefox-115.9.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19499.
[bdubbs] - Update to nss-3.99. Fixes #19467.
[bdubbs] - Update to vala-0.56.16. Fixes #19465.
[bdubbs] - Update to libaom-3.8.2. Fixes #19461.
[thomas] - Update to libpaper-2.2.3. Fixes #19445.
[bdubbs] - Update to tcsh-6.24.11. Fixes #19457.
[bdubbs] - Update to jasper-4.2.2. Fixes #19454.
[bdubbs] - Update to libqalculate-5.0.0. Fixes #19453.
March 18th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to xapian-core-1.4.25. Fixes #19427.
[bdubbs] - Update to iceauth-1.0.10 (Xorg app). Fixes #19450.
[bdubbs] - Update to libXaw-1.0.16 (Xorg library). Fixes #19451.
[bdubbs] - Update to packaging-24.0 (Python module). Fixes #19448.
[bdubbs] - Update to pygobject3-3.48.1 (Python module). Fixes #19440.
[bdubbs] - Update to pytest-8.1.1 (Python module). Fixes #19443.
[timtas] - Update to gvfs-1.54.0. Fixes #19483.
[bdubbs] - Update to HTML-Parser-3.82 (Perl module). Fixes #19458.
[bdubbs] - Update to libwww-perl-6.77 (Perl module). Fixes #19447.
[bdubbs] - Update to LWP-Protocol-https-6.14 (Perl module). Fixes #19446.
[bdubbs] - Update to asciidoctor-2.0.22. Fixes #19437.
[bdubbs] - Update to shadow-4.15.0. Fixes #19432.
[thomas] - Update to glslang-14.1.0. Fixes #19435.
[thomas] - Update to php-8.3.4. Fixes #19466.
[thomas] - Update to wget-1.24.5. Fixes #19449.
[thomas] - Update to at-spi2-core-2.50.2. Fixes #19471.
March 17th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to sddm-0.21.0. Fixes #19360.
[bdubbs] - Add xdotool-3.20211022.1 in support of plasma6. Addresses #19373.
[bdubbs] - Add libdisplay-info-0.1.1 in support of plasma6. Addresses #19373.
[bdubbs] - Add hwdata-0.380 in support of plasma6. Addresses #19373.
[bdubbs] - Add kirigami-addons-1.0.1 in support of plasma6. Addresses #19373.
[bdubbs] - Add qcoro-0.10.0 in support of plasma6. Addresses #19373.
[thomas] - Update to libxml2-2.12.6. Fixes #19468.
[xry111] - Archive wpebackend-fdo and libwpe. Fixes #18460.
[xry111] - Update to WebKitGTK-2.44.0. Fixes #19478.
March 16th, 2024
[timtas] - Update to mesa-24.0.3. Fixes #19459.
March 15th, 2024
March 14th, 2024
[xry111] - Add dtc-1.7.0 for supporting qemu-8.2.2.
March 12th, 2024
March 10th, 2024
March 9th, 2024
March 7th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Revert to pytest-8.0.2 (Python Module). Fixes #19417.
[renodr] - Update to pyparsing-3.1.2 (Python Module). Fixes #19416.
[renodr] - Update to libassuan-2.5.7. Fixes #19415.
[renodr] - Update to SDL2-2.30.1. Fixes #19412.
[renodr] - Update to umockdev-0.18.0. Fixes #19399.
[renodr] - Update to opus-1.5.1. Fixes #19409.
[renodr] - Update to uhttpmock-0.10.0. Fixes #19406.
[renodr] - Update to vala-0.56.15. Fixes #19405.
[renodr] - Update to mkfontscale-1.2.3, xauth-1.1.3, xev-1.2.6, xmessage-1.0.7, xpr-1.2.0, and xrefresh-1.1.0 (Xorg Applications). Fixes #19402.
[renodr] - Update to gdb-14.2. Fixes #19398.
March 6th, 2024
[xry111] - Update to SeaMonkey-2.53.18.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19420.
[xry111] - Update to LLVM-18.1.0. Fixes #19413.
[renodr] - Update to thunderbird-115.8.1 (Security Update). Fixes #19411.
[renodr] - Update to xf86-input-wacom-1.2.1 (Xorg Driver). Fixes #19403.
[renodr] - Update to gtk-doc-1.34.0. Fixes #19410.
[renodr] - Update to gnome-maps-45.5. Fixes #19397.
[renodr] - Update to gcr-4.2.1. Fixes #19396.
[renodr] - Update to libadwaita-1.4.4. Fixes #19395.
[renodr] - Update to pytest-8.1.0 (Python Module). Fixes #19401.
[bdubbs] - Finish updating to kf6-apps. Fixes #19375.
[xry111] - Archive PCRE1. Fixes #18893.
March 5th, 2024
March 4th, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to poppler-24.03.0. Fixes #19400.
March 4th, 2024
March 3rd, 2024
[bdubbs] - Update to encodings-1.1.0 (Xorg Font). Fixes #19393.
[bdubbs] - Update to libXcursor-1.2.2 (Xorg Library) and libfontenc-1.1.8 (Xorg Library). Fixes #19392 and #19389.
[bdubbs] - Update to libxcb-1.16.1. Fixes #19391.
[bdubbs] - Update to libXdmcp-1.1.5. Fixes #19394.
[bdubbs] - Update to nghttp2-1.60.0. Fixes #19386.
[bdubbs] - Update to mdadm-4.3. Fixes #19377.
[bdubbs] - Update to pixman-0.43.4. Fixes #19376.
[bdubbs] - Update to mesa-24.0.2. Fixes #19374.
[bdubbs] - Update to a52dec-0.8.0. Fixes #19368.
[bdubbs] - Update to swig-4.2.1. Fixes #19365.
[bdubbs] - Update to qpdf-11.9.0. Fixes #19363.
[bdubbs] - Update to libunistring-1.2. Fixes #19361.
[bdubbs] - Update to libpng-1.6.43. Fixes #19354.
[bdubbs] - Update to mupdf-1.23.11. Fixes #19347.
[bdubbs] - Update to polkit-qt-1-0.200.0. Fixes #19345.
[bdubbs] - Update to python-dbusmock-0.31.1 (Python module). Fixes #19356.
[bdubbs] - Update to npth-1.7. Fixes #19353.
[bdubbs] - Update to libksba-1.6.6. Fixes #19352.
[bdubbs] - Update to libgpg-error-1.48. Fixes #19351.
[thomas] - Update to pciutils-3.11.1. Fixes #19364.
[xry111] - Update to shadow-4.14.6. Fixes #19385.
March 2nd, 2024
[renodr] - Update to epiphany-45.3. Fixes #19381.
[renodr] - Update to glib-networking-2.78.1. Fixes #19378.
[renodr] - Update to AppStream-1.0.2. Fixes #19362.
[renodr] - Update to libsecret-0.21.4. Fixes #19358.
[renodr] - Update to glm-1.0.1. Fixes #19369.
[renodr] - Update to OpenJPEG-2.5.2 (Security Update). Fixes #19370.
[renodr] - Update to c-ares-1.27.0 (Security Update). Fixes #19357.
[renodr] - Update to NetworkManager-1.46.0. Fixes #19350.
[renodr] - Update to Spidermonkey-115.8.0. Fixes #19344.
[bdubbs] - Update to asciidoctor-2.0.21. Fixes #19341.
[bdubbs] - Update to mpg123-1.32.5. Fixes #19328.
[bdubbs] - Update to pytest-8.0.2 (Python module). Fixes #19326.
[bdubbs] - Update to pcre2-10.43. Fixes #19062.
[renodr] - Enable support for Vulkan in ffmpeg again. Fixes #19390.
[renodr] - Update to jasper-4.2.1. Fixes #19340.
[renodr] - Update to Vulkan-Headers and Vulkan-Loader 1.3.279. Fixes #19327.
[renodr] - Update to giflib-5.2.2 (Security Update). Fixes #19335.
[bdubbs] - Update to unrar-7.0.7. Fixes #18768.
[timtas] - Update to xfce4-panel-4.18.6. Fixes #19379.
[timtas] - Update to xarchiver-0.5.4.23. Fixes #19383.
[timtas] - Update to xfce4-terminal-1.1.3. Fixes #19380.
March 1st, 2024
[bdubbs] - Release of BLFS-12.1.
The linuxfromscratch.org server is hosting a number of mailing lists that are used for the development of the BLFS book. These lists include, among others, the main development and support lists.
For more information regarding which lists are available, how to subscribe to them, archive locations, etc., visit https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/mail.html.
The BLFS Project has created a Wiki for editors to comment on pages and instructions at https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki.
When editor notes are
present, a link appears in the form https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/pkgname
right below the dependency list. The idea behind the editor
notes is to give additional information about the package
and/or its build instructions, common pitfalls or maybe even
more sophisticated configuration for special cases of use.
The vast majority of the packages do not have editor notes.
The editor notes might be outdated. Even though the pages should be reviewed when a package is updated, it might happen that there are notes referring to an obsolete version and therefore, the notes might be out of date. Always check the date of the notes and more importantly, the version of the package the notes refer to.
If you encounter a problem while using this book, and your problem is not listed in the FAQ (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq), you will find that most of the people on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and on the mailing lists are willing to help you. An overview of the LFS mailing lists can be found in Mailing lists. To assist us in diagnosing and solving your problem, include as much relevant information as possible in your request for help.
Before asking for help, you should review the following items:
Is the hardware support compiled into the kernel or
available as a module to the kernel? If it is a module,
is it configured properly in modprobe.conf and has it been loaded?
You should use lsmod as the
root user to see if
it's loaded. Check the sys.log file or run modprobe <driver>
to review any error message. If it loads properly, you
may need to add the modprobe command to
your boot scripts.
Are your permissions properly set, especially for
devices? LFS uses groups to make these settings easier,
but it also adds the step of adding users to groups to
allow access. A simple usermod -G audio <user>
may be all that's necessary for that user to have
access to the sound system. Any question that starts
out with “It
works as root, but not as ...” requires a
thorough review of permissions prior to asking.
BLFS liberally uses /opt/.
The main objection to this centers around the need to
expand your environment variables for each package
placed there (e.g., PATH=$PATH:/opt/kde/bin). In most
cases, the package instructions will walk you through
the changes, but some will not. The section called
“Going
Beyond BLFS” is available to help you
check.
<package>
Apart from a brief explanation of the problem you're having, the essential things to include in your request are:
the version of the book you are using (being 12.2),
the package or section giving you problems,
the exact error message or symptom you are receiving,
whether you have deviated from the book or LFS at all,
if you are installing a BLFS package on a non-LFS system.
(Note that saying that you've deviated from the book doesn't mean that we won't help you. It'll just help us to see other possible causes of your problem.)
Expect guidance instead of specific instructions. If you are instructed to read something, please do so. It generally implies that the answer was way too obvious and that the question would not have been asked if a little research was done prior to asking. The volunteers in the mailing list prefer not to be used as an alternative to doing reasonable research on your end. In addition, the quality of your experience with BLFS is also greatly enhanced by this research, and the quality of volunteers is enhanced because they don't feel that their time has been abused, so they are far more likely to participate.
An excellent article on asking for help on the Internet in general has been written by Eric S. Raymond. It is available online at http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html. Read and follow the hints in that document and you are much more likely to get a response to start with and also to get the help you actually need.
Many people have contributed both directly and indirectly to BLFS. This page lists all of those we can think of. We may well have left people out and if you feel this is the case, drop us a line. Many thanks to all of the LFS community for their assistance with this project.
Rahul Chandra
Bruce Dubbs
Pierre Labastie
Ken Moffat
Douglas Reno
Xi Ruoyao
Thomas Trepl
The list of contributors is far too large to provide detailed information about the contributions for each contributor. Over the years, the following individuals have provided significant inputs to the book:
Timothy Bauscher
Daniel Bauman
Jeff Bauman
Andy Benton
Wayne Blaszczyk
Paul Campbell
Nathan Coulson
Jeroen Coumans
Guy Dalziel
Robert Daniels
Richard Downing
Manuel Canales Esparcia
Jim Gifford
Manfred Glombowski
Ag Hatzimanikas
Mark Hymers
James Iwanek
David Jensen
Jeremy Jones
Seth Klein
Alex Kloss
Eric Konopka
Larry Lawrence
D-J Lucas
Chris Lynn
Andrew McMurry
Randy McMurchy
Denis Mugnier
Billy O'Connor
Fernando de Oliveira
Alexander Patrakov
Olivier Peres
Andreas Pedersen
Henning Rohde
Matt Rogers
James Robertson
Henning Rohde
Chris Staub
Jesse Tie-Ten-Quee
Ragnar Thomsen
Tushar Teredesai
Jeremy Utley
Zack Winkles
Christian Wurst
Igor Živković
Fernando Arbeiza
Miguel Bazdresch
Gerard Beekmans
Oliver Brakmann
Jeremy Byron
Ian Chilton
David Ciecierski
Jim Harris
Lee Harris
Marc Heerdink
Steffen Knollmann
Eric Konopka
Scot McPherson
Ted Riley
Please direct your emails to one of the BLFS mailing lists. See Mailing lists for more information on the available mailing lists.
This chapter is used to explain some of the policies used throughout the book, to introduce important concepts and to explain some issues you may see with some of the included packages.
Those people who have built an LFS system may be aware of the general principles of downloading and unpacking software. Some of that information is repeated here for those new to building their own software.
Each set of installation instructions contains a URL from which you can download the package. The patches; however, are stored on the LFS servers and are available via HTTP. These are referenced as needed in the installation instructions.
While you can keep the source files anywhere you like, we assume that you have unpacked the package and changed into the directory created by the unpacking process (the source directory). We also assume you have uncompressed any required patches and they are in the directory immediately above the source directory.
We can not emphasize strongly enough that you should start from
a clean source tree each
time. This means that if you have had an error during
configuration or compilation, it's usually best to delete the
source tree and re-unpack it before trying again. This obviously
doesn't apply if you're an advanced user used to hacking
Makefiles and C code, but if in
doubt, start from a clean tree.
The golden rule of Unix System Administration is to use your
superpowers only when necessary. Hence, BLFS recommends that
you build software as an unprivileged user and only become
the root user when installing
the software. This philosophy is followed in all the packages
in this book. Unless otherwise specified, all instructions
should be executed as an unprivileged user. The book will
advise you on instructions that need root privileges.
If a file is in .tar format and
compressed, it is unpacked by running one of the following
commands:
tar -xvf filename.tar.gz tar -xvf filename.tgz tar -xvf filename.tar.Z tar -xvf filename.tar.bz2
You may omit using the v
parameter in the commands shown above and below if you wish
to suppress the verbose listing of all the files in the
archive as they are extracted. This can help speed up the
extraction as well as make any errors produced during the
extraction more obvious to you.
You can also use a slightly different method:
bzcat filename.tar.bz2 | tar -xv
Finally, sometimes we have a compressed patch file in
.patch.gz or .patch.bz2 format. The best way to apply
the patch is piping the output of the decompressor to the
patch utility.
For example:
gzip -cd ../patchname.patch.gz | patch -p1
Or for a patch compressed with bzip2:
bzcat ../patchname.patch.bz2 | patch -p1
Generally, to verify that the downloaded file is complete,
many package maintainers also distribute md5sums of the
files. To verify the md5sum of the downloaded files, download
both the file and the corresponding md5sum file to the same
directory (preferably from different on-line locations), and
(assuming file.md5sum is the
md5sum file downloaded) run the following command:
md5sum -c file.md5sum
If there are any errors, they will be reported. Note that the
BLFS book includes md5sums for all the source files also. To
use the BLFS supplied md5sums, you can create a file.md5sum (place the md5sum data and the
exact name of the downloaded file on the same line of a file,
separated by white space) and run the command shown above.
Alternately, simply run the command shown below and compare
the output to the md5sum data shown in the BLFS book.
md5sum <name_of_downloaded_file>
MD5 is not cryptographically secure, so the md5sums are only provided for detecting unmalicious changes to the file content. For example, an error or truncation introduced during network transfer, or a “stealth” update to the package from the upstream (updating the content of a released tarball instead of making a new release properly).
There is no “100%” secure way to make sure the genuity of the source files. Assuming the upstream is managing their website correctly (the private key is not leaked and the domain is not hijacked), and the trust anchors have been set up correctly using make-ca-1.14 on the BLFS system, we can reasonably trust download URLs to the upstream official website with https protocol. Note that BLFS book itself is published on a website with https, so you should already have some confidence in https protocol or you wouldn't trust the book content.
If the package is downloaded from an unofficial location (for example a local mirror), checksums generated by cryptographically secure digest algorithms (for example SHA256) can be used to verify the genuity of the package. Download the checksum file from the upstream official website (or somewhere you can trust) and compare the checksum of the package from unofficial location with it. For example, SHA256 checksum can be checked with the command:
If the checksum and the package are downloaded from the same untrusted location, you won't gain security enhancement by verifying the package with the checksum. The attacker can fake the checksum as well as compromising the package itself.
sha256sum -c file.sha256sum
If GnuPG-2.4.5 is installed, you can also verify the genuity of the package with a GPG signature. Import the upstream GPG public key with:
gpg --recv-key keyID
keyID should be
replaced with the key ID from somewhere you can trust (for example,
copy it from the upstream official website using https). Now
you can verify the signature with:
gpg --recv-keyfile.sigfile
The advantage of GnuPG signature is, once you imported a public key which can be trusted, you can download both the package and its signature from the same unofficial location and verify them with the public key. So you won't need to connect to the official upstream website to retrieve a checksum for each new release. You only need to update the public key if it's expired or revoked.
For larger packages, it is convenient to create log files
instead of staring at the screen hoping to catch a particular
error or warning. Log files are also useful for debugging and
keeping records. The following command allows you to create
an installation log. Replace <command> with the
command you intend to execute.
( <command> 2>&1 | tee compile.log && exit $PIPESTATUS )
2>&1 redirects error
messages to the same location as standard output. The
tee command
allows viewing of the output while logging the results to a
file. The parentheses around the command run the entire
command in a subshell and finally the exit $PIPESTATUS command
ensures the result of the <command> is returned
as the result and not the result of the tee command.
For many modern systems with multiple processors (or cores) the compilation time for a package can be reduced by performing a "parallel make" by either setting an environment variable or telling the make program to simultaneously execute multiple jobs.
For instance, an Intel Core i9-13900K CPU contains 8 performance (P) cores and 16 efficiency (E) cores, and the P cores support SMT (Simultaneous MultiThreading, also known as “Hyper-Threading”) so each P core can run two threads simultaneously and the Linux kernel will treat each P core as two logical cores. As a result, there are 32 logical cores in total. To utilize all these logical cores running make, we can set an environment variable to tell make to run 32 jobs simultaneously:
export MAKEFLAGS='-j32'
or just building with:
make -j32
If you have applied the optional sed when building ninja in LFS, you can use:
export NINJAJOBS=32
when a package uses ninja, or just:
ninja -j32
If you are not sure about the number of logical cores, run the nproc command.
For make, the default number of jobs is 1. But for ninja, the default number of jobs is N + 2 if the number of logical cores N is greater than 2; or N + 1 if N is 1 or 2. The reason to use a number of jobs slightly greater than the number of logical cores is keeping all logical processors busy even if some jobs are performing I/O operations.
Note that the -j switches only
limits the parallel jobs started by make or ninja, but each job may
still spawn its own processes or threads. For example,
ld.gold will
use multiple threads for linking, and some tests of packages
can spawn multiple threads for testing thread safety
properties. There is no generic way for the building system
to know the number of processes or threads spawned by a job.
So generally we should not consider the value passed with
-j a hard limit of the number of
logical cores to use. Read the
section called “Use Linux Control Group to Limit the Resource
Usage” if you want to set such a hard limit.
Generally the number of processes should not exceed the
number of cores supported by the CPU too much. To list the
processors on your system, issue: grep processor
/proc/cpuinfo.
In some cases, using multiple processes may result in a race condition where the success of the build depends on the order of the commands run by the make program. For instance, if an executable needs File A and File B, attempting to link the program before one of the dependent components is available will result in a failure. This condition usually arises because the upstream developer has not properly designated all the prerequisites needed to accomplish a step in the Makefile.
If this occurs, the best way to proceed is to drop back to a
single processor build. Adding -j1 to a make command will override the
similar setting in the MAKEFLAGS
environment variable.
Another problem may occur with modern CPU's, which have a lot of cores. Each job started consumes memory, and if the sum of the needed memory for each job exceeds the available memory, you may encounter either an OOM (Out of Memory) kernel interrupt or intense swapping that will slow the build beyond reasonable limits.
Some compilations with g++ may consume up to 2.5 GB of memory, so to be safe, you should restrict the number of jobs to (Total Memory in GB)/2.5, at least for big packages such as LLVM, WebKitGtk, QtWebEngine, or libreoffice.
Sometimes we want to limit the resource usage when we build a package. For example, when we have 8 logical cores, we may want to use only 6 cores for building the package and reserve another 2 cores for playing a movie. The Linux kernel provides a feature called control groups (cgroup) for such a need.
Enable control group in the kernel configuration, then rebuild the kernel and reboot if necessary:
General setup ---> [*] Control Group support ---> [CGROUPS] [*] Memory controller [MEMCG] [*] Cpuset controller [CPUSETS]
Ensure Systemd-256.4 and Shadow-4.16.0 have been
rebuilt with Linux-PAM-1.6.1 support (if you are
interacting via a SSH or graphical session, also ensure the
OpenSSH-9.8p1 server or the desktop
manager has been built with Linux-PAM-1.6.1). As the
root user, create a
configuration file to allow resource control without
root privilege, and instruct
systemd to
reload the configuration:
mkdir -pv /etc/systemd/system/user@.service.d &&
cat > /etc/systemd/system/user@.service.d/delegate.conf << EOF &&
[Service]
Delegate=memory cpuset
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload
Then logout and login again. Now to run make -j5 with the first 4 logical cores and 8 GB of system memory, issue:
systemctl --user start dbus &&
systemd-run --user --pty --pipe --wait -G -d \
-p MemoryHigh=8G \
-p AllowedCPUs=0-3 \
make -j5
With MemoryHigh=8G , a soft
limit of memory usage is set. If the processes in the cgroup
(make and all
the descendants of it) uses more than 8 GB of system memory
in total, the kernel will throttle down the processes and try
to reclaim the system memory from them. But they can still
use more than 8 GB of system memory. If you want to make a
hard limit instead, replace MemoryHigh with MemoryMax. But doing so
will cause the processes killed if 8 GB is not enough for
them.
AllowedCPUs=0-3 makes
the kernel only run the processes in the cgroup on the
logical cores with numbers 0, 1, 2, or 3. You may need to
adjust this setting based the mapping between the logical
cores and the physical cores. For example, with an Intel Core
i9-13900K CPU, the logical cores 0, 2, 4, ..., 14 are mapped
to the first threads of the eight physical P cores, the
logical cores 1, 3, 5, ..., 15 are mapped to the second
threads of the physical P cores, and the logical cores 16,
17, ..., 31 are mapped to the 16 physical E cores. So if we
want to use four threads from four different P cores, we need
to specify 0,2,4,6 instead of
0-3. Note that the other CPU
models may use a different mapping scheme. If you are not
sure about the mapping between the logical cores and the
physical cores, run the lscpu
--extended command which will output logical
core IDs in the CPU
column, and physical core IDs in the CORE column.
When the nproc
or ninja
command runs in a cgroup, it will use the number of logical
cores assigned to the cgroup as the “system logical core
count.” For example, in a cgroup with logical
cores 0-3 assigned, nproc will print
4, and ninja will run 6 (4 + 2)
jobs simultaneously if no -j
setting is explicitly given.
Read the man pages systemd-run(1) and systemd.resource-control(5) for the detailed explanation of parameters in the command.
There are times when automating the building of a package can
come in handy. Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to
automate building, and everyone goes about it in their own
way. Creating Makefiles,
Bash scripts, Perl scripts or simply a list of
commands used to cut and paste are just some of the methods
you can use to automate building BLFS packages. Detailing how
and providing examples of the many ways you can automate the
building of packages is beyond the scope of this section.
This section will expose you to using file redirection and
the yes command
to help provide ideas on how to automate your builds.
You will find times throughout your BLFS journey when you will come across a package that has a command prompting you for information. This information might be configuration details, a directory path, or a response to a license agreement. This can present a challenge to automate the building of that package. Occasionally, you will be prompted for different information in a series of questions. One method to automate this type of scenario requires putting the desired responses in a file and using redirection so that the program uses the data in the file as the answers to the questions.
This effectively makes the test suite use the responses in the file as the input to the questions. Occasionally you may end up doing a bit of trial and error determining the exact format of your input file for some things, but once figured out and documented you can use this to automate building the package.
Sometimes you will only need to provide one response, or provide the same response to many prompts. For these instances, the yes command works really well. The yes command can be used to provide a response (the same one) to one or more instances of questions. It can be used to simulate pressing just the Enter key, entering the Y key or entering a string of text. Perhaps the easiest way to show its use is in an example.
First, create a short Bash script by entering the following commands:
cat > blfs-yes-test1 << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
echo -n -e "\n\nPlease type something (or nothing) and press Enter ---> "
read A_STRING
if test "$A_STRING" = ""; then A_STRING="Just the Enter key was pressed"
else A_STRING="You entered '$A_STRING'"
fi
echo -e "\n\n$A_STRING\n\n"
EOF
chmod 755 blfs-yes-test1
Now run the script by issuing ./blfs-yes-test1 from the command line. It will wait for a response, which can be anything (or nothing) followed by the Enter key. After entering something, the result will be echoed to the screen. Now use the yes command to automate the entering of a response:
yes | ./blfs-yes-test1
Notice that piping yes by itself to the script results in y being passed to the script. Now try it with a string of text:
yes 'This is some text' | ./blfs-yes-test1
The exact string was used as the response to the script. Finally, try it using an empty (null) string:
yes '' | ./blfs-yes-test1
Notice this results in passing just the press of the Enter key to the script. This is useful for times when the default answer to the prompt is sufficient. This syntax is used in the Net-tools instructions to accept all the defaults to the many prompts during the configuration step. You may now remove the test script, if desired.
In order to automate the building of some packages, especially those that require you to read a license agreement one page at a time, requires using a method that avoids having to press a key to display each page. Redirecting the output to a file can be used in these instances to assist with the automation. The previous section on this page touched on creating log files of the build output. The redirection method shown there used the tee command to redirect output to a file while also displaying the output to the screen. Here, the output will only be sent to a file.
Again, the easiest way to demonstrate the technique is to show an example. First, issue the command:
ls -l /usr/bin | less
Of course, you'll be required to view the output one page at
a time because the less filter was used. Now
try the same command, but this time redirect the output to a
file. The special file /dev/null can be used instead of the
filename shown, but you will have no log file to examine:
ls -l /usr/bin | less > redirect_test.log 2>&1
Notice that this time the command immediately returned to the shell prompt without having to page through the output. You may now remove the log file.
The last example will use the yes command in combination
with output redirection to bypass having to page through the
output and then provide a y to a prompt. This
technique could be used in instances when otherwise you would
have to page through the output of a file (such as a license
agreement) and then answer the question of do you accept the above?. For this
example, another short Bash
script is required:
cat > blfs-yes-test2 << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
ls -l /usr/bin | less
echo -n -e "\n\nDid you enjoy reading this? (y,n) "
read A_STRING
if test "$A_STRING" = "y"; then A_STRING="You entered the 'y' key"
else A_STRING="You did NOT enter the 'y' key"
fi
echo -e "\n\n$A_STRING\n\n"
EOF
chmod 755 blfs-yes-test2
This script can be used to simulate a program that requires you to read a license agreement, then respond appropriately to accept the agreement before the program will install anything. First, run the script without any automation techniques by issuing ./blfs-yes-test2.
Now issue the following command which uses two automation techniques, making it suitable for use in an automated build script:
yes | ./blfs-yes-test2 > blfs-yes-test2.log 2>&1
If desired, issue tail blfs-yes-test2.log to see the end of the paged output, and confirmation that y was passed through to the script. Once satisfied that it works as it should, you may remove the script and log file.
Finally, keep in mind that there are many ways to automate and/or script the build commands. There is not a single “correct” way to do it. Your imagination is the only limit.
For each package described, BLFS lists the known dependencies. These are listed under several headings, whose meaning is as follows:
Required means that the target package cannot be correctly built without the dependency having first been installed, except if the dependency is said to be “runtime” which means the target package can be built but cannot function without it.
Note that a target package can start to “function” in many subtle ways: an installed configuration file can make the init system, cron daemon, or bus daemon to run a program automatically; another package using the target package as a dependency can run a program from the target package in the building system; and the configuration sections in the BLFS book may also run a program from a just installed package. So if you are installing the target package without a Required (runtime) dependency installed, You should install the dependency as soon as possible after the installation of the target package.
Recommended means that BLFS strongly suggests this package is installed first (except if said to be “runtime,” see below) for a clean and trouble-free build, that won't have issues either during the build process, or at run-time. The instructions in the book assume these packages are installed. Some changes or workarounds may be required if these packages are not installed. If a recommended dependency is said to be “runtime,” it means that BLFS strongly suggests that this dependency is installed before using the package, for getting full functionality.
Optional means that this package might be installed for added functionality. Often BLFS will describe the dependency to explain the added functionality that will result. Some optional dependencies are automatically picked up by the target package if the dependency is installed, while others also need additional configuration options to be enabled when the target package is built. Such additional options are often documented in the BLFS book. If an optional dependency is said to be “runtime,” it means you may install the dependency after installing the target package to support some optional features of the target package if you need these features.
An optional dependency may be out of BLFS. If you need such an external optional dependency for some features you need, read Going Beyond BLFS for the general hint about installing an out-of-BLFS package.
On occasion you may run into a situation in the book when a package will not build or work properly. Though the Editors attempt to ensure that every package in the book builds and works properly, sometimes a package has been overlooked or was not tested with this particular version of BLFS.
If you discover that a package will not build or work properly, you should see if there is a more current version of the package. Typically this means you go to the maintainer's web site and download the most current tarball and attempt to build the package. If you cannot determine the maintainer's web site by looking at the download URLs, use Google and query the package's name. For example, in the Google search bar type: 'package_name download' (omit the quotes) or something similar. Sometimes typing: 'package_name home page' will result in you finding the maintainer's web site.
In LFS, stripping of debugging symbols and unneeded symbol table entries was discussed a couple of times. When building BLFS packages, there are generally no special instructions that discuss stripping again. Stripping can be done while installing a package, or afterwards.
There are several ways to strip executables installed by a package. They depend on the build system used (see below the section about build systems), so only some generalities can be listed here:
The following methods using the feature of a building system (autotools, meson, or cmake) will not strip static libraries if any is installed. Fortunately there are not too many static libraries in BLFS, and a static library can always be stripped safely by running strip --strip-unneeded on it manually.
The packages using autotools usually have an install-strip target in
their generated Makefile
files. So installing stripped executables is just a
matter of using make
install-strip instead of make install.
The packages using the meson build system can accept
-D strip=true
when running meson. If you've
forgot to add this option running the meson, you can also
run meson install
--strip instead of ninja install.
cmake
generates install/strip targets for
both the Unix
Makefiles and Ninja generators (the
default is Unix
Makefiles on linux). So just run
make
install/strip or ninja install/strip
instead of the install counterparts.
Removing (or not generating) debug symbols can also be
achieved by removing the -g<something>
options in C/C++ calls. How to do that is very specific
for each package. And, it does not remove unneeded
symbol table entries. So it will not be explained in
detail here. See also below the paragraphs about
optimization.
The strip
utility changes files in place, which may break anything
using it if it is loaded in memory. Note that if a file is in
use but just removed from the disk (i.e. not overwritten nor
modified), this is not a problem since the kernel can use
“deleted” files. Look at /proc/*/maps and it is likely that you'll
see some (deleted)
entries. The mv
just removes the destination file from the directory but does
not touch its content, so that it satisfies the condition for
the kernel to use the old (deleted) file. But this approach
can detach hard links into duplicated copies, causing a bloat
which is obviously unwanted as we are stripping to reduce
system size. If two files in a same file system share the
same inode number, they are hard links to each other and we
should reconstruct the link. The script below is just an
example. It should be run as the root user:
cat > /usr/sbin/strip-all.sh << "EOF"
#!/usr/bin/bash
if [ $EUID -ne 0 ]; then
echo "Need to be root"
exit 1
fi
last_fs_inode=
last_file=
{ find /usr/lib -type f -name '*.so*' ! -name '*dbg'
find /usr/lib -type f -name '*.a'
find /usr/{bin,sbin,libexec} -type f
} | xargs stat -c '%m %i %n' | sort | while read fs inode file; do
if ! readelf -h $file >/dev/null 2>&1; then continue; fi
if file $file | grep --quiet --invert-match 'not stripped'; then continue; fi
if [ "$fs $inode" = "$last_fs_inode" ]; then
ln -f $last_file $file;
continue;
fi
cp --preserve $file ${file}.tmp
strip --strip-unneeded ${file}.tmp
mv ${file}.tmp $file
last_fs_inode="$fs $inode"
last_file=$file
done
EOF
chmod 744 /usr/sbin/strip-all.sh
If you install programs in other directories such as
/opt or /usr/local, you may want to strip the files
there too. Just add other directories to scan in the compound
list of find
commands between the braces.
For more information on stripping, see https://www.technovelty.org/linux/stripping-shared-libraries.html.
There are now three different build systems in common use for
converting C or C++ source code into compiled programs or
libraries and their details (particularly, finding out about
available options and their default values) differ. It may be
easiest to understand the issues caused by some choices
(typically slow execution or unexpected use of, or omission
of, optimizations) by starting with the CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS,
and LDFLAGS environment variables.
There are also some programs which use Rust.
Most LFS and BLFS builders are probably aware of the basics
of CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS for altering how a program is
compiled. Typically, some form of optimization is used by
upstream developers (-O2 or
-O3), sometimes with the creation
of debug symbols (-g), as
defaults.
If there are contradictory flags (e.g. multiple different
-O values), the last value will be used. Sometimes
this means that flags specified in environment variables will
be picked up before values hardcoded in the Makefile, and
therefore ignored. For example, where a user specifies
-O2 and that is followed by
-O3 the build will use
-O3.
There are various other things which can be passed in CFLAGS
or CXXFLAGS, such as allowing using the instruction set
extensions available with a specific microarchitecture (e.g.
-march=amdfam10 or -march=native), tune the generated code for a
specific microarchitecture (e. g. -mtune=tigerlake or -mtune=native, if -mtune= is not used, the microarchitecture
from -march= setting will be
used), or specifying a specific standard for C or C++
(-std=c++17 for example). But one
thing which has now come to light is that programmers might
include debug assertions in their code, expecting them to be
disabled in releases by using -D
NDEBUG. Specifically, if Mesa-24.1.5 is built with these
assertions enabled, some activities such as loading levels of
games can take extremely long times, even on high-class video
cards.
This combination is often described as “CMMI” (configure, make, make install) and is used here to also cover the few packages which have a configure script that is not generated by autotools.
Sometimes running ./configure --help will produce useful options about switches which might be used. At other times, after looking at the output from configure you may need to look at the details of the script to find out what it was actually searching for.
Many configure scripts will pick up any CFLAGS or CXXFLAGS from the environment, but CMMI packages vary about how these will be mixed with any flags which would otherwise be used (variously: ignored, used to replace the programmer's suggestion, used before the programmer's suggestion, or used after the programmer's suggestion).
In most CMMI packages, running make will list each command
and run it, interspersed with any warnings. But some packages
try to be “silent” and only show which file they
are compiling or linking instead of showing the command line.
If you need to inspect the command, either because of an
error, or just to see what options and flags are being used,
adding V=1 to the make invocation
may help.
CMake works in a very different way, and it has two backends
which can be used on BLFS: make and ninja. The default backend
is make, but ninja can be faster on large packages with
multiple processors. To use ninja, specify -G Ninja in the cmake command. However, there
are some packages which create fatal errors in their ninja
files but build successfully using the default of Unix
Makefiles.
The hardest part of using CMake is knowing what options you might wish to specify. The only way to get a list of what the package knows about is to run cmake -LAH and look at the output for that default configuration.
Perhaps the most-important thing about CMake is that it has a
variety of CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE values, and these affect the
flags. The default is that this is not set and no flags are
generated. Any CFLAGS or
CXXFLAGS in the environment will
be used. If the programmer has coded any debug assertions,
those will be enabled unless -D NDEBUG is used. The following
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE values will generate the flags shown, and
these will come after
any flags in the environment and therefore take precedence.
| Value | Flags |
|---|---|
| Debug |
-g
|
| Release |
-O3 -D NDEBUG
|
| RelWithDebInfo |
-O2 -g -D NDEBUG
|
| MinSizeRel |
-Os -D NDEBUG
|
CMake tries to produce quiet builds. To see the details of the commands which are being run, use make VERBOSE=1 or ninja -v.
By default, CMake treats file installation differently from
the other build systems: if a file already exists and is not
newer than a file that would overwrite it, then the file is
not installed. This may be a problem if a user wants to
record which file belongs to a package, either using
LD_PRELOAD, or by listing files
newer than a timestamp. The default can be changed by setting
the variable CMAKE_INSTALL_ALWAYS
to 1 in the environment, for example by
export'ing it.
Meson has some similarities to CMake, but many differences.
To get details of the defines that you may wish to change you
can look at meson_options.txt
which is usually in the top-level directory.
If you have already configured the package by running meson and now wish to change one or more settings, you can either remove the build directory, recreate it, and use the altered options, or within the build directory run meson configure, e.g. to set an option:
meson configure -D <some_option>=true
If you do that, the file meson-private/cmd_line.txt will show the
last commands which
were used.
Meson provides the following buildtype values, and the flags they enable come after any flags supplied in the environment and therefore take precedence.
plain: no added flags. This is for distributors to
supply their own CFLAGS,
CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS. There is no obvious reason to
use this in BLFS.
debug: -g - this is the
default if nothing is specified in either meson.build or the command line.
However it results large and slow binaries, so we
should override it in BLFS.
debugoptimized: -O2 -g -
this is the default specified in meson.build of some packages.
release: -O3 (occasionally
a package will force -O2
here) - this is the buildtype we use for most packages
with Meson build system in BLFS.
The -D NDEBUG flag is implied by
the release buildtype for some packages (for example
Mesa-24.1.5). It can also be provided
explicitly by passing -D
b_ndebug=true.
To see the details of the commands which are being run in a package using meson, use ninja -v.
Most released rustc programs are provided as crates (source
tarballs) which will query a server to check current versions
of dependencies and then download them as necessary. These
packages are built using cargo
--release. In theory, you can manipulate the
RUSTFLAGS to change the optimize-level (default for
--release is 3, i. e.
-Copt-level=3, like -O3) or to force it to build for the machine
it is being compiled on, using -Ctarget-cpu=native but in practice this
seems to make no significant difference.
If you are compiling a standalone Rust program (as an
unpackaged .rs file) by running
rustc directly,
you should specify -O (the
abbreviation of -Copt-level=2) or
-Copt-level=3 otherwise it will
do an unoptimized compile and run much slower. If you are compiling
the program for debugging it, replace the -O or -Copt-level= options with -g to produce an unoptimized program with
debug info.
Like ninja, by
default cargo
uses all logical cores. This can often be worked around,
either by exporting CARGO_BUILD_JOBS= or passing
<N>--jobs to
cargo. For
compiling rustc itself, specifying <N>--jobs for
invocations of x.py (together with the
<N>CARGO_BUILD_JOBS environment
variable, which looks like a “belt and braces”
approach but seems to be necessary) mostly works. The
exception is running the tests when building rustc, some of
them will nevertheless use all online CPUs, at least as of
rustc-1.42.0.
Many people will prefer to optimize compiles as they see fit,
by providing CFLAGS or
CXXFLAGS. For an introduction to
the options available with gcc and g++ see
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-14.2.0/gcc/Optimize-Options.html.
The same content can be also found in info gcc.
Some packages default to -O2 -g,
others to -O3 -g, and if
CFLAGS or CXXFLAGS are supplied they might be added to
the package's defaults, replace the package's defaults, or
even be ignored. There are details on some desktop packages
which were mostly current in April 2019 at https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/~ken/tuning/
- in particular, README.txt,
tuning-1-packages-and-notes.txt, and
tuning-notes-2B.txt. The
particular thing to remember is that if you want to try some
of the more interesting flags you may need to force verbose
builds to confirm what is being used.
Clearly, if you are optimizing your own program you can spend
time to profile it and perhaps recode some of it if it is too
slow. But for building a whole system that approach is
impractical. In general, -O3
usually produces faster programs than -O2. Specifying -march=native is also beneficial, but means
that you cannot move the binaries to an incompatible machine
- this can also apply to newer machines, not just to older
machines. For example programs compiled for amdfam10 run on old Phenoms, Kaveris, and
Ryzens, but programs compiled for a Kaveri will not run on a
Ryzen because certain op-codes are not present. Similarly, if
you build for a Haswell not everything will run on a
SandyBridge.
Be careful that the name of a -march setting does not always match the
baseline of the microarchitecture with the same name. For
example, the Skylake-based Intel Celeron processors do not
support AVX at all, but -march=skylake assumes AVX and even AVX2.
When a shared library is built by GCC, a feature named
“semantic
interposition” is enabled by default. When the
shared library refers to a symbol name with external linkage
and default visibility, if the symbol exists in both the
shared library and the main executable, semantic
interposition guarantees the symbol in the main executable is
always used. This feature was invented in an attempt to make
the behavior of linking a shared library and linking a static
library as similar as possible. Today only a small number of
packages still depend on semantic interposition, but the
feature is still on by the default of GCC, causing many
optimizations disabled for shared libraries because they
conflict with semantic interposition. The -fno-semantic-interposition option can be
passed to gcc
or g++ to
disable semantic interposition and enable more optimizations
for shared libraries. This option is used as the default of
some packages (for example Python-3.12.5), and it's also the
default of Clang.
There are also various other options which some people claim are beneficial. At worst, you get to recompile and test, and then discover that in your usage the options do not provide a benefit.
If building Perl or Python modules, in general the
CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS used are those which were used by
those “parent” packages.
For LDFLAGS, there are three
options can be used for optimization. They are quite safe to
use and the building system of some packages use some of
these options as the default.
With -Wl,-O1, the linker will
optimize the hash table to speed up the dynamic linking. Note
that -Wl,-O1 is completely
unrelated to the compiler optimization flag -O1.
With -Wl,--as-needed, the linker
will disregard unnecessary -l options from the
command line, i. e. the shared library foolib will only be
linked if a symbol in foolib is really referred
from the executable or shared library being linked. This can
sometimes mitigate the “excessive dependencies to shared
libraries” issues caused by libtool.
foo
With -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs,
the linker generates a more compacted form of the relative
relocation entries for PIEs and shared libraries. It reduces
the size of the linked PIE or shared library, and speeds up
the loading of the PIE or shared library.
The -Wl, prefix is necessary
because despite the variable is named LDFLAGS, its content is actually passed to
gcc (or
g++,
clang, etc.)
during the link stage, not directly passed to ld.
Even on desktop systems, there are still a lot of exploitable vulnerabilities. For many of these, the attack comes via javascript in a browser. Often, a series of vulnerabilities are used to gain access to data (or sometimes to pwn, i.e. own, the machine and install rootkits). Most commercial distros will apply various hardening measures.
In the past, there was Hardened LFS where gcc (a much older
version) was forced to use hardening (with options to turn
some of it off on a per-package basis). The current LFS and
BLFS books are carrying forward a part of its spirit by
enabling PIE (-fPIE -pie) and SSP
(-fstack-protector-strong) as the
defaults for GCC and clang. And, the linkers (ld.bfd and ld.gold) have also enabled
-Wl,-z,relro which makes a part
of the Global Offset Table (GOT) immutable, by default since
Binutils 2.27. What is being covered here is different -
first you have to make sure that the package is indeed using
your added flags and not over-riding them.
For hardening options which are reasonably cheap, there is
some discussion in the 'tuning' link above (occasionally, one
or more of these options might be inappropriate for a
package). These options are -D
_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 (or -D
_FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 which is more secure but with a
larger performance overhead) and (for C++) -D _GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS. On modern machines
these should only have a little impact on how fast things
run, and often they will not be noticeable.
The main distros use much more, such as:
-Wl,-z,now: disables lazy
binding to enhance -Wl,-z,relro, so the entire GOT can be made
immutable.
-fstack-clash-protection:
prevents the attacker from using an offset large enough
and not adequately checked to jump over the stack guard
page placed by the kernel and the stack canary placed
by -fstack-protector=strong, and modify
the stack from a heap address, or vice versa.
-ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero:
initializes some variables by filling zero bytes if
they are not initialized by other means.
-fcf-protection=full:
utilizes Intel and AMD CET technology to limit the
target addresses of control-flow transfer instructions.
To make it really effective for a package, all packages
providing a shared library for the package to use must
be built with this option, as well as that package
itself, Glibc must be configured with the --enable-cet option enabled, and the
system must run on Intel Tiger Lake or newer, or AMD
Zen 3 or newer. If the criteria is not met the program
compiled with this option will still run, but not
really protected by CET.
In GCC 14, the option -fhardened
is a shorthand to enable all the hardening options mentioned
above. It sets -D
_FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 instead of -D
_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2.
You may also encounter the so-called “userspace
retpoline” (-mindirect-branch=thunk etc.) which is the
equivalent of the spectre mitigations applied to the linux
kernel in late 2018. The kernel mitigations caused a lot of
complaints about lost performance, if you have a production
server you might wish to consider testing that, along with
the other available options, to see if performance is still
sufficient.
Whilst gcc has many hardening options, clang/LLVM's strengths lie elsewhere. Some options which gcc provides are said to be less effective in clang/LLVM.
Should I install XXX in /usr or /usr/local?
This is a question without an obvious answer for an LFS based system.
In traditional Unix systems, /usr
usually contains files that come with the system distribution,
and the /usr/local tree is free
for the local administrator to manage. The only really hard and
fast rule is that Unix distributions should not touch
/usr/local, except perhaps to
create the basic directories within it.
With Linux distributions like Red Hat, Debian, etc., a possible
rule is that /usr is managed by
the distribution's package system and /usr/local is not. This way the package
manager's database knows about every file within /usr.
LFS users build their own system and so deciding where the
system ends and local files begin is not straightforward. So
the choice should be made in order to make things easier to
administer. There are several reasons for dividing files
between /usr and /usr/local.
On a network of several machines all running LFS, or
mixed LFS and other Linux distributions, /usr/local could be used to hold
packages that are common between all the computers in the
network. It can be NFS mounted or mirrored from a single
server. Here local indicates local to the site.
On a network of several computers all running an
identical LFS system, /usr/local could hold packages that are
different between the machines. In this case local refers
to the individual computers.
Even on a single computer, /usr/local can be useful if you have
several distributions installed simultaneously, and want
a place to put packages that will be the same on all of
them.
Or you might regularly rebuild your LFS, but want a place to put files that you don't want to rebuild each time. This way you can wipe the LFS file system and start from a clean partition every time without losing everything.
Some people ask why not use your own directory tree, e.g.,
/usr/site, rather than
/usr/local?
There is nothing stopping you, many sites do make their own
trees, however it makes installing new software more difficult.
Automatic installers often look for dependencies in
/usr and /usr/local, and if the file it is looking for
is in /usr/site instead, the
installer will probably fail unless you specifically tell it
where to look.
What is the BLFS position on this?
All of the BLFS instructions install programs in /usr with optional instructions to install
into /opt for some specific
packages.
As you follow the various sections in the book, you will observe that the book occasionally includes patches that are required for a successful and secure installation of the packages. The general policy of the book is to include patches that fall in one of the following criteria:
Fixes a compilation problem.
Fixes a security problem.
Fixes a broken functionality.
In short, the book only includes patches that are either required or recommended. There is a Patches subproject which hosts various patches (including the patches referenced in the books) to enable you to configure your LFS the way you like it.
The BLFS Systemd Units package contains the systemd unit files that are used throughout the book.
Package Information
The BLFS Systemd Units package will be used throughout the BLFS
book for systemd unit files. Each systemd unit has a separate
install target. It is recommended that you keep the package
source directory around until completion of your BLFS system.
When a systemd unit is requested from BLFS Systemd Units,
simply change to the directory, and as the root user, execute the given make install-<systemd-unit>
command. This command installs the systemd unit to its proper
location (along with any auxiliary configuration scripts) and
also enables it by default.
It is advisable to peruse each systemd unit before installation to determine whether the installed files meet your needs.
In LFS and BLFS, many packages use an internally shipped libtool copy to build on a variety of Unix platforms. This includes platforms such as AIX, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, and Cygwin as well as Linux. The origins of this tool are quite dated. It was intended to manage libraries on systems with less advanced capabilities than a modern Linux system.
On a Linux system, libtool specific files are generally unneeded. Normally libraries are specified in the build process during the link phase. Since a linux system uses the Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) for executables and dynamic libraries, information needed to complete the task is embedded in the files. Both the linker and the program loader can query the appropriate files and properly link or execute the program.
Static libraries are rarely used in LFS and BLFS. And, nowadays most packages store the information needed for linking against a static library into a .pc file, instead of relying on libtool. A pkg-config --static --libs command will output the sufficient flags for the linker to link against a static library without any libtool magic.
The problem is that libtool usually creates one or more text files for package libraries called libtool archives. These small files have a ".la" extension and contain information that is similar to that embedded in the libraries or pkg-config files. When building a package that uses libtool, the process automatically looks for these files. Sometimes a .la file can contains the name or path of a static library used during build but not installed, then the build process will break because the .la file refers to something nonexistent on the system. Similarly, if a package is updated and no longer uses the .la file, then the build process can break with the old .la files.
The solution is to remove the .la files. However there is a catch. Some packages, such as ImageMagick-7.1.1-36, use a libtool function, lt_dlopen, to load libraries as needed during execution and resolve their dependencies at run time. In this case, the .la files should remain.
The script below, removes all unneeded .la files and saves them in a directory, /var/local/la-files by default, not in the normal library path. It also searches all pkg-config files (.pc) for embedded references to .la files and fixes them to be conventional library references needed when an application or library is built. It can be run as needed to clean up the directories that may be causing problems.
cat > /usr/sbin/remove-la-files.sh << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
# /usr/sbin/remove-la-files.sh
# Written for Beyond Linux From Scratch
# by Bruce Dubbs <bdubbs@linuxfromscratch.org>
# Make sure we are running with root privs
if test "${EUID}" -ne 0; then
echo "Error: $(basename ${0}) must be run as the root user! Exiting..."
exit 1
fi
# Make sure PKG_CONFIG_PATH is set if discarded by sudo
source /etc/profile
OLD_LA_DIR=/var/local/la-files
mkdir -p $OLD_LA_DIR
# Only search directories in /opt, but not symlinks to directories
OPTDIRS=$(find /opt -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d)
# Move any found .la files to a directory out of the way
find /usr/lib $OPTDIRS -name "*.la" ! -path "/usr/lib/ImageMagick*" \
-exec mv -fv {} $OLD_LA_DIR \;
###############
# Fix any .pc files that may have .la references
STD_PC_PATH='/usr/lib/pkgconfig
/usr/share/pkgconfig
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
/usr/local/share/pkgconfig'
# For each directory that can have .pc files
for d in $(echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH | tr : ' ') $STD_PC_PATH; do
# For each pc file
for pc in $d/*.pc ; do
if [ $pc == "$d/*.pc" ]; then continue; fi
# Check each word in a line with a .la reference
for word in $(grep '\.la' $pc); do
if $(echo $word | grep -q '.la$' ); then
mkdir -p $d/la-backup
cp -fv $pc $d/la-backup
basename=$(basename $word )
libref=$(echo $basename|sed -e 's/^lib/-l/' -e 's/\.la$//')
# Fix the .pc file
sed -i "s:$word:$libref:" $pc
fi
done
done
done
EOF
chmod +x /usr/sbin/remove-la-files.sh
The original libraries were simply an archive of routines
from which the required routines were extracted and linked
into the executable program. These are described as static
libraries, with names of the form libfoo.a on UNIX-like operating systems. On
some old operating systems they are the only type available.
On almost all Linux platforms there are also “shared” (or
equivalently “dynamic”) libraries (with names of the
form libfoo.so) – one copy of
the library is loaded into virtual memory, and shared by all
the programs which call any of its functions. This is space
efficient.
In the past, essential programs such as a shell were often
linked statically so that some form of minimal recovery
system would exist even if shared libraries, such as
libc.so, became damaged (e.g.
moved to lost+found after
fsck following
an unclean shutdown). Nowadays, most people use an
alternative system install or a USB stick if they have to
recover. Journaling filesystems also reduce the likelihood of
this sort of problem.
Within the book, there are various places where configure
switches such as --disable-static are employed,
and other places where the possibility of using system
versions of libraries instead of the versions included within
another package is discussed. The main reason for this is to
simplify updates of libraries.
If a package is linked to a dynamic library, updating to a
newer library version is automatic once the newer library is
installed and the program is (re)started (provided the
library major version is unchanged, e.g. going from
libfoo.so.2.0 to libfoo.so.2.1. Going to libfoo.so.3 will require recompilation –
ldd can be used
to find which programs use the old version). If a program is
linked to a static library, the program always has to be
recompiled. If you know which programs are linked to a
particular static library, this is merely an annoyance. But
usually you will not
know which programs to recompile.
One way to identify when a static library is used, is to deal
with it at the end of the installation of every package.
Write a script to find all the static libraries in
/usr/lib or wherever you are
installing to, and either move them to another directory so
that they are no longer found by the linker, or rename them
so that libfoo.a becomes e.g.
libfoo.a.hidden. The static
library can then be temporarily restored if it is ever
needed, and the package needing it can be identified. This
shouldn't be done blindly since many libraries only exist in
a static version. For example, some libraries from the
glibc and gcc packages should always be present on
the system (libc_nonshared.a, libg.a,
libpthread_nonshared.a, libssp_nonshared.a,
libsupc++.a as of glibc-2.36 and gcc-12.2).
If you use this approach, you may discover that more packages than you were expecting use a static library. That was the case with nettle-2.4 in its default static-only configuration: It was required by GnuTLS-3.0.19, but also linked into package(s) which used GnuTLS, such as glib-networking-2.32.3.
Many packages put some of their common functions into a static library which is only used by the programs within the package and, crucially, the library is not installed as a standalone library. These internal libraries are not a problem – if the package has to be rebuilt to fix a bug or vulnerability, nothing else is linked to them.
When BLFS mentions system libraries, it means shared versions of libraries. Some packages such as Firefox-128.1.0 and ghostscript-10.03.1 bundle many other libraries in their build tree. The version they ship is often older than the version used in the system, so it may contain bugs – sometimes developers go to the trouble of fixing bugs in their included libraries, other times they do not.
Sometimes, deciding to use system libraries is an easy decision. Other times it may require you to alter the system version (e.g. for libpng-1.6.43 if used for Firefox-128.1.0). Occasionally, a package ships an old library and can no longer link to the current version, but can link to an older version. In this case, BLFS will usually just use the shipped version. Sometimes the included library is no longer developed separately, or its upstream is now the same as the package's upstream and you have no other packages which will use it. In those cases, you'll be lead to use the included library even if you usually prefer to use system libraries.
This page contains information about locale related problems and issues. In the following paragraphs you'll find a generic overview of things that can come up when configuring your system for various locales. Many (but not all) existing locale related problems can be classified and fall under one of the headings below. The severity ratings below use the following criteria:
Critical: The program doesn't perform its main function. The fix would be very intrusive, it's better to search for a replacement.
High: Part of the functionality that the program provides is not usable. If that functionality is required, it's better to search for a replacement.
Low: The program works in all typical use cases, but lacks some functionality normally provided by its equivalents.
If there is a known workaround for a specific package, it will appear on that package's page.
Severity: Critical
Some programs require the user to specify the character
encoding for their input or output data and present only a
limited choice of encodings. This is the case for the
-X option in Enscript-1.6.6,
the -input-charset option in
unpatched Cdrtools-3.02a09, and the character
sets offered for display in the menu of Links-2.30. If the required
encoding is not in the list, the program usually becomes
completely unusable. For non-interactive programs, it may be
possible to work around this by converting the document to a
supported input character set before submitting to the
program.
A solution to this type of problem is to implement the necessary support for the missing encoding as a patch to the original program or to find a replacement.
Severity: High for non-text documents, low for text documents
Some programs, nano-8.1 or JOE-4.6 for example, assume that documents are always in the encoding implied by the current locale. While this assumption may be valid for the user-created documents, it is not safe for external ones. When this assumption fails, non-ASCII characters are displayed incorrectly, and the document may become unreadable.
If the external document is entirely text based, it can be converted to the current locale encoding using the iconv program.
For documents that are not text-based, this is not possible. In fact, the assumption made in the program may be completely invalid for documents where the Microsoft Windows operating system has set de facto standards. An example of this problem is ID3v1 tags in MP3 files. For these cases, the only solution is to find a replacement program that doesn't have the issue (e.g., one that will allow you to specify the assumed document encoding).
Among BLFS packages, this problem applies to nano-8.1, JOE-4.6, and all media players except Audacious-4.4.
Another problem in this category is when someone cannot read the documents you've sent them because their operating system is set up to handle character encodings differently. This can happen often when the other person is using Microsoft Windows, which only provides one character encoding for a given country. For example, this causes problems with UTF-8 encoded TeX documents created in Linux. On Windows, most applications will assume that these documents have been created using the default Windows 8-bit encoding.
In extreme cases, Windows encoding compatibility issues may be solved only by running Windows programs under Wine.
Severity: Critical
The POSIX standard mandates that the filename encoding is the
encoding implied by the current LC_CTYPE locale category.
This information is well-hidden on the page which specifies
the behavior of Tar and
Cpio programs. Some programs
get it wrong by default (or simply don't have enough
information to get it right). The result is that they create
filenames which are not subsequently shown correctly by
ls, or they
refuse to accept filenames that ls shows properly. For the
GLib-2.80.4 library, the problem can be
corrected by setting the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable to
the special "@locale" value. Glib2 based programs that don't respect
that environment variable are buggy.
The Zip-3.0 and UnZip-6.0 have this problem because they hard-code the expected filename encoding. UnZip contains a hard-coded conversion table between the CP850 (DOS) and ISO-8859-1 (UNIX) encodings and uses this table when extracting archives created under DOS or Microsoft Windows. However, this assumption only works for those in the US and not for anyone using a UTF-8 locale. Non-ASCII characters will be mangled in the extracted filenames.
The general rule for avoiding this class of problems is to avoid installing broken programs. If this is impossible, the convmv command-line tool can be used to fix filenames created by these broken programs, or intentionally mangle the existing filenames to meet the broken expectations of such programs.
In other cases, a similar problem is caused by importing filenames from a system using a different locale with a tool that is not locale-aware (e.g., OpenSSH-9.8p1). In order to avoid mangling non-ASCII characters when transferring files to a system with a different locale, any of the following methods can be used:
Transfer anyway, fix the damage with convmv.
On the sending side, create a tar archive with the
--format=posix
switch passed to tar (this will be the
default in a future version of tar).
Mail the files as attachments. Mail clients specify the encoding of attached filenames.
Write the files to a removable disk formatted with a FAT or FAT32 filesystem.
Transfer the files using Samba.
Transfer the files via FTP using RFC2640-aware server (this currently means only wu-ftpd, which has bad security history) and client (e.g., lftp).
The last four methods work because the filenames are automatically converted from the sender's locale to UNICODE and stored or sent in this form. They are then transparently converted from UNICODE to the recipient's locale encoding.
Severity: High or critical
Many programs were written in an older era where multibyte locales were not common. Such programs assume that C "char" data type, which is one byte, can be used to store single characters. Further, they assume that any sequence of characters is a valid string and that every character occupies a single character cell. Such assumptions completely break in UTF-8 locales. The visible manifestation is that the program truncates strings prematurely (i.e., at 80 bytes instead of 80 characters). Terminal-based programs don't place the cursor correctly on the screen, don't react to the "Backspace" key by erasing one character, and leave junk characters around when updating the screen, usually turning the screen into a complete mess.
Fixing this kind of problems is a tedious task from a programmer's point of view, like all other cases of retrofitting new concepts into the old flawed design. In this case, one has to redesign all data structures in order to accommodate to the fact that a complete character may span a variable number of "char"s (or switch to wchar_t and convert as needed). Also, for every call to the "strlen" and similar functions, find out whether a number of bytes, a number of characters, or the width of the string was really meant. Sometimes it is faster to write a program with the same functionality from scratch.
Among BLFS packages, this problem applies to xine-ui-0.99.14 and all the shells.
Severity: Low
LFS expects that manual pages are in the language-specific (usually 8-bit) encoding, as specified on the LFS Man DB page. However, some packages install translated manual pages in UTF-8 encoding (e.g., Shadow, already dealt with), or manual pages in languages not in the table. Not all BLFS packages have been audited for conformance with the requirements put in LFS (the large majority have been checked, and fixes placed in the book for packages known to install non-conforming manual pages). If you find a manual page installed by any of BLFS packages that is obviously in the wrong encoding, please remove or convert it as needed, and report this to BLFS team as a bug.
You can easily check your system for any non-conforming manual pages by copying the following short shell script to some accessible location,
#!/bin/sh
# Begin checkman.sh
# Usage: find /usr/share/man -type f | xargs checkman.sh
for a in "$@"
do
# echo "Checking $a..."
# Pure-ASCII manual page (possibly except comments) is OK
grep -v '.\\"' "$a" | iconv -f US-ASCII -t US-ASCII >/dev/null 2>&1 \
&& continue
# Non-UTF-8 manual page is OK
iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-8 "$a" >/dev/null 2>&1 || continue
# Found a UTF-8 manual page, bad.
echo "UTF-8 manual page: $a" >&2
done
# End checkman.sh
and then issuing the following command (modify the command
below if the checkman.sh script is not
in your PATH environment
variable):
find /usr/share/man -type f | xargs checkman.sh
Note that if you have manual pages installed in any location
other than /usr/share/man
(e.g., /usr/local/share/man),
you must modify the above command to include this additional
location.
The packages that are installed in this book are only the tip of the iceberg. We hope that the experience you gained with the LFS book and the BLFS book will give you the background needed to compile, install and configure packages that are not included in this book.
When you want to install a package to a location other than
/, or /usr, you are installing outside the default
environment settings on most machines. The following examples
should assist you in determining how to correct this situation.
The examples cover the complete range of settings that may need
updating, but they are not all needed in every situation.
Expand the PATH to include
$PREFIX/bin.
Expand the PATH for
root to include
$PREFIX/sbin.
Add $PREFIX/lib to
/etc/ld.so.conf or expand
LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include it.
Before using the latter option, check out http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/_/ldpath.html.
If you modify /etc/ld.so.conf, remember to update
/etc/ld.so.cache by
executing ldconfig as the
root user.
Add $PREFIX/man to
/etc/man_db.conf.
Add $PREFIX/info to
INFOPATH.
Add $PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig
to PKG_CONFIG_PATH. Some
packages are now installing .pc files in $PREFIX/share/pkgconfig, so you may
have to include this directory also.
Add $PREFIX/include to
CPPFLAGS when compiling
packages that depend on the package you installed.
Add $PREFIX/lib to
LDFLAGS when compiling
packages that depend on a library installed by the
package.
If you are in search of a package that is not in the book, the following are different ways you can search for the desired package.
If you know the name of the package, then search
SourceForge for it at https://sourceforge.net/directory/,
and search GitHub for it at https://github.com/. Also
search Google at https://google.com/. Sometimes
a search for the rpm at
https://rpmfind.net/ or the
deb at
https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_packages
can also lead to a link to the package.
If you know the name of the executable, but not the package that the executable belongs to, first try a Google search with the name of the executable. If the results are overwhelming, try searching for the given executable in the Debian repository at https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages#search_contents.
Some general hints on handling new packages:
Many of the newer packages follow the ./configure && make && make install process. Help on the options accepted by configure can be obtained via the command ./configure --help.
Most of the packages contain documentation on compiling and installing the package. Some of the documents are excellent, some not so excellent. Check out the homepage of the package for any additional and updated hints for compiling and configuring the package.
If you are having a problem compiling the package, try searching the LFS archives at https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/search.html for the error or if that fails, try searching Google. Often, a distribution will have already solved the problem (many of them use development versions of packages, so they see the changes sooner than those of us who normally use stable released versions). But be cautious - all builders tend to carry patches which are no longer necessary, and to have fixes which are only required because of their particular choices in how they build a package. You may have to search deeply to find a fix for the package version you are trying to use, or even to find the package (names are sometimes not what you might expect, e.g. ghostscript often has a prefix or a suffix in its name), but the following notes might help, particularly for those who, like the editors, are trying to build the latest versions and encountering problems:
Arch https://www.archlinux.org/packages/
- enter the package name in the 'Keywords' box,
select the package name, select the 'Source Files'
field, and then select the PKGBUILD entry to see how they
build this package.
Debian http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool
(use your country's version if there is one) - the
source will be in .tar.gz tarballs (either the
original upstream .orig source, or else a
dfsg containing those
parts which comply with Debian's free software
guidelines) accompanied by versioned .diff.gz or
.tar.gz additions. These additions often show how
the package is built, and may contain patches. In
the .diff.gz versions, any patches create files in
debian/patches.
Fedora package source gets reorganized from time to time. At the moment the package source for rpms is at https://src.fedoraproject.org/projects/rpms/%2A and from there you can try putting a package name in the search box. If the package is found you can look at the files (specfile to control the build, various patches) or the commits. If that fails, you can download an srpm (source rpm) and using rpm2cpio (see the Tip at the bottom of the page). For rpms go to https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/ and then choose which repo you wish to look at - development/rawhide is the latest development, or choose releases for what was shipped in a release, updates for updates to a release, or updates/testing for the latest updates which might work or might have problems.
Gentoo - First use a search engine to find an
ebuild which looks as if it will fix the problem,
or search at https://packages.gentoo.org/
- use the search field. Note where the package
lives in the portage hierarchy, e.g. app-something/. In general you
can treat the ebuild as a sort of pseudo-code /
shell combination with some functions you can
hazard a guess at, such as dodoc. If the fix
is just a sed, try it.
However, in most cases the fix will use a patch. To
find the patch, use a gentoo-portage mirror: Two
links to mirrors in the U.S.A. which seem to
usually be up to date are https://mirror.rackspace.com/gentoo-portage/
and https://mirror.steadfast.net/gentoo-portage/.
Navigate down the tree to the package, then to the
files/ directory to
look for the patch. Sometimes a portage mirror has
not yet been updated, particularly for a recent new
patch. In a few cases, gentoo batch the patches
into a tarball and the ebuild will have a link in
the form
https://dev.gentoo.org/~${PATCH_DEV}/distfiles/${P}-patches-${PATCH_VER}.tar.xz
here, look for PATCH_DEV and PATCH_VER in the build
and format the full URL in your browser or for
wget. Remember the '~' before the developer's ID
and note that trying to search the earlier levels
of the URL in a browser may drop you at
www.gentoo.org or return 403 (forbidden).
openSUSE provide a rolling release, some package versions are in https://download.opensuse.org/source/tumbleweed/repo/oss/src/ but others are in ../update/openSUSE-current/src - the source only seems to be available in source rpms.
Slackware - the official package browser is
currently broken. The site at https://slackbuilds.org/
has current and previous versions in their
unofficial repository with links to homepages,
downloads, and some individual files, particularly
the .SlackBuild
files.
Ubuntu http://ftp.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/ - see the Debian notes above.
If everything else fails, try the blfs-support mailing-list.
If you have found a package that is only available in
.deb or .rpm format, there are two small scripts,
rpm2targz and
deb2targz that
are available at
https://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/extras/deb2targz.tar.bz2
and
https://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/extras/rpm2targz.tar.bz2
to convert the archives into a simple tar.gz format.
You may also find an rpm2cpio script useful. The Perl version in the linux kernel archives at https://lore.kernel.org/all/20021016121842.GA2292@ncsu.edu/2-rpm2cpio works for most source rpms. The rpm2targz script will use an rpm2cpio script or binary if one is on your path. Note that rpm2cpio will unpack a source rpm in the current directory, giving a tarball, a spec file, and perhaps patches or other files.
The intention of LFS is to provide a basic system which you can build upon. There are several things about tidying up the system which many people wonder about once they have done the base install. We hope to cover these issues in this chapter.
Most people coming from non-Unix like backgrounds to Linux find
the concept of text-only configuration files slightly strange. In
Linux, just about all configuration is done via the manipulation
of text files. The majority of these files can be found in the
/etc hierarchy. There are often
graphical configuration programs available for different
subsystems but most are simply pretty front ends to the process
of editing a text file. The advantage of text-only configuration
is that you can edit parameters using your favorite text editor,
whether that be vim, emacs, or any other editor.
The first task is making a recovery boot device in Creating a Custom Boot Device because it's the most critical need. Hardware issues relevant to firmware and other devices is addressed next. The system is then configured to ease addition of new users, because this can affect the choices you make in the two subsequent topics—The Bash Shell Startup Files and The vimrc Files.
There is one remaining topic: Customizing your Logon with /etc/issue. It doesn't have much interaction with the other topics in this chapter.
This section is really about creating a rescue device. As the name rescue implies, the host system has a problem, often lost partition information or corrupted file systems, that prevents it from booting and/or operating normally. For this reason, you must not depend on resources from the host being "rescued". To presume that any given partition or hard drive will be available is a risky presumption.
In a modern system, there are many devices that can be used as a rescue device: floppy, cdrom, usb drive, or even a network card. Which one you use depends on your hardware and your BIOS. In the past, a rescue device was thought to be a floppy disk. Today, many systems do not even have a floppy drive.
Building a complete rescue device is a challenging task. In many ways, it is equivalent to building an entire LFS system. In addition, it would be a repetition of information already available. For these reasons, the procedures for a rescue device image are not presented here.
The software of today's systems has grown large. Linux 2.6 no longer supports booting directly from a floppy. In spite of this, there are solutions available using older versions of Linux. One of the best is Tom's Root/Boot Disk available at http://www.toms.net/rb/. This will provide a minimal Linux system on a single floppy disk and provides the ability to customize the contents of your disk if necessary.
There are several sources that can be used for a rescue CD-ROM. Just about any commercial distribution's installation CD-ROMs or DVDs will work. These include RedHat, Ubuntu, and SuSE. One very popular option is Knoppix.
Also, the LFS Community has developed its own LiveCD available at https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/livecd/. This LiveCD, is no longer capable of building an entire LFS/BLFS system, but is still a good rescue CD-ROM. If you download the ISO image, use xorriso to copy the image to a CD-ROM.
The instructions for using GRUB2 to make a custom rescue CD-ROM are also available in LFS Chapter 10.
A USB Pen drive, sometimes called a Thumb drive, is recognized by Linux as a SCSI device. Using one of these devices as a rescue device has the advantage that it is usually large enough to hold more than a minimal boot image. You can save critical data to the drive as well as use it to diagnose and recover a damaged system. Booting such a drive requires BIOS support, but building the system consists of formatting the drive, adding GRUB as well as the Linux kernel and supporting files.
An LFS system can be used without a graphical desktop, and unless or until you install a graphical environment you will have to work in the console. Most, if not all, PCs boot with an 8x16 font - whatever the actual screen size. There are a few things you can do to alter the display on the console. Most of them involve changing the font, but the first alters the commandline used by grub.
Modern screens often have a lot more pixels then the screens used in the past. If your screen is 1600 pixels wide, an 8x16 font will give you 200 columns of text - unless your monitor is enormous, the text will be tiny. One of the ways to work around this is to tell grub to use a smaller size, such as 1024x768 or 800x600 or even 640x480. Even if your screen does not have a 4:3 aspect ratio, this should work.
To try this, you can reboot and edit grub's command-line to
insert a 'video=' parameter between the 'root=/dev/sdXn' and
'ro', for example root=/dev/sda2
video=1024x768 ro based on the example in LFS section
10.4.4 : ../../../../lfs/view/12.2-systemd/chapter10/grub.html.
If you decide that you wish to do this, you can then (as the
root user) edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
In LFS the kbd package is
used. The fonts it provides are PC Screen Fonts, usually
called PSF, and they were installed into /usr/share/consolefonts. Where these
include a unicode mapping table, the file suffix is often
changed to .psfu although
packages such as terminus-font (see below) do not add the
'u'. These fonts are usually compressed with gzip to save
space, but that is not essential.
The initial PC text screens had 8 colours, or 16 colours if the bright versions of the original 8 colours were used. A PSF font can include up to 256 characters (technically, glyphs) while allowing 16 colours, or up to 512 characters (in which case, the bright colours will not be available). Clearly, these console fonts cannot be used to display CJK text - that would need thousands of available glyphs.
Some fonts in kbd can cover more than 512 codepoints ('characters'), with varying degrees of fidelity: unicode contains several whitespace codepoints which can all be mapped to a space, varieties of dashes can be mapped to a minus sign, smart quotes can map to the regular ASCII quotes rather than to whatever is used for "codepoint not present or invalid", and those cyrillic or greek letters which look like latin letters can be mapped onto them, so 'A' can also do duty for cyrillic A and greek Alpha, and 'P' can also do duty for cyrillic ER and greek RHO. Unfortunately, where a font has been created from a BDF file (the method in terminus and Debian's console-setup ) such mapping of additional codepoints onto an existing glyph is not always done, although the terminus ter-vXXn fonts do this well.
There are over 120 combinations of font and size in
kbd: often a font is
provided at several character sizes, and sometimes varieties
cover different subsets of unicode. Most are 8 pixels wide,
in heights from 8 to 16 pixels, but there are a few which are
9 pixels wide, some others which are 12x22, and even one
(latarcyrheb-sun32.psfu) which
has been scaled up to 16x32. Using a bigger font is another
way of making text on a large screen easier to read.
You can test fonts as a normal user. If you have a font which has not been installed, you can load it with :
setfont /path/to/yourfont.ext
For the fonts already installed you only need the name, so
using gr737a-9x16.psfu.gz as an
example:
setfont gr737a-9x16
To see the glyphs in the font, use:
showconsolefont
If the font looks as if it might be useful, you can then go on to test it more thoroughly.
When you find a font which you wish to use, as the
root user) edit /etc/vconsole.conf as
described in LFS section 9.6 ../../../../lfs/view/12.2-systemd/chapter09/console.html..
For fonts not supplied with the kbd package you will need to optionally
compress it / them with gzip and then install it /
them as the root user.
Although some console fonts are created from BDF files, which is a text format with hex values for the pixels in each row of the character, there are more-modern tools available for editing psf fonts. The psftools package allows you to dump a font to a text representation with a dash for a pixel which is off (black) and a hash for a pixel which is on (white). You can then edit the text file to add more characters, or reshape them, or map extra codepoints onto them, and then create a new psf font with your changes.
The Terminus Font
package provides fixed-width bitmap fonts designed for long
(8 hours and more per day) work with computers. Under
'Character variants' on that page is a list of patches (in
the alt/ directory). If you are
using a graphical browser to look at that page, you can see
what the patches do, e.g. 'll2' makes 'l' more visibly
different from 'i' and '1'.
By default terminus-fonts will try to create several types of font, and it will fail if bdftopcf from Xorg Applications has not been installed. The configure script is only really useful if you go on to install all the fonts (console and X11 bitmap) to the correct directories, as in a distro. To build only the PSF fonts and their dependencies, run:
make psf
This will create more than 240 ter-*.psf fonts. The 'b' suffix indicates bright, 'n' indicates normal. You can then test them to see if any fit your requirements. Unless you are creating a distro, there seems little point in installing them all.
As an example, to install the last of these fonts, you can
gzip it and then as the root
user:
install -v -m644 ter-v32n.psf.gz /usr/share/consolefonts
On some recent PCs it can be necessary, or desirable, to load
firmware to make them work at their best. There is a directory,
/lib/firmware, where the kernel
or kernel drivers look for firmware images.
Currently, most firmware can be found at a git repository which can be
viewed in the browser with the URL
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/plain.
For convenience, the LFS Project has created a mirror, updated
daily, where these firmware files can be accessed via
wget or a web
browser at https://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/linux-firmware/.
To get the firmware, point a browser to one of the above
repositories and then download the item(s) which you need. If
you want all these firmware files (for example you are
distributing the system onto multiple hardware systems), either
install git-2.46.0 and clone
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git,
or open this URL in a browser and download the latest snapshot
listed in the Tag table.
For some other firmware, particularly for Intel microcode and certain wifi devices, the needed firmware is not available in the above repository. Some of this will be addressed below, but a search of the Internet for needed firmware is sometimes necessary.
Firmware files are conventionally referred to as blobs because you cannot determine what they will do. Note that firmware is distributed under various different licenses which do not permit disassembly or reverse-engineering.
Firmware for PCs falls into four categories:
Updates to the CPU to work around errata, usually referred to as microcode.
Firmware for video controllers. On x86 machines this is required for ATI devices (Radeon and AMDGPU chips) and may be useful for Intel (Skylake and later) and Nvidia (Kepler and later) GPUs.
ATI Radeon and AMDGPU devices all require firmware to be able to use KMS (kernel modesetting - the preferred option) as well as for Xorg. For old radeon chips (before the R600), the firmware is still in the kernel source.
Intel integrated GPUs from Skylake onwards can use firmware for GuC (the Graphics microcontroller), and also for the HuC (HEVC/H265 microcontroller which offloads to the GPU) and the DMC (Display Microcontroller) to provide additional low-power states. The GuC and HuC have had a chequered history in the kernel and updated firmware may be disabled by default, depending on your kernel version. Further details may be found at 01.org and Arch linux.
Nvidia GPUs from Kepler onwards require signed firmware, otherwise the nouveau driver is unable to provide hardware acceleration. Nvidia has now released firmware up to Ampere (GeForce30 series) to linux-firmware. Note that faster clocks than the default are not enabled by the released firmware.
Firmware updates for wired network ports. Most of them work even without the updates, but they will probably work better with the updated firmware. For some modern laptops, firmware for both wired ethernet (e.g. rtl_nic) and also for bluetooth devices (e.g. qca) is required before the wired network can be used.
Firmware for other devices, such as wireless NICs. These devices are not required for the PC to boot, but need the firmware before these devices can be used.
Although not needed to load a firmware blob, the following tools may be useful for determining, obtaining, or preparing the needed firmware in order to load it into the system: cpio-2.15, git-2.46.0, pciutils-3.13.0, and Wget-1.24.5
In general, microcode can be loaded by the BIOS or UEFI, and it might be updated by upgrading to a newer version of those. On linux, you can also load the microcode from the kernel if you are using an AMD family 10h or later processor (first introduced late 2007), or an Intel processor from 1998 and later (Pentium4, Core, etc), if updated microcode has been released. These updates only last until the machine is powered off, so they need to be applied on every boot.
Intel provide updates of their microcode for Skylake and later processors as new vulnerabilities come to light, and have in the past provided updates for processors from SandyBridge onwards, although those are no-longer supported for new fixes. New versions of AMD firmware are rare and usually only apply to a few models, although motherboard manufacturers get AGESA (AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture) updates to change BIOS values, e.g. to support more memory variants, new vulnerability fixes or newer CPUs.
There were two ways of loading the microcode, described as 'early' and 'late'. Early loading happens before userspace has been started, late loading happens after userspace has started. However, late loading is known to be problematic and not supported anymore (see the kernel commit x86/microcode: Taint and warn on late loading). Indeed, early loading is needed to work around one particular erratum in early Intel Haswell processors which had TSX enabled. (See Intel Disables TSX Instructions: Erratum Found in Haswell, Haswell-E/EP, Broadwell-Y.) Without this update glibc can do the wrong thing in uncommon situations.
In previous versions of this book, late loading of microcode to see if it gets applied was recommended, followed by using an initrd to force early loading. But now that the contents of the Intel microcode tarball is documented, and AMD microcode can be read by a Python script to determine which machines it covers, there is no real reason to use late loading.
It might be still possible to manually force late loading of microcode. But it may cause kernel malfunction and you should take the risk yourself. You will need to reconfigure your kernel for late loading, but early loading is always supported by Linux kernel version 6.6 or later on a x86 (no matter 32-bit or 64-bit) system. The instructions here will show you how to create an initrd for early loading. It is also possible to build the same microcode bin file into the kernel, which allows early loading but requires the kernel to be recompiled to update the microcode.
To confirm what processor(s) you have (if more than one, they will be identical) look in /proc/cpuinfo. Determine the decimal values of the cpu family, model and stepping by running the following command (it will also report the current microcode version):
head -n7 /proc/cpuinfo
Convert the cpu family, model and stepping to pairs of hexadecimal digits, and remember the value of the “microcode” field. You can now check if there is any microcode available.
If you are creating an initrd to update firmware for different machines, as a distro would do, go down to 'Early loading of microcode' and cat all the Intel blobs to GenuineIntel.bin or cat all the AMD blobs to AuthenticAMD.bin. This creates a larger initrd - for all Intel machines in the 20200609 update the size was 3.0 MB compared to typically 24 KB for one machine.
The first step is to get the most recent version of the
Intel microcode. This must be done by navigating to
https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files/releases/
and downloading the latest file there. As of this writing
the most secure version of the microcode is
microcode-20240813. Extract this file in the normal way,
the microcode is in the intel-ucode directory, containing various
blobs with names in the form XX-YY-ZZ. There are also
various other files, and a release note.
In the past, intel did not provide any details of which
blobs had changed versions, but now the release note
details this. You can compare the microcode version in
/proc/cpuinfo with the
version for your CPU model in the releasenote to know if
there is an update.
The recent firmware for older processors is provided to deal with vulnerabilities which have now been made public, and for some of these such as Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) you might wish to increase the protection by disabling hyperthreading, or alternatively to disable the kernel's default mitigation because of its impact on compile times. Please read the online documentation at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/hw-vuln/index.html.
For an Tigerlake mobile (described as Intel(R) Core(TM)
i5-11300H CPU) the relevant values are cpu family 6, model
140, stepping 1 so in this case the required identification
is 06-8c-01. The releasenote says the latest microcode for
it is versioned 0xb8. If the value of the “microcode” field
in /proc/cpuinfo is 0xb8 or
greater, it indicates the microcode update is already
applied by the BIOS. Otherwise, proceed to the section called “Early
loading of microcode”.
Begin by downloading a container of firmware for your CPU family from https://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/linux-firmware/amd-ucode/. The family is always specified in hex. Families 10h to 14h (16 to 20) are in microcode_amd.bin. Families 15h, 16h, 17h (Zen, Zen+, Zen2) and 19h (Zen3) have their own containers, but very few machines are likely to get updated microcode. Instead, AMD provide an updated AGESA to the motherboard makers, who may provide an updated BIOS using this. There is a Python3 script at https://github.com/AMDESE/amd_ucode_info/blob/master/amd_ucode_info.py. Download that script and run it against the bin file to check which processors have updates.
For the very old Athlon(tm) II X2 in these examples the values were cpu family 16, model 5, stepping 3 giving an identification of Family=0x10 Model=0x05 Stepping=0x03. One line of the amd_ucode_info.py script output describes the microcode version for it:
Family=0x10 Model=0x05 Stepping=0x03: Patch=0x010000c8 Length=960 bytes
If the value of the “microcode” field in /proc/cpuinfo is 0x10000c8 or greater, it
indicates the BIOS has already applied the microcode
update. Otherwise, proceed to the
section called “Early loading of microcode”.
If you have established that updated microcode is available for your system, it is time to prepare it for early loading. This requires an additional package, cpio-2.15 and the creation of an initrd which will need to be added to grub.cfg.
It does not matter where you prepare the initrd, and once it is working you can apply the same initrd to later LFS systems or newer kernels on this same machine, at least until any newer microcode is released. Use the following commands:
mkdir -p initrd/kernel/x86/microcode cd initrd
For an AMD machine, use the following command (replace <MYCONTAINER> with the name of the container for your CPU's family):
cp -v ../<MYCONTAINER> kernel/x86/microcode/AuthenticAMD.bin
Or for an Intel machine copy the appropriate blob using this command:
cp -v ../intel-ucode/<XX-YY-ZZ> kernel/x86/microcode/GenuineIntel.bin
Now prepare the initrd:
find . | cpio -o -H newc > /boot/microcode.img
You now need to add a new entry to /boot/grub/grub.cfg and here you should add a new line after the linux line within the stanza. If /boot is a separate mountpoint:
initrd /microcode.img
or this if it is not:
initrd /boot/microcode.img
If you are already booting with an initrd (see the
section called “About initramfs”), you should run
mkinitramfs
again after putting the appropriate blob or container into
/lib/firmware. More
precisely, put an intel blob in a /lib/firmware/intel-ucode directory or an
AMD container in a /lib/firmware/amd-ucode directory before
running mkinitramfs.
Alternatively, you can have both initrd on the same line,
such as initrd
/microcode.img /other-initrd.img (adapt
that as above if /boot is not a separate mountpoint).
You can now reboot with the added initrd, and then use the following command to check that the early load worked:
dmesg | grep -e 'microcode' -e 'Linux version' -e 'Command line'
If you updated to address vulnerabilities, you can look at the output of the lscpu command to see what is now reported.
The places and times where early loading happens are very different in AMD and Intel machines. First, an example of an Intel (Tigerlake mobile) with early loading:
[ 0.000000] Linux version 6.10.4 (xry111@stargazer) (gcc (GCC) 14.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.43) #4 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Aug 15 18:04:11 CST 2024
[ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.10.0 root=PARTUUID=<CLASSIFIED> ro
[ 0.585605] microcode: Current revision: 0x000000b8
[ 0.585611] microcode: Updated early from: 0x00000086A historic AMD example:
[ 0.000000] Linux version 4.15.3 (ken@testserver) (gcc version 7.3.0 (GCC))
#2 SMP Sun Feb 18 02:32:03 GMT 2018
[ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-4.15.3-sda5 root=/dev/sda5 ro
[ 0.307619] microcode: microcode updated early to new patch_level=0x010000c8
[ 0.307678] microcode: CPU0: patch_level=0x010000c8
[ 0.307723] microcode: CPU1: patch_level=0x010000c8
[ 0.307795] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2.
These instructions do NOT apply to old radeons before the
R600 family. For those, the firmware is in the kernel's
/lib/firmware/ directory. Nor
do they apply if you intend to avoid a graphical setup such
as Xorg and are content to use the default 80x25 display
rather than a framebuffer.
Early radeon devices only needed a single 2K blob of firmware. Recent devices need several different blobs, and some of them are much bigger. The total size of the radeon firmware directory is over 500K — on a large modern system you can probably spare the space, but it is still redundant to install all the unused files each time you build a system.
A better approach is to install pciutils-3.13.0 and
then use lspci to identify which
VGA controller is installed.
With that information, check the RadeonFeature page of the Xorg wiki for Decoder ring for engineering vs marketing names to identify the family (you may need to know this for the Xorg driver in BLFS — Southern Islands and Sea Islands use the radeonsi driver) and the specific model.
Now that you know which controller you are using, consult the Radeon page of the Gentoo wiki which has a table listing the required firmware blobs for the various chipsets. Note that Southern Islands and Sea Islands chips use different firmware for kernel 3.17 and later compared to earlier kernels. Identify and download the required blobs then install them:
mkdir -pv /lib/firmware/radeon cp -v <YOUR_BLOBS> /lib/firmware/radeon
Building the kernel amdgpu driver as a module is recommended because the firmware files need to be accessible at the time it is loaded. If you are building it as a part of the kernel image for any reason, you need to either include the firmware files in the initramfs (read the section called “About initramfs” for details), or include them in the kernel image itself (read the section called “Include Firmware Blobs in the Kernel Image” for details).
All video controllers using the amdgpu kernel driver require firmware, whether you will be using the xorg amdgpu driver, the xserver's modesetting driver, or just kernel modesetting to get a console framebuffer larger than 80x25.
Install pciutils-3.13.0 and use that to check the model name (look for 'VGA compatible controller:'). If you have an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit, i.e. CPU and video on the same chip) that will probably tell you the name. If you have a separate amdgpu video card you will need to search to determine which name it uses (e.g. a card described as Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] needs Polaris11 firmware. There is a table of "Family, Chipset name, Product name and Firmware" at the end of the Kernel sections in AMDGPU page of the Gentoo wiki.
Once you have identified the firmware name, install all the relevant files for it. For example, the Baffin card mentioned above has 21 different polaris11* files, APUs such as renoir and picasso have at least 12 files and might gain more in future updates (e.g. the raven APU now has a 13th file, raven_ta.bin).
mkdir -pv /lib/firmware/amdgpu cp -v <YOUR_BLOBS> /lib/firmware/amdgpu
If disk space is not a problem, you could install all the current amdgpu firmware files and not worry about exactly which chipset is installed.
Building the kernel amdgpu driver as a module is recommended because the firmware files need to be accessible at the time it is loaded. If you are building it as a part of the kernel image for any reason, you need to either include the firmware files in the initramfs (read the section called “About initramfs” for details), or include them in the kernel image itself (read the section called “Include Firmware Blobs in the Kernel Image” for details).
Nvidia has released basic signed firmware for recent graphics chips, but significantly after the chips and its own binary drivers were first available. For other chips it has been necessary to extract the firmware from the binary driver.
For more exact information about which chips need extracted firmware, see https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/VideoAcceleration.html.
If the necessary firmware is available in the nvidia/ directory of linux-firmware, copy
it to /lib/firmware/nouveau.
If the firmware has not been made available in linux-firmware, for the old chips mentioned in the nouveau wiki link above run the following commands:
wget https://anduin.linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/nvidia-firmware/extract_firmware.py wget https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/340.32/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-340.32.run sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-340.32.run --extract-only python3 extract_firmware.py mkdir -p /lib/firmware/nouveau cp -d nv* vuc-* /lib/firmware/nouveau/
The kernel likes to load firmware for some network drivers,
particularly those from Realtek (the
/lib/linux-firmware/rtl_nic/) directory, but they generally
appear to work without it. Therefore, you can boot the
kernel, check dmesg for messages about this missing firmware,
and if necessary download the firmware and put it in the
specified directory in /lib/firmware so that it will be found on
subsequent boots. Note that with current kernels this works
whether or not the driver is compiled in or built as a
module, there is no need to build this firmware into the
kernel. Here is an example where the R8169 driver has been
compiled in but the firmware was not made available. Once the
firmware had been provided, there was no mention of it on
later boots.
dmesg | grep firmware | grep r8169
[ 7.018028] r8169 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw failed with error -2
[ 7.018036] r8169 0000:01:00.0 eth0: unable to load firmware patch rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw (-2)
Different countries have different regulations on the radio
spectrum usage of wireless devices. You can install a
firmware to make the wireless devices obey local spectrum
regulations, so you won't be inquired by local authority or
find your wireless NIC jamming the frequencies of other
devices (for example, remote controllers). The regulatory
database firmware can be downloaded from https://kernel.org/pub/software/network/wireless-regdb/.
To install it, simply extract regulatory.db and regulatory.db.p7s from the tarball into
/lib/firmware. Note that either
the cfg80211 driver needs to be
selected as a module for the regulatory.* files to be loaded, or those
files need to be included as firmware into the kernel, as
explained above in the section called “Firmware
for Video Cards”.
The access point (AP) would send a country code to your
wireless NIC, and wpa_supplicant-2.11 would
tell the kernel to load the regulation of this country from
regulatory.db, and enforce it.
Note that several AP don't send this country code, so you may
be locked to a rather restricted usage (specially if you want
to use your interface as an AP).
Some systems (especially budget laptops) utilize a DSP
shipped with the CPU for connection with the audio codec. The
Sound Open Firmware must be loaded onto the DSP to make it
functional. These firmware files can be downloaded from
https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/releases.
Extract the tarball and changing into the extracted
directory, then as the root
user install the firmware:
install -vdm755 /usr/lib/firmware/intel && cp -av -T --no-preserve=ownership sof \ /usr/lib/firmware/intel/sof && cp -av -T --no-preserve=ownership sof-tplg \ /usr/lib/firmware/intel/sof-tplg
alsa-lib-1.2.12 needs Use Case Manager configuration files for the systems using Sound Open Firmware as well. Read the alsa-lib-1.2.12 page for the instructions to install them. Once the firmware is loaded (you may need a reboot so the kernel will load them) and the UCM configuration files are installed, following the section called “Configuring ALSA Utilities” to set up your sound card for ALSA properly.
Identifying the correct firmware will typically require you
to install pciutils-3.13.0, and then use
lspci to
identify the device. You should then search online to check
which module it uses, which firmware, and where to obtain the
firmware — not all of it is in linux-firmware.
If possible, you should begin by using a wired connection when you first boot your LFS system. To use a wireless connection you will need to use a network tools such as iw-6.9, Wireless Tools-29, or wpa_supplicant-2.11.
Firmware may also be needed for other devices such as some SCSI controllers, bluetooth adaptors, or TV recorders. The same principles apply.
Some drivers, notably the drivers for ATI or AMD GPU,
requires the firmware files accessible at the time it is
loaded. The easiest method to handle these drivers is
building them as a kernel module. An alternative method is
creating an initramfs (read the section called “About
initramfs” for details) including the firmware files. If
you don't want to use either methods, you may include the
firmware files in the kernel image itself. Install the needed
firmware files into /lib/firmware first, then set the following
kernel configuration and rebuild the kernel:
Device Drivers ---> Generic Driver Options ---> Firmware loader ---> <*> Firmware loading facility [FW_LOADER] (xx/aa.bin xx/bb.bin) Build named firmware blobs into the kernel binary ... [EXTRA_FIRMWARE] (/lib/firmware) Firmware blobs root directory ... [EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR]
Replace xx/aa.bin
xx/bb.bin with a whitespace-separated list of
paths to the needed firmware files, relative to /lib/firmware. A method easier than
manually typing the list (it may be long) is running the
following command:
echo CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE='"'$({ cd /lib/firmware; echo amdgpu/* })'"' >> .config
make oldconfig
Replace amdgpu/*
with a shell pattern matching the needed firmware files.
Do not distribute a kernel image containing the firmware to others or you may violate the GPL.
Although most devices needed by packages in BLFS and beyond are
set up properly by udev using
the default rules installed by LFS in /etc/udev/rules.d, there are cases where the
rules must be modified or augmented.
If there are multiple sound cards in a system, the "default"
sound card becomes random. The method to establish sound card
order depends on whether the drivers are modules or not. If
the sound card drivers are compiled into the kernel, control
is via kernel command line parameters in /boot/grub/grub.cfg. For example, if a
system has both an FM801 card and a SoundBlaster PCI card,
the following can be appended to the command line:
snd-fm801.index=0 snd-ens1371.index=1
If the sound card drivers are built as modules, the order can
be established in the /etc/modprobe.conf file with:
options snd-fm801 index=0
options snd-ens1371 index=1USB devices usually have two kinds of device nodes associated with them.
The first kind is created by device-specific drivers (e.g., usb_storage/sd_mod or usblp) in the kernel. For example, a USB mass storage device would be /dev/sdb, and a USB printer would be /dev/usb/lp0. These device nodes exist only when the device-specific driver is loaded.
The second kind of device nodes (/dev/bus/usb/BBB/DDD, where BBB is the bus number and DDD is the device number) are created even if the device doesn't have a kernel driver. By using these "raw" USB device nodes, an application can exchange arbitrary USB packets with the device, i.e., bypass the possibly-existing kernel driver.
Access to raw USB device nodes is needed when a userspace program is acting as a device driver. However, for the program to open the device successfully, the permissions have to be set correctly. By default, due to security concerns, all raw USB devices are owned by user root and group root, and have 0664 permissions (the read access is needed, e.g., for lsusb to work and for programs to access USB hubs). Packages (such as SANE and libgphoto2) containing userspace USB device drivers also ship udev rules that change the permissions of the controlled raw USB devices. That is, rules installed by SANE change permissions for known scanners, but not printers. If a package maintainer forgot to write a rule for your device, report a bug to both BLFS (if the package is there) and upstream, and you will need to write your own rule.
Before Linux-2.6.15, raw USB device access was performed not with /dev/bus/usb/BBB/DDD device nodes, but with /proc/bus/usb/BBB/DDD pseudofiles. Some applications still use only this deprecated technique and can't use the new device nodes. They cannot work with Linux kernel version 3.5 or newer. If you need to run such an application, contact the developer of it for a fix.
Fine-tuning of device attributes such as group name and
permissions is possible by creating extra udev rules, matching on something like
this. The vendor and product can be found by searching the
/sys/devices directory entries
or using udevadm
info after the device has been attached. See
the documentation in the current udev directory of /usr/share/doc for details.
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="05d8", SYSFS{idProduct}=="4002", \
GROUP:="scanner", MODE:="0660"The above line is used for descriptive purposes only. The scanner udev rules are put into place when installing SANE-1.2.1.
If the initial boot process does not set up the /dev/dvd device properly, it can be
installed using the following modification to the default
udev rules. As the root user,
run:
sed '1d;/SYMLINK.*cdrom/ a\
KERNEL=="sr0", ENV{ID_CDROM_DVD}=="1", SYMLINK+="dvd", OPTIONS+="link_priority=-100"' \
/lib/udev/rules.d/60-cdrom_id.rules > /etc/udev/rules.d/60-cdrom_id.rules
Together, the /usr/sbin/useradd command and
/etc/skel directory (both are
easy to set up and use) provide a way to assure new users are
added to your LFS system with the same beginning settings for
things such as the PATH, keyboard
processing and other environmental variables. Using these two
facilities makes it easier to assure this initial state for
each new user added to the system.
The /etc/skel directory holds
copies of various initialization and other files that may be
copied to the new user's home directory when the /usr/sbin/useradd program
adds the new user.
The useradd
program uses a collection of default values kept in
/etc/default/useradd. This file
is created in a base LFS installation by the Shadow package. If it has been removed or
renamed, the useradd program uses some
internal defaults. You can see the default values by running
/usr/sbin/useradd
-D.
To change these values, simply modify the /etc/default/useradd file as the root user. An alternative to directly
modifying the file is to run useradd as the root user while supplying the desired
modifications on the command line. Information on how to do
this can be found in the useradd man page.
To get started, create an /etc/skel directory and make sure it is
writable only by the system administrator, usually root. Creating the directory as
root is the best way to go.
The mode of any files from this part of the book that you put
in /etc/skel should be writable
only by the owner. Also, since there is no telling what kind of
sensitive information a user may eventually place in their copy
of these files, you should make them unreadable by "group" and
"other".
You can also put other files in /etc/skel and different permissions may be
needed for them.
Decide which initialization files should be provided in every
(or most) new user's home directory. The decisions you make
will affect what you do in the next two sections, The Bash Shell Startup Files
and The vimrc Files. Some
or all of those files will be useful for root, any already-existing users, and new
users.
The files from those sections that you might want to place in
/etc/skel include .inputrc, .bash_profile, .bashrc, .bash_logout, .dircolors, and .vimrc. If you are unsure which of these
should be placed there, just continue to the following
sections, read each section and any references provided, and
then make your decision.
You will run a slightly modified set of commands for files
which are placed in /etc/skel.
Each section will remind you of this. In brief, the book's
commands have been written for files not added to /etc/skel and instead just sends the results
to the user's home directory. If the file is going to be in
/etc/skel, change the book's
command(s) to send output there instead and then just copy the
file from /etc/skel to the
appropriate directories, like /etc, ~ or the
home directory of any other user already in the system.
When adding a new user with useradd, use the -m parameter, which tells useradd to create the user's
home directory and copy files from /etc/skel (can be overridden) to the new
user's home directory. For example (perform as the root user):
useradd -m <newuser>
If you are sharing a /home or
/usr/src with another Linux
distro (for example, the host distro used for building LFS),
you can create a user with the same UID (and, same primary
group GID) to keep the file ownership consistent across the
systems. First, on the other
distro, get the UID of the user and the GID of the
user's primary group:
getent passwd <username> | cut -d ':' -f 3,4
The command should output the UID and GID, separated by a colon. Now on the BLFS system, create the primary group and the user:
groupadd -g<GID><username>&& useradd -u<UID>-g<username><username>
Throughout BLFS, many packages install programs that run as
daemons or in some way should have a user or group name
assigned. Generally these names are used to map a user ID (uid)
or group ID (gid) for system use. Generally the specific uid or
gid numbers used by these applications are not significant. The
exception of course, is that root has a uid and gid of 0 (zero) that is
indeed special. The uid values are stored in /etc/passwd and the gid values are found in
/etc/group.
Customarily, Unix systems classify users and groups into two
categories: system users and regular users. The system users
and groups are given low numbers and regular users and groups
have numeric values greater than all the system values. The
cutoff for these numbers is found in two parameters in the
/etc/login.defs configuration
file. The default UID_MIN value is 1000 and the default GID_MIN
value is 1000. If a specific uid or gid value is not specified
when creating a user with useradd or a group with
groupadd the
values assigned will always be above these cutoff values.
Additionally, the Linux Standard Base recommends that system uid and gid values should be below 100.
Below is a table of suggested uid/gid values used in BLFS beyond those defined in a base LFS installation. These can be changed as desired, but provide a suggested set of consistent values.
Table 3.1. UID/GID Suggested Values
| Name | uid | gid |
|---|---|---|
| bin | 1 | |
| lp | 9 | |
| adm | 16 | |
| atd | 17 | 17 |
| messagebus | 18 | 18 |
| lpadmin | 19 | |
| named | 20 | 20 |
| gdm | 21 | 21 |
| fcron | 22 | 22 |
| systemd-journal | 23 | 23 |
| apache | 25 | 25 |
| smmsp | 26 | 26 |
| polkitd | 27 | 27 |
| rpc | 28 | 28 |
| exim | 31 | 31 |
| postfix | 32 | 32 |
| postdrop | 33 | |
| sendmail | 34 | |
| 34 | ||
| vmailman | 35 | 35 |
| news | 36 | 36 |
| kdm | 37 | 37 |
| fetchmail | 38 | |
| mysql | 40 | 40 |
| postgres | 41 | 41 |
| dovecot | 42 | 42 |
| dovenull | 43 | 43 |
| ftp | 45 | 45 |
| proftpd | 46 | 46 |
| vsftpd | 47 | 47 |
| rsyncd | 48 | 48 |
| sshd | 50 | 50 |
| stunnel | 51 | 51 |
| dhcpcd | 52 | 52 |
| svn | 56 | 56 |
| svntest | 57 | |
| git | 58 | 58 |
| games | 60 | 60 |
| kvm | 61 | |
| wireshark | 62 | |
| sddm | 64 | 64 |
| lightdm | 65 | 65 |
| scanner | 70 | |
| colord | 71 | 71 |
| systemd-journal-gateway | 73 | 73 |
| systemd-journal-remote | 74 | 74 |
| systemd-journal-upload | 75 | 75 |
| systemd-network | 76 | 76 |
| systemd-resolve | 77 | 77 |
| systemd-timesync | 78 | 78 |
| systemd-coredump | 79 | 79 |
| uuidd | 80 | 80 |
| systemd-oom | 81 | 81 |
| ldap | 83 | 83 |
| avahi | 84 | 84 |
| avahi-autoipd | 85 | 85 |
| netdev | 86 | |
| ntp | 87 | 87 |
| unbound | 88 | 88 |
| plugdev | 90 | |
| wheel | 97 | |
| anonymous | 98 | |
| nobody | 65534 | |
| nogroup | 65534 |
The shell program /bin/bash
(hereafter referred to as just "the shell") uses a collection
of startup files to help create an environment. Each file has a
specific use and may affect login and interactive environments
differently. The files in the /etc directory generally provide global
settings. If an equivalent file exists in your home directory
it may override the global settings.
An interactive login shell is started after a successful login,
using /bin/login, by reading the
/etc/passwd file. This shell
invocation normally reads /etc/profile and its private equivalent
~/.bash_profile (or ~/.profile if called as /bin/sh) upon startup.
An interactive non-login shell is normally started at the
command-line using a shell program (e.g., [prompt]$/bin/bash) or by the
/bin/su command.
An interactive non-login shell is also started with a terminal
program such as xterm or konsole from within a
graphical environment. This type of shell invocation normally
copies the parent environment and then reads the user's
~/.bashrc file for additional
startup configuration instructions.
A non-interactive shell is usually present when a shell script is running. It is non-interactive because it is processing a script and not waiting for user input between commands. For these shell invocations, only the environment inherited from the parent shell is used.
The file ~/.bash_logout is not
used for an invocation of the shell. It is read and executed
when a user exits from an interactive login shell.
Many distributions use /etc/bashrc for system wide initialization of
non-login shells. This file is usually called from the user's
~/.bashrc file and is not built
directly into bash itself. This convention
is followed in this section.
For more information see info bash -- Nodes: Bash Startup Files and Interactive Shells.
Most of the instructions below are used to create files
located in the /etc directory
structure which requires you to execute the commands as the
root user. If you elect to
create the files in user's home directories instead, you
should run the commands as an unprivileged user.
Editor Notes: https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/bash-shell-startup-files
Here is a base /etc/profile.
This file starts by setting up some helper functions and some
basic parameters. It specifies some bash history parameters
and, for security purposes, disables keeping a permanent
history file for the root
user. It also sets a default user prompt. It then calls
small, single purpose scripts in the /etc/profile.d directory to provide most of
the initialization.
For more information on the escape sequences you can use for
your prompt (i.e., the PS1
environment variable) see info
bash -- Node:
Printing a Prompt.
cat > /etc/profile << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/profile
# Written for Beyond Linux From Scratch
# by James Robertson <jameswrobertson@earthlink.net>
# modifications by Dagmar d'Surreal <rivyqntzne@pbzpnfg.arg>
# System wide environment variables and startup programs.
# System wide aliases and functions should go in /etc/bashrc. Personal
# environment variables and startup programs should go into
# ~/.bash_profile. Personal aliases and functions should go into
# ~/.bashrc.
# Functions to help us manage paths. Second argument is the name of the
# path variable to be modified (default: PATH)
pathremove () {
local IFS=':'
local NEWPATH
local DIR
local PATHVARIABLE=${2:-PATH}
for DIR in ${!PATHVARIABLE} ; do
if [ "$DIR" != "$1" ] ; then
NEWPATH=${NEWPATH:+$NEWPATH:}$DIR
fi
done
export $PATHVARIABLE="$NEWPATH"
}
pathprepend () {
pathremove $1 $2
local PATHVARIABLE=${2:-PATH}
export $PATHVARIABLE="$1${!PATHVARIABLE:+:${!PATHVARIABLE}}"
}
pathappend () {
pathremove $1 $2
local PATHVARIABLE=${2:-PATH}
export $PATHVARIABLE="${!PATHVARIABLE:+${!PATHVARIABLE}:}$1"
}
export -f pathremove pathprepend pathappend
# Set the initial path
export PATH=/usr/bin
# Attempt to provide backward compatibility with LFS earlier than 11
if [ ! -L /bin ]; then
pathappend /bin
fi
if [ $EUID -eq 0 ] ; then
pathappend /usr/sbin
if [ ! -L /sbin ]; then
pathappend /sbin
fi
unset HISTFILE
fi
# Set up some environment variables.
export HISTSIZE=1000
export HISTIGNORE="&:[bf]g:exit"
# Set some defaults for graphical systems
export XDG_DATA_DIRS=${XDG_DATA_DIRS:-/usr/share}
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=${XDG_CONFIG_DIRS:-/etc/xdg}
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR:-/tmp/xdg-$USER}
# Set up a red prompt for root and a green one for users.
NORMAL="\[\e[0m\]"
RED="\[\e[1;31m\]"
GREEN="\[\e[1;32m\]"
if [[ $EUID == 0 ]] ; then
PS1="$RED\u [ $NORMAL\w$RED ]# $NORMAL"
else
PS1="$GREEN\u [ $NORMAL\w$GREEN ]\$ $NORMAL"
fi
for script in /etc/profile.d/*.sh ; do
if [ -r $script ] ; then
. $script
fi
done
unset script RED GREEN NORMAL
# End /etc/profile
EOF
Now create the /etc/profile.d
directory, where the individual initialization scripts are
placed:
install --directory --mode=0755 --owner=root --group=root /etc/profile.d
Using the bash completion script below is controversial. Not all users like it. It adds many (usually over 1000) lines to the bash environment and makes it difficult to use the 'set' command to examine simple environment variables. Omitting this script does not interfere with the ability of bash to use the tab key for file name completion.
This script imports bash completion scripts, installed by many other BLFS packages, to allow TAB command line completion.
cat > /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh
# Import bash completion scripts
# If the bash-completion package is installed, use its configuration instead
if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then
# Check for interactive bash and that we haven't already been sourced.
if [ -n "${BASH_VERSION-}" -a -n "${PS1-}" -a -z "${BASH_COMPLETION_VERSINFO-}" ]; then
# Check for recent enough version of bash.
if [ ${BASH_VERSINFO[0]} -gt 4 ] || \
[ ${BASH_VERSINFO[0]} -eq 4 -a ${BASH_VERSINFO[1]} -ge 1 ]; then
[ -r "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/bash_completion" ] && \
. "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/bash_completion"
if shopt -q progcomp && [ -r /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then
# Source completion code.
. /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
fi
fi
fi
else
# bash-completions are not installed, use only bash completion directory
if shopt -q progcomp; then
for script in /etc/bash_completion.d/* ; do
if [ -r $script ] ; then
. $script
fi
done
fi
fi
# End /etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh
EOF
Make sure that the directory exists:
install --directory --mode=0755 --owner=root --group=root /etc/bash_completion.d
For a more complete installation, see https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/bash-shell-startup-files#bash-completions.
This script uses the ~/.dircolors and /etc/dircolors files to control the
colors of file names in a directory listing. They control
colorized output of things like ls --color. The
explanation of how to initialize these files is at the end
of this section.
cat > /etc/profile.d/dircolors.sh << "EOF"
# Setup for /bin/ls and /bin/grep to support color, the alias is in /etc/bashrc.
if [ -f "/etc/dircolors" ] ; then
eval $(dircolors -b /etc/dircolors)
fi
if [ -f "$HOME/.dircolors" ] ; then
eval $(dircolors -b $HOME/.dircolors)
fi
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
EOF
This script adds some useful paths to the PATH and can be used to customize other PATH
related environment variables (e.g. LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc)
that may be needed for all users.
cat > /etc/profile.d/extrapaths.sh << "EOF"
if [ -d /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig ] ; then
pathappend /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig PKG_CONFIG_PATH
fi
if [ -d /usr/local/bin ]; then
pathprepend /usr/local/bin
fi
if [ -d /usr/local/sbin -a $EUID -eq 0 ]; then
pathprepend /usr/local/sbin
fi
if [ -d /usr/local/share ]; then
pathprepend /usr/local/share XDG_DATA_DIRS
fi
# Set some defaults before other applications add to these paths.
pathappend /usr/share/info INFOPATH
EOF
The man
program automatically deduce the search path for man
pages by examining the content of the PATH variable, see manpath(5)
for details. Setting the MANPATH variable may override the
automatic deduction, so the BLFS editors do not recommend
to set it. If you must set it for any reason, it's better
to start its value with a colon (:), for example MANPATH=:/opt/somepkg/share/man:/opt/otherpkg/share/man
so the paths listed in the MANPATH variable will be appended to the
automatically deduced value instead of overriding it.
This script sets up the default inputrc configuration file. If the user
does not have individual settings, it uses the global file.
cat > /etc/profile.d/readline.sh << "EOF"
# Set up the INPUTRC environment variable.
if [ -z "$INPUTRC" -a ! -f "$HOME/.inputrc" ] ; then
INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
fi
export INPUTRC
EOF
Setting the umask value is important for security. Here the default group write permissions are turned off for system users and when the user name and group name are not the same.
cat > /etc/profile.d/umask.sh << "EOF"
# By default, the umask should be set.
if [ "$(id -gn)" = "$(id -un)" -a $EUID -gt 99 ] ; then
umask 002
else
umask 022
fi
EOF
This script sets an environment variable necessary for native language support. A full discussion on determining this variable can be found on the Configuring the System Locale page.
cat > /etc/profile.d/i18n.sh << "EOF"
# Set up i18n variables
for i in $(locale); do
unset ${i%=*}
done
if [[ "$TERM" = linux ]]; then
export LANG=C.UTF-8
else
source /etc/locale.conf
for i in $(locale); do
key=${i%=*}
if [[ -v $key ]]; then
export $key
fi
done
fi
EOF
Here is a base /etc/bashrc.
Comments in the file should explain everything you need.
cat > /etc/bashrc << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/bashrc
# Written for Beyond Linux From Scratch
# by James Robertson <jameswrobertson@earthlink.net>
# updated by Bruce Dubbs <bdubbs@linuxfromscratch.org>
# System wide aliases and functions.
# System wide environment variables and startup programs should go into
# /etc/profile. Personal environment variables and startup programs
# should go into ~/.bash_profile. Personal aliases and functions should
# go into ~/.bashrc
# Provides colored /bin/ls and /bin/grep commands. Used in conjunction
# with code in /etc/profile.
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
# Provides prompt for non-login shells, specifically shells started
# in the X environment. [Review the LFS archive thread titled
# PS1 Environment Variable for a great case study behind this script
# addendum.]
NORMAL="\[\e[0m\]"
RED="\[\e[1;31m\]"
GREEN="\[\e[1;32m\]"
if [[ $EUID == 0 ]] ; then
PS1="$RED\u [ $NORMAL\w$RED ]# $NORMAL"
else
PS1="$GREEN\u [ $NORMAL\w$GREEN ]\$ $NORMAL"
fi
unset RED GREEN NORMAL
# End /etc/bashrc
EOF
Here is a base ~/.bash_profile.
If you want each new user to have this file automatically,
just change the output of the command to /etc/skel/.bash_profile and check the
permissions after the command is run. You can then copy
/etc/skel/.bash_profile to the
home directories of already existing users, including
root, and set the owner and
group appropriately.
cat > ~/.bash_profile << "EOF"
# Begin ~/.bash_profile
# Written for Beyond Linux From Scratch
# by James Robertson <jameswrobertson@earthlink.net>
# updated by Bruce Dubbs <bdubbs@linuxfromscratch.org>
# Personal environment variables and startup programs.
# Personal aliases and functions should go in ~/.bashrc. System wide
# environment variables and startup programs are in /etc/profile.
# System wide aliases and functions are in /etc/bashrc.
if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ] ; then
source $HOME/.bashrc
fi
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
pathprepend $HOME/bin
fi
# Having . in the PATH is dangerous
#if [ $EUID -gt 99 ]; then
# pathappend .
#fi
# End ~/.bash_profile
EOF
Here is a base ~/.profile. The
comments and instructions for using /etc/skel for .bash_profile above also apply here. Only
the target file names are different.
cat > ~/.profile << "EOF"
# Begin ~/.profile
# Personal environment variables and startup programs.
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
pathprepend $HOME/bin
fi
# Set up user specific i18n variables
#export LANG=<ll>_<CC>.<charmap><@modifiers>
# End ~/.profile
EOF
Here is a base ~/.bashrc.
cat > ~/.bashrc << "EOF"
# Begin ~/.bashrc
# Written for Beyond Linux From Scratch
# by James Robertson <jameswrobertson@earthlink.net>
# Personal aliases and functions.
# Personal environment variables and startup programs should go in
# ~/.bash_profile. System wide environment variables and startup
# programs are in /etc/profile. System wide aliases and functions are
# in /etc/bashrc.
if [ -f "/etc/bashrc" ] ; then
source /etc/bashrc
fi
# Set up user specific i18n variables
#export LANG=<ll>_<CC>.<charmap><@modifiers>
# End ~/.bashrc
EOF
This is an empty ~/.bash_logout
that can be used as a template. You will notice that the base
~/.bash_logout does not include
a clear
command. This is because the clear is handled in the
/etc/issue file.
cat > ~/.bash_logout << "EOF"
# Begin ~/.bash_logout
# Written for Beyond Linux From Scratch
# by James Robertson <jameswrobertson@earthlink.net>
# Personal items to perform on logout.
# End ~/.bash_logout
EOF
If you want to use the dircolors capability, then run the
following command. The /etc/skel setup steps shown above also can
be used here to provide a ~/.dircolors file when a new user is set
up. As before, just change the output file name on the
following command and assure the permissions, owner, and
group are correct on the files created and/or copied.
dircolors -p > /etc/dircolors
If you wish to customize the colors used for different file
types, you can edit the /etc/dircolors file. The instructions for
setting the colors are embedded in the file.
Finally, Ian Macdonald has written an excellent collection of tips and tricks to enhance your shell environment. You can read it online at https://www.caliban.org/bash/index.shtml.
The LFS book installs Vim as its text editor. At this point it should be noted that there are a lot of different editing applications out there including Emacs, nano, Joe and many more. Anyone who has been around the Internet (especially usenet) for a short time will certainly have observed at least one flame war, usually involving Vim and Emacs users!
The LFS book creates a basic vimrc file. In this section you'll find an
attempt to enhance this file. At startup, vim reads the global
configuration file (/etc/vimrc)
as well as a user-specific file (~/.vimrc). Either or both can be tailored to
suit the needs of your particular system.
Here is a slightly expanded .vimrc that you can put in ~/.vimrc to provide user specific effects. Of
course, if you put it into /etc/skel/.vimrc instead, it will be made
available to users you add to the system later. You can also
copy the file from /etc/skel/.vimrc to the home directory of
users already on the system, such as root. Be sure to set permissions, owner,
and group if you do copy anything directly from /etc/skel.
" Begin .vimrc
set columns=80
set wrapmargin=8
set ruler
" End .vimrc
Note that the comment tags are " instead of the more usual # or
//. This is correct, the syntax for vimrc is slightly unusual.
Below you'll find a quick explanation of what each of the options in this example file means here:
set columns=80: This simply
sets the number of columns used on the screen.
set wrapmargin=8: This is the
number of characters from the right window border where
wrapping starts.
set ruler: This makes
vim show
the current row and column at the bottom right of the
screen.
More information on the many vim options can be found by
reading the help inside vim itself. Do this by typing
:help in vim to get the general help,
or by typing :help
usr_toc.txt to view the User Manual Table of Contents.
When you first boot up your new LFS system, the logon screen
will be nice and plain (as it should be in a bare-bones
system). Many people however, will want their system to display
some information in the logon message. This can be accomplished
using the file /etc/issue.
The /etc/issue file is a plain
text file which will also accept certain escape sequences (see
below) in order to insert information about the system. There
is also the file issue.net which
can be used when logging on remotely. ssh however, will only use it
if you set the option in the configuration file and will
not interpret the escape
sequences shown below.
One of the most common things which people want to do is clear
the screen at each logon. The easiest way of doing that is to
put a "clear" escape sequence into /etc/issue. A simple way of doing this is to
issue the command clear >
/etc/issue. This will insert the relevant
escape code into the start of the /etc/issue file. Note that if you do this,
when you edit the file, you should leave the characters
(normally '^[[H^[[2J') on the first line alone.
Terminal escape sequences are special codes recognized by the terminal. The ^[ represents an ASCII ESC character. The sequence ESC [ H puts the cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen and ESC 2 J erases the screen. For more information on terminal escape sequences see https://invisible-mirror.net/xterm/ctlseqs/ctlseqs.html
The following sequences are recognized by agetty (the program which
usually parses /etc/issue). This
information is from man
agetty where you can find extra information
about the logon process.
The issue file can contain
certain character sequences to display various information. All
issue sequences consist of a
backslash (\) immediately followed by one of the letters
explained below (so \d in
/etc/issue would insert the
current date).
b Insert the baudrate of the current line.
d Insert the current date.
s Insert the system name, the name of the operating system.
l Insert the name of the current tty line.
m Insert the architecture identifier of the machine, e.g., i686.
n Insert the nodename of the machine, also known as the hostname.
o Insert the domainname of the machine.
r Insert the release number of the kernel, e.g., 2.6.11.12.
t Insert the current time.
u Insert the number of current users logged in.
U Insert the string "1 user" or "<n> users" where <n> is the
number of current users logged in.
v Insert the version of the OS, e.g., the build-date etc.Security takes many forms in a computing environment. After some initial discussion, this chapter gives examples of three different types of security: access, prevention and detection.
Access for users is usually handled by login or an application designed to handle the login function. In this chapter, we show how to enhance login by setting policies with PAM modules. Access via networks can also be secured by policies set by iptables, commonly referred to as a firewall. The Network Security Services (NSS) and Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR) libraries can be installed and shared among the many applications requiring them. For applications that don't offer the best security, you can use the Stunnel package to wrap an application daemon inside an SSL tunnel.
Prevention of breaches, like a trojan, are assisted by applications like GnuPG, specifically the ability to confirm signed packages, which recognizes modifications of the tarball after the packager creates it.
Finally, we touch on detection with a package that stores "signatures" of critical files (defined by the administrator) and then regenerates those "signatures" and compares for files that have been changed.
All software has bugs. Sometimes, a bug can be exploited, for example to allow users to gain enhanced privileges (perhaps gaining a root shell, or simply accessing or deleting other user's files), or to allow a remote site to crash an application (denial of service), or for theft of data. These bugs are labelled as vulnerabilities.
The main place where vulnerabilities get logged is cve.mitre.org. Unfortunately, many vulnerability numbers (CVE-yyyy-nnnn) are initially only labelled as "reserved" when distributions start issuing fixes. Also, some vulnerabilities apply to particular combinations of configure options, or only apply to old versions of packages which have long since been updated in BLFS.
BLFS differs from distributions—there is no BLFS security team, and the editors only become aware of vulnerabilities after they are public knowledge. Sometimes, a package with a vulnerability will not be updated in the book for a long time. Issues can be logged in the Trac system, which might speed up resolution.
The normal way for BLFS to fix a vulnerability is, ideally, to update the book to a new fixed release of the package. Sometimes that happens even before the vulnerability is public knowledge, so there is no guarantee that it will be shown as a vulnerability fix in the Changelog. Alternatively, a sed command, or a patch taken from a distribution, may be appropriate.
The bottom line is that you are responsible for your own security, and for assessing the potential impact of any problems.
The editors now issue Security Advisories for packages in BLFS (and LFS), which can be found at BLFS Security Advisories, and grade the severity according to what upstream reports, or to what is shown at nvd.nist.gov if that has details.
To keep track of what is being discovered, you may wish to follow the security announcements of one or more distributions. For example, Debian has Debian security. Fedora's links on security are at the Fedora wiki. Details of Gentoo linux security announcements are discussed at Gentoo security. Finally, the Slackware archives of security announcements are at Slackware security.
The most general English source is perhaps the Full Disclosure Mailing List, but please read the comment on that page. If you use other languages you may prefer other sites such as heise.de (German) or cert.hr (Croatian). These are not linux-specific. There is also a daily update at lwn.net for subscribers (free access to the data after 2 weeks, but their vulnerabilities database at lwn.net/Alerts is unrestricted).
For some packages, subscribing to their 'announce' lists will provide prompt news of newer versions.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a method to validate the authenticity of an otherwise unknown entity across untrusted networks. PKI works by establishing a chain of trust, rather than trusting each individual host or entity explicitly. In order for a certificate presented by a remote entity to be trusted, that certificate must present a complete chain of certificates that can be validated using the root certificate of a Certificate Authority (CA) that is trusted by the local machine.
Establishing trust with a CA involves validating things like company address, ownership, contact information, etc., and ensuring that the CA has followed best practices, such as undergoing periodic security audits by independent investigators and maintaining an always available certificate revocation list. This is well outside the scope of BLFS (as it is for most Linux distributions). The certificate store provided here is taken from the Mozilla Foundation, who have established very strict inclusion policies described here.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://github.com/lfs-book/make-ca/archive/v1.14/make-ca-1.14.tar.gz
Download size: 40 KB
Download MD5 Sum: e99d2985ead0037caedb765fd66b33f0
Estimated disk space required: 164 KB (with all runtime deps)
Estimated build time: 0.1 SBU (with all runtime deps)
This package ships a CA certificate for validating the
identity of https://hg.mozilla.org/. If
the trust chain of this website has been changed after the
release of make-ca-1.14, it may fail to get the revision of
certdata.txt from server. Use
an updated make-ca release at the release
page if this issue happens.
p11-kit-0.25.5 (runtime, built after libtasn1-4.19.0, required in the following instructions to generate certificate stores from trust anchors, and each time make-ca is run)
nss-3.103 (to generate a shared NSSDB)
The make-ca script will
download and process the certificates included in the
certdata.txt file for use as
trust anchors for the p11-kit-0.25.5 trust module.
Additionally, it will generate system certificate stores used
by BLFS applications (if the recommended and optional
applications are present on the system). Any local
certificates stored in /etc/ssl/local will be imported to both the
trust anchors and the generated certificate stores
(overriding Mozilla's trust). Additionally, any modified
trust values will be copied from the trust anchors to
/etc/ssl/local prior to any
updates, preserving custom trust values that differ from
Mozilla when using the trust utility from
p11-kit to operate on the
trust store.
To install the various certificate stores, first install the
make-ca script into the
correct location. As the root
user:
make install && install -vdm755 /etc/ssl/local
Technically, this package is already installed at this point. But most packages listing make-ca as a dependency actually require the system certificate store set up by this package, rather than the make-ca program itself. So the instructions for using make-ca for setting up the system certificate store are included in this section. You should make sure the required runtime dependency for make-ca is satisfied now, and continue to follow the instructions.
As the root user, download
the certificate source and prepare for system use with the
following command:
If running the script a second time with the same version
of certdata.txt, for
instance, to update the stores when make-ca is upgraded, or to add
additional stores as the requisite software is installed,
replace the -g
switch with the -r
switch in the command line. If packaging, run make-ca --help to see all
available command line options.
/usr/sbin/make-ca -g
You should periodically update the store with the above
command, either manually, or via a systemd timer. A timer is installed at /usr/lib/systemd/system/update-pki.timer
that, if enabled, will check for updates weekly.
Execute the following commands,
as the root user, to
enable the systemd timer:
systemctl enable update-pki.timer
For most users, no additional configuration is necessary,
however, the default certdata.txt file provided by make-ca is
obtained from the mozilla-release branch, and is modified to
provide a Mercurial revision. This will be the correct
version for most systems. There are several other variants of
the file available for use that might be preferred for one
reason or another, including the files shipped with Mozilla
products in this book. RedHat and OpenSUSE, for instance, use
the version included in nss-3.103. Additional upstream downloads are
available at the links included in /etc/make-ca/make-ca.conf.dist. Simply copy
the file to /etc/make-ca.conf
and edit as appropriate.
There are three trust types that are recognized by the
make-ca script, SSL/TLS,
S/Mime, and code signing. For OpenSSL, these are serverAuth, emailProtection, and codeSigning respectively. If
one of the three trust arguments is omitted, the certificate
is neither trusted, nor rejected for that role. Clients that
use OpenSSL or NSS encountering this certificate will
present a warning to the user. Clients using GnuTLS without p11-kit support are not aware of trusted
certificates. To include this CA into the ca-bundle.crt, email-ca-bundle.crt, or objsign-ca-bundle.crt files (the
GnuTLS legacy bundles), it
must have the appropriate trust arguments.
The /etc/ssl/local directory is
available to add additional CA certificates to the system
trust store. This directory is also used to store
certificates that were added to or modified in the system
trust store by p11-kit-0.25.5 so that trust values are
maintained across upgrades. Files in this directory must be
in the OpenSSL trusted
certificate format. Certificates imported using the
trust utility
from p11-kit-0.25.5 will utilize the x509
Extended Key Usage values to assign default trust values for
the system anchors.
If you need to override trust values, or otherwise need to
create an OpenSSL trusted
certificate manually from a regular PEM encoded file, you
need to add trust arguments to the openssl command, and create
a new certificate. For example, using the CAcert roots, if you want
to trust both for all three roles, the following commands
will create appropriate OpenSSL trusted certificates (run as
the root user after Wget-1.24.5 is
installed):
wget http://www.cacert.org/certs/root.crt &&
wget http://www.cacert.org/certs/class3.crt &&
openssl x509 -in root.crt -text -fingerprint -setalias "CAcert Class 1 root" \
-addtrust serverAuth -addtrust emailProtection -addtrust codeSigning \
> /etc/ssl/local/CAcert_Class_1_root.pem &&
openssl x509 -in class3.crt -text -fingerprint -setalias "CAcert Class 3 root" \
-addtrust serverAuth -addtrust emailProtection -addtrust codeSigning \
> /etc/ssl/local/CAcert_Class_3_root.pem &&
/usr/sbin/make-ca -r
Occasionally, there may be instances where you don't agree
with Mozilla's inclusion of a particular certificate
authority. If you'd like to override the default trust of a
particular CA, simply create a copy of the existing
certificate in /etc/ssl/local
with different trust arguments. For example, if you'd like to
distrust the "Makebelieve_CA_Root" file, run the following
commands:
openssl x509 -in /etc/ssl/certs/Makebelieve_CA_Root.pem \
-text \
-fingerprint \
-setalias "Disabled Makebelieve CA Root" \
-addreject serverAuth \
-addreject emailProtection \
-addreject codeSigning \
> /etc/ssl/local/Disabled_Makebelieve_CA_Root.pem &&
/usr/sbin/make-ca -r
When Python3 was installed in LFS, it included the pip3 module with vendored certificates from the Certifi module. That was necessary, but it means that whenever pip3 is used it can reference those certificates, primarily when creating a virtual environment or when installing a module with all its wheel dependencies in one go.
It is generally considered that the System Administrator should be in charge of which certificates are available. Now that make-ca-1.14 and p11-kit-0.25.5 have been installed and make-ca has been configured, it is possible to make pip3 use the system certificates.
The vendored certificates installed in LFS are a snapshot from when the pulled-in version of Certifi was created. If you regularly update the system certificates, the vendored version will become out of date.
To use the system certificates in Python3, you should set _PIP_STANDALONE_CERT to point to them, e.g for
the bash shell:
export _PIP_STANDALONE_CERT=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
If you have created virtual environments, for example when
testing modules, and those include the Requests and Certifi modules in ~/.local/lib/python3.12/, then those
local modules will be used instead of the system
certificates unless you remove the local modules.
To use the system certificates in Python3 with the BLFS profiles, add the following variable to your system or personal profiles:
mkdir -pv /etc/profile.d &&
cat > /etc/profile.d/pythoncerts.sh << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/profile.d/pythoncerts.sh
export _PIP_STANDALONE_CERT=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
# End /etc/profile.d/pythoncerts.sh
EOF
The CrackLib package contains a library used to enforce strong passwords by comparing user selected passwords to words in chosen word lists.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://github.com/cracklib/cracklib/releases/download/v2.10.2/cracklib-2.10.2.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: a99e0aef4c677df7063624690b634988
Download size: 456 KB
Estimated disk space required: 5.0 MB
Estimated build time: less than 0.1 SBU
Recommended word list for English-speaking countries:
Download (HTTP): https://github.com/cracklib/cracklib/releases/download/v2.10.2/cracklib-words-2.10.2.xz
Download MD5 sum: f27804022dbf2682a7f7c353317f9a53
Download size: 4.0 MB
There are additional word lists available for download, e.g., from https://wiki.skullsecurity.org/index.php/Passwords. CrackLib can utilize as many, or as few word lists you choose to install.
Users tend to base their passwords on regular words of the spoken language, and crackers know that. CrackLib is intended to filter out such bad passwords at the source using a dictionary created from word lists. To accomplish this, the word list(s) for use with CrackLib must be an exhaustive list of words and word-based keystroke combinations likely to be chosen by users of the system as (guessable) passwords.
The default word list recommended above for downloading mostly satisfies this role in English-speaking countries. In other situations, it may be necessary to download (or even create) additional word lists.
Note that word lists suitable for spell-checking are not usable as CrackLib word lists in countries with non-Latin based alphabets, because of “word-based keystroke combinations” that make bad passwords.
Install CrackLib by running the following commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--disable-static \
--with-default-dict=/usr/lib/cracklib/pw_dict &&
make
Now, as the root user:
make install
Issue the following commands as the root user to install the recommended word
list and create the CrackLib
dictionary. Other word lists (text based, one word per line)
can also be used by simply installing them into /usr/share/dict and adding them to the
create-cracklib-dict
command.
install -v -m644 -D ../cracklib-words-2.10.2.xz \
/usr/share/dict/cracklib-words.xz &&
unxz -v /usr/share/dict/cracklib-words.xz &&
ln -v -sf cracklib-words /usr/share/dict/words &&
echo $(hostname) >> /usr/share/dict/cracklib-extra-words &&
install -v -m755 -d /usr/lib/cracklib &&
create-cracklib-dict /usr/share/dict/cracklib-words \
/usr/share/dict/cracklib-extra-words
If desired, check the proper operation of the library as an unprivileged user by issuing the following command:
make test
If you are installing CrackLib after your LFS system has been completed and you have the Shadow package installed, you must reinstall Shadow-4.16.0 if you wish to provide strong password support on your system. If you are now going to install the Linux-PAM-1.6.1 package, you may disregard this note as Shadow will be reinstalled after the Linux-PAM installation.
--with-default-dict=/usr/lib/cracklib/pw_dict:
This parameter forces the installation of the CrackLib dictionary to the /lib hierarchy.
--disable-static:
This switch prevents installation of static versions of the
libraries.
install -v -m644 -D
...: This command creates the /usr/share/dict directory (if it doesn't
already exist) and installs the compressed word list there.
ln -v -s cracklib-words
/usr/share/dict/words: The word list is
linked to /usr/share/dict/words
as historically, words is the
primary word list in the /usr/share/dict directory. Omit this
command if you already have a /usr/share/dict/words file installed on
your system.
echo $(hostname)
>>...: The value of hostname is echoed to a
file called cracklib-extra-words. This extra file is
intended to be a site specific list which includes easy to
guess passwords such as company or department names, user
names, product names, computer names, domain names, etc.
create-cracklib-dict ...: This command creates the CrackLib dictionary from the word lists. Modify the command to add any additional word lists you have installed.
|
is used to determine if a password is strong |
|
|
is used to format text files (lowercases all words, removes control characters and sorts the lists) |
|
|
creates a database with words read from standard input |
|
|
displays on standard output the database specified |
|
|
is used to create the CrackLib dictionary from the given word list(s) |
|
|
provides a fast dictionary lookup method for strong password enforcement |
cryptsetup is used to set up transparent encryption of block devices using the kernel crypto API.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/cryptsetup/v2.7/cryptsetup-2.7.4.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 26ffe48f65d144af91b2a9639425d08c
Download size: 11 MB
Estimated disk space required: 35 MB (add 5 MB for tests)
Estimated build time: 0.2 SBU (add 8.1 SBU for tests)
JSON-C-0.17, LVM2-2.03.26, and popt-1.19
asciidoctor-2.0.23, libpwquality-1.4.5, argon2, libssh, and passwdqc
Encrypted block devices require kernel support. To use it, the appropriate kernel configuration parameters need to be set:
Device Drivers ---> [*] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM) ---> [MD] <*/M> Device mapper support [BLK_DEV_DM] <*/M> Crypt target support [DM_CRYPT] -*- Cryptographic API ---> [CRYPTO] Block ciphers ---> <*/M> AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) [CRYPTO_AES] # For tests: <*/M> Twofish [CRYPTO_TWOFISH] Length-preserving ciphers and modes ---> <*/M> XTS (XOR Encrypt XOR with ciphertext stealing) [CRYPTO_XTS] Hashes, digests, and MACs ---> <*/M> SHA-224 and SHA-256 [CRYPTO_SHA256] Userspace interface ---> <*/M> Symmetric key cipher algorithms [CRYPTO_USER_API_SKCIPHER]
Install cryptsetup by running the following commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--disable-ssh-token \
--disable-asciidoc &&
make
To test the result, issue as the root user: make check. Some tests will
fail if appropriate kernel configuration options are not set.
Some additional options that may be needed for tests are:
CONFIG_SCSI_LOWLEVEL,
CONFIG_SCSI_DEBUG,
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_DM_BUILTIN,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_USER,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_CRYPTD,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_LRW,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_XTS,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_ESSIV,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_CRCT10DIF,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES_TI,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES_NI_INTEL,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_BLOWFISH,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_CAST5,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SERPENT,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SERPENT_SSE2_X86_64,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SERPENT_AVX_X86_64,
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SERPENT_AVX2_X86_64, and
CONFIG_CRYPTO_TWOFISH_X86_64
Now, as the root user:
make install
--disable-ssh-token:
This switch is required if the optional libssh dependency is
not installed.
--disable-asciidoc:
This switch disables regeneration of the man pages. Remove
this switch if you have asciidoctor-2.0.23 installed
and wish to regenerate the man pages. Note that even if this
switch is used, the pre-generated man pages are shipped in
the tarball and they'll still be installed.
Because of the number of possible configurations, setup of encrypted volumes is beyond the scope of the BLFS book. Please see the configuration guide in the cryptsetup FAQ.
|
is used to setup dm-crypt managed device-mapper mappings |
|
|
is a tool for offline LUKS device re-encryption |
|
|
is a tool to manage dm-integrity (block level integrity) volumes |
|
|
is used to configure dm-verity managed device-mapper mappings. The Device-mapper verity target provides read-only transparent integrity checking of block devices using the kernel crypto API |
The Cyrus SASL package contains a Simple Authentication and Security Layer implementation, a method for adding authentication support to connection-based protocols. To use SASL, a protocol includes a command for identifying and authenticating a user to a server and for optionally negotiating protection of subsequent protocol interactions. If its use is negotiated, a security layer is inserted between the protocol and the connection.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://github.com/cyrusimap/cyrus-sasl/releases/download/cyrus-sasl-2.1.28/cyrus-sasl-2.1.28.tar.gz
Download MD5 sum: 6f228a692516f5318a64505b46966cfa
Download size: 3.9 MB
Estimated disk space required: 28 MB
Estimated build time: 0.2 SBU
Linux-PAM-1.6.1, MIT Kerberos V5-1.21.3, MariaDB-10.11.8 or MySQL, OpenLDAP-2.6.8, PostgreSQL-16.4, sphinx-8.0.2, SQLite-3.46.1, Berkeley DB (deprecated), krb4, Dmalloc, and Pod::POM::View::Restructured
This package does not support parallel build.
First, fix a problem revealed by gcc-14:
sed '/saslint/a #include <time.h>' -i lib/saslutil.c && sed '/plugin_common/a #include <time.h>' -i plugins/cram.c
Install Cyrus SASL by running the following commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--enable-auth-sasldb \
--with-dblib=lmdb \
--with-dbpath=/var/lib/sasl/sasldb2 \
--with-sphinx-build=no \
--with-saslauthd=/var/run/saslauthd &&
make -j1
This package does not come with a test suite. If you are planning on using the GSSAPI authentication mechanism, test it after installing the package using the sample server and client programs which were built in the preceding step. Instructions for performing the tests can be found at https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/downloads/files/cyrus-sasl.txt.
Now, as the root user:
make install && install -v -dm755 /usr/share/doc/cyrus-sasl-2.1.28/html && install -v -m644 saslauthd/LDAP_SASLAUTHD /usr/share/doc/cyrus-sasl-2.1.28 && install -v -m644 doc/legacy/*.html /usr/share/doc/cyrus-sasl-2.1.28/html && install -v -dm700 /var/lib/sasl
--with-dbpath=/var/lib/sasl/sasldb2:
This switch forces the sasldb database to be
created in /var/lib/sasl
instead of /etc.
--with-saslauthd=/var/run/saslauthd:
This switch forces saslauthd to use the FHS
compliant directory /var/run/saslauthd for variable run-time
data.
--enable-auth-sasldb:
This switch enables SASLDB authentication backend.
--with-dblib=gdbm: This switch
forces GDBM to be used
instead of LMDB.
--with-ldap: This switch enables
the OpenLDAP support.
--enable-ldapdb: This switch
enables the LDAPDB authentication backend.
--enable-login: This option
enables unsupported LOGIN authentication.
--enable-ntlm: This option
enables unsupported NTLM authentication.
install -v -m644 ...: These commands install documentation which is not installed by the make install command.
install -v -m700 -d /var/lib/sasl: This directory must exist when starting saslauthd or using the sasldb plugin. If you're not going to be running the daemon or using the plugins, you may omit the creation of this directory.
/etc/saslauthd.conf (for
saslauthd
LDAP configuration) and /etc/sasl2/Appname.conf (where "Appname"
is the application defined name of the application)
See https://www.cyrusimap.org/sasl/sasl/sysadmin.html for information on what to include in the application configuration files.
See file:///usr/share/doc/cyrus-sasl-2.1.28/LDAP_SASLAUTHD for configuring saslauthd with OpenLDAP.
See https://www.cyrusimap.org/sasl/sasl/gssapi.html#gssapi for configuring saslauthd with Kerberos.
If you need to run the saslauthd daemon at
system startup, install the saslauthd.service unit included in the
blfs-systemd-units-20240801
package using the following command:
make install-saslauthd
You'll need to modify /etc/default/saslauthd and modify the
MECHANISM parameter with your
desired authentication mechanism. The default authentication mechanism is
"shadow".
|
is used to list loadable SASL plugins and their properties |
|
|
is the SASL authentication server |
|
|
is used to list the users in the SASL password
database |
|
|
is used to set and delete a user's SASL password
and mechanism specific secrets in the SASL password
database |
|
|
is a test utility for the SASL authentication server |
|
|
is a general purpose authentication library for server and client applications |
The GnuPG package is GNU's tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures. It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the proposed OpenPGP Internet standard as described in RFC2440 and the S/MIME standard as described by several RFCs. GnuPG 2 is the stable version of GnuPG integrating support for OpenPGP and S/MIME.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://www.gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gnupg/gnupg-2.4.5.tar.bz2
Download MD5 sum: 49c3534e87744e994250d37c1b43f928
Download size: 7.6 MB
Estimated disk space required: 164 MB (with tests)
Estimated build time: 1.2 SBU (with tests; using parallelism=4)
libassuan-3.0.1, libgcrypt-1.11.0, libksba-1.6.7, npth-1.7, and OpenLDAP-2.6.8
GnuTLS-3.8.7.1 (required to communicate with keyservers using https or hkps protocol) and pinentry-1.3.1 (Run-time requirement for most of the package's functionality)
cURL-8.9.1, Fuse-3.16.2, ImageMagick-7.1.1-36 (for the convert utility, used for generating the documentation), libusb-1.0.27, an MTA, SQLite-3.46.1, texlive-20240312 (or install-tl-unx), fig2dev (for generating documentation), and GNU adns
Install GnuPG by running the following commands:
mkdir build &&
cd build &&
../configure --prefix=/usr \
--localstatedir=/var \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5 &&
make &&
makeinfo --html --no-split -I doc -o doc/gnupg_nochunks.html ../doc/gnupg.texi &&
makeinfo --plaintext -I doc -o doc/gnupg.txt ../doc/gnupg.texi &&
make -C doc html
If you have texlive-20240312 installed and you wish to create documentation in the pdf format, issue the following command:
make -C doc pdf
To test the results, issue: make check.
Now, as the root user:
make install &&
install -v -m755 -d /usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5/html &&
install -v -m644 doc/gnupg_nochunks.html \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5/html/gnupg.html &&
install -v -m644 ../doc/*.texi doc/gnupg.txt \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5 &&
install -v -m644 doc/gnupg.html/* \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5/html
If you created the pdf format of the documentation, install
them using the following command as the root user:
install -v -m644 doc/gnupg.pdf \
/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5
mkdir build && cd build: the Gnupg2 developers recommend to build the package in a dedicated directory.
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5:
This switch changes the default docdir to /usr/share/doc/gnupg-2.4.5.
--enable-all-tests: This switch
allows more tests to be run with make check.
--enable-g13: This switch enables
building the g13 program.
|
is used to create and populate a user's
|
|
|
is a wrapper script used to run gpgconf with the
|
|
|
is a tool that takes care of accessing the OpenPGP keyservers |
|
|
is a tool to contact a running dirmngr and test whether a certificate has been revoked |
|
|
is a tool to create, mount or unmount an encrypted file system container (optional) |
|
|
is a daemon used to manage secret (private) keys independently from any protocol. It is used as a backend for gpg and gpgsm as well as for a couple of other utilities |
|
|
is a tool to manage smart cards and tokens |
|
|
is a utility used to communicate with a running gpg-agent |
|
|
is the OpenPGP part of the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG). It is a tool used to provide digital encryption and signing services using the OpenPGP standard |
|
|
is a utility used to automatically and reasonably
safely query and modify configuration files in the
|
|
|
is a utility currently only useful for debugging.
Run it with |
|
|
executes the given scheme program or spawns an interactive shell |
|
|
is a tool similar to gpg used to provide digital encryption and signing services on X.509 certificates and the CMS protocol. It is mainly used as a backend for S/MIME mail processing |
|
|
splits an OpenPGP message into packets |
|
|
is a tool to encrypt or sign files into an archive |
|
|
is a verify only version of gpg |
|
|
is a client for the Web Key Service protocol |
|
|
provides a server for the Web Key Service protocol |
|
|
is used to list, export and import Keybox data |
|
|
is used to listen to a Unix Domain socket created by any of the GnuPG tools |
The GnuTLS package contains libraries and userspace tools which provide a secure layer over a reliable transport layer. Currently the GnuTLS library implements the proposed standards by the IETF's TLS working group. Quoting from the TLS 1.3 protocol specification :
“ TLS allows client/server applications to communicate over the Internet in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. ”
GnuTLS provides support for TLS 1.3, TLS 1.2, TLS 1.1, TLS 1.0, and (optionally) SSL 3.0 protocols. It also supports TLS extensions, including server name and max record size. Additionally, the library supports authentication using the SRP protocol, X.509 certificates, and OpenPGP keys, along with support for the TLS Pre-Shared-Keys (PSK) extension, the Inner Application (TLS/IA) extension, and X.509 and OpenPGP certificate handling.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://www.gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gnutls/v3.8/gnutls-3.8.7.1.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 46777802233eb7203d47a8b8880c8c90
Download size: 6.4 MB
Estimated disk space required: 154 MB (add 115 MB for tests)
Estimated build time: 0.5 SBU (add 1.5 SBU for tests; both using parallelism=8)
When extracting this package tarball, it expands to the gnutls-3.8.7 directory, instead of the expected gnutls-3.8.7.1 directory.
make-ca-1.14, libunistring-1.2, libtasn1-4.19.0, and p11-kit-0.25.5
Brotli-1.1.0, Doxygen-1.12.0, GTK-Doc-1.34.0, libidn-1.42 or libidn2-2.3.7, libseccomp-2.5.5, Net-tools-2.10 (used during the test suite), texlive-20240312 or install-tl-unx, Unbound-1.21.0 (to build the DANE library), Valgrind-3.23.0 (used during the test suite), autogen, cmocka and datefudge (used during the test suite if the DANE library is built), and Trousers (Trusted Platform Module support)
Note that if you do not install libtasn1-4.19.0, a version shipped in the GnuTLS tarball will be used instead.
Install GnuTLS by running the following commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/gnutls-3.8.7.1 \
--with-default-trust-store-pkcs11="pkcs11:" &&
make
One test hangs the test procedure. Disable it: sed '/ocsp-must-staple-connection/d' -i tests/Makefile. To test the results, now issue: make check.
Now, install the package as the root user:
make install
--with-default-trust-store-pkcs11="pkcs11:":
This switch tells gnutls to use the PKCS #11 trust store as
the default trust. Omit this switch if p11-kit-0.25.5 is not
installed.
--with-default-trust-store-file=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt:
This switch tells configure where to find the
legacy CA certificate bundle and to use it instead of PKCS
#11 module by default. Use this if p11-kit-0.25.5 is not
installed.
--enable-gtk-doc: Use this
parameter if GTK-Doc is
installed and you wish to rebuild and install the API
documentation.
--enable-openssl-compatibility:
Use this switch if you wish to build the OpenSSL
compatibility library.
--without-p11-kit: use this
switch if you have not installed p11-kit.
--with-included-unistring: uses
the bundled version of libunistring, instead of the system
one. Use this switch if you have not installed libunistring-1.2.
--disable-dsa: completely
disables DSA algorithm support.
|
is used to generate X.509 certificates, certificate requests, and private keys |
|
|
is a tool used to generate and check DNS resource records for the DANE protocol |
|
|
is a simple client program to set up a TLS connection to some other computer |
|
|
is a simple client program to set up a TLS connection to some other computer and produces very verbose progress results |
|
|
is a simple server program that listens to incoming TLS connections |
|
|
is a program that can parse and print information about OCSP requests/responses, generate requests and verify responses |
|
|
is a program that allows handling data from PKCS #11 smart cards and security modules |
|
|
is a simple program that generates random keys for use with TLS-PSK |
|
|
is a simple program that emulates the programs in the Stanford SRP (Secure Remote Password) libraries using GnuTLS |
|
|
contains the core API functions and X.509 certificate API functions |
The GPGME package is a C library that allows cryptography support to be added to a program. It is designed to make access to public key crypto engines like GnuPG or GpgSM easier for applications. GPGME provides a high-level crypto API for encryption, decryption, signing, signature verification and key management.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://www.gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gpgme/gpgme-1.23.2.tar.bz2
Download MD5 sum: 01a8c05b409847e87daf0543e91f8c37
Download size: 1.8 MB
Estimated disk space required: 260 MB (with tests)
Estimated build time: 1.0 SBU (with all bindings and tests; with parallelism=4)
Doxygen-1.12.0 and Graphviz-12.1.0 (for API documentation), GnuPG-2.4.5 (required if Qt or SWIG are installed; used during the test suite), Clisp-2.49, qt5-components-5.15.14, and SWIG-4.2.1 (for language bindings)
Install GPGME by running the following commands:
mkdir build && cd build && ../configure --prefix=/usr --disable-gpg-test && make PYTHONS=
If SWIG-4.2.1 is installed, build the Python 3 binding as a wheel:
if swig -version > /dev/null; then srcdir=$PWD/../lang/python \ top_builddir=$PWD \ pip3 wheel -w dist --no-build-isolation --no-deps --no-cache-dir $PWD/lang/python fi
To test the results, you should have GnuPG-2.4.5 installed and
remove the --disable-gpg-test
above. If SWIG-4.2.1 is installed, it's necessary to
adapt the test suite to use the Python 3 binding just built
as a wheel as well. Issue:
if swig -version > /dev/null; then
python3 -m venv testenv &&
testenv/bin/pip3 install --no-index --find-links=dist --no-cache-dir \
gpg &&
sed '/PYTHON/s#run-tests.py#& --python-libdir=/dev/null#' \
-i lang/python/tests/Makefile
fi &&
make -k check PYTHONS= PYTHON=$PWD/testenv/bin/python3
One test named t-quick-key-manipulation.py is known to
fail.
Now, as the root user:
make install PYTHONS=
If SWIG-4.2.1 is installed, still as the
root user, install the Python
3 binding:
if swig -version > /dev/null; then pip3 install --no-index --find-links=dist --no-cache-dir --no-user gpg fi
--disable-gpg-test:
if this parameter is not passed to configure, the test
programs are built during make stage, which requires
GnuPG-2.4.5. This parameter is not needed
if GnuPG-2.4.5 is installed.
PYTHONS=: Disable
building Python binding using the deprecated python3 setup.py build
command. The explicit instruction to build the Python 3
binding with the pip3
wheel command is provided.
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outputs GPGME commands in JSON format |
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is an assuan server exposing GPGME operations, such as printing fingerprints and keyids with keyservers |
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contains the GPGME API functions |
|
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contains the C++ GPGME API functions |
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contains API functions for handling GPG operations in Qt applications |
iptables is a userspace command line program used to configure the Linux 2.4 and later kernel packet filtering ruleset.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.2 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://www.netfilter.org/projects/iptables/files/iptables-1.8.10.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 5eaa3bb424dd3a13c98c0cb026314029
Download size: 628 KB
Estimated disk space required: 16 MB
Estimated build time: 0.1 SBU
libpcap-1.10.4 (required for BPF compiler or nfsynproxy support), bpf-utils (required for Berkeley Packet Filter support), libnfnetlink (required for connlabel support), libnetfilter_conntrack (required for connlabel support), and nftables
A firewall in Linux is accomplished through the netfilter interface. To use iptables to configure netfilter, the following kernel configuration parameters are required:
[*] Networking support ---> [NET] Networking options ---> [*] Network packet filtering framework (Netfilter) ---> [NETFILTER] [*] Advanced netfilter configuration [NETFILTER_ADVANCED] Core Netfilter Configuration ---> <*/M> Netfilter connection tracking support [NF_CONNTRACK] <*/M> Netfilter Xtables support (required for ip_tables) ... [NETFILTER_XTABLES] <*/M> LOG target support [NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_LOG] IP: Netfilter Configuration ---> <*/M> IP tables support (required for filtering/masq/NAT) ... [IP_NF_IPTABLES]
Include any connection tracking protocols that will be used, as well as any protocols that you wish to use for match support under the "Core Netfilter Configuration" section. The above options are enough for running Creating a Personal Firewall With iptables below.
The installation below does not include building some
specialized extension libraries which require the raw
headers in the Linux
source code. If you wish to build the additional extensions
(if you aren't sure, then you probably don't), you can look
at the INSTALL file to see an
example of how to change the KERNEL_DIR= parameter to
point at the Linux source
code. Note that if you upgrade the kernel version, you may
also need to recompile iptables and that the BLFS team has
not tested using the raw kernel headers.
Install iptables by running the following commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--disable-nftables \
--enable-libipq &&
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
make install
--disable-nftables:
This switch disables building nftables compatibility.
--enable-libipq: This
switch enables building of libipq.so which can be used by some
packages outside of BLFS.
--enable-nfsynproxy: This switch
enables installation of nfsynproxy SYNPROXY configuration tool.
In the following example configurations, LAN1 is used for the internal LAN interface, and WAN1 is used for the external interface connected to the Internet. You will need to replace these values with appropriate interface names for your system.
A Personal Firewall is designed to let you access all the services offered on the Internet while keeping your computer secure and your data private.
Below is a slightly modified version of Rusty Russell's recommendation from the Linux 2.4 Packet Filtering HOWTO. It is still applicable to the Linux 6.x kernels.
install -v -dm755 /etc/systemd/scripts
cat > /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
# Begin /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables
# Insert connection-tracking modules
# (not needed if built into the kernel)
modprobe nf_conntrack
modprobe xt_LOG
# Enable broadcast echo Protection
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts
# Disable Source Routed Packets
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/accept_source_route
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/accept_source_route
# Enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
# Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/accept_redirects
# Do not send Redirect Messages
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/send_redirects
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/send_redirects
# Drop Spoofed Packets coming in on an interface, where responses
# would result in the reply going out a different interface.
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/rp_filter
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/rp_filter
# Log packets with impossible addresses.
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/log_martians
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/log_martians
# be verbose on dynamic ip-addresses (not needed in case of static IP)
echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr
# disable Explicit Congestion Notification
# too many routers are still ignorant
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
# Set a known state
iptables -P INPUT DROP
iptables -P FORWARD DROP
iptables -P OUTPUT DROP
# These lines are here in case rules are already in place and the
# script is ever rerun on the fly. We want to remove all rules and
# pre-existing user defined chains before we implement new rules.
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -Z
iptables -t nat -F
# Allow local-only connections
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
# Free output on any interface to any ip for any service
# (equal to -P ACCEPT)
iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT
# Permit answers on already established connections
# and permit new connections related to established ones
# (e.g. port mode ftp)
iptables -A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
# Log everything else.
iptables -A INPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:INPUT "
# End /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables
EOF
chmod 700 /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables
This script is quite simple, it drops all traffic coming into your computer that wasn't initiated from your computer, but as long as you are simply surfing the Internet you are unlikely to exceed its limits.
If you frequently encounter certain delays at accessing FTP servers, take a look at BusyBox with iptables example number 4.
Even if you have daemons or services running on your system, these will be inaccessible everywhere but from your computer itself. If you want to allow access to services on your machine, such as ssh or ping, take a look at Creating a BusyBox With iptables.
A Network Firewall has two interfaces, one connected to an intranet, in this example LAN1, and one connected to the Internet, here WAN1. To provide the maximum security for the firewall itself, make sure that there are no unnecessary servers running on it such as X11. As a general principle, the firewall itself should not access any untrusted service (think of a remote server giving answers that makes a daemon on your system crash, or even worse, that implements a worm via a buffer-overflow).
install -v -dm755 /etc/systemd/scripts
cat > /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
# Begin /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables
echo
echo "You're using the example configuration for a setup of a firewall"
echo "from Beyond Linux From Scratch."
echo "This example is far from being complete, it is only meant"
echo "to be a reference."
echo "Firewall security is a complex issue, that exceeds the scope"
echo "of the configuration rules below."
echo "You can find additional information"
echo "about firewalls in Chapter 4 of the BLFS book."
echo "https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs"
echo
# Insert iptables modules (not needed if built into the kernel).
modprobe nf_conntrack
modprobe nf_conntrack_ftp
modprobe xt_conntrack
modprobe xt_LOG
modprobe xt_state
# Enable broadcast echo Protection
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts
# Disable Source Routed Packets
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/accept_source_route
# Enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
# Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/accept_redirects
# Don't send Redirect Messages
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/send_redirects
# Drop Spoofed Packets coming in on an interface where responses
# would result in the reply going out a different interface.
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/rp_filter
# Log packets with impossible addresses.
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/log_martians
# Be verbose on dynamic ip-addresses (not needed in case of static IP)
echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr
# Disable Explicit Congestion Notification
# Too many routers are still ignorant
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn
# Set a known state
iptables -P INPUT DROP
iptables -P FORWARD DROP
iptables -P OUTPUT DROP
# These lines are here in case rules are already in place and the
# script is ever rerun on the fly. We want to remove all rules and
# pre-existing user defined chains before we implement new rules.
iptables -F
iptables -X
iptables -Z
iptables -t nat -F
# Allow local connections
iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT
# Allow forwarding if the initiated on the intranet
iptables -A FORWARD -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD ! -i WAN1 -m conntrack --ctstate NEW -j ACCEPT
# Do masquerading
# (not needed if intranet is not using private ip-addresses)
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o WAN1 -j MASQUERADE
# Log everything for debugging
# (last of all rules, but before policy rules)
iptables -A INPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:INPUT "
iptables -A FORWARD -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:FORWARD "
iptables -A OUTPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:OUTPUT "
# Enable IP Forwarding
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
# The following sections allow inbound packets for specific examples
# Uncomment the example lines and adjust as necessary
# Allow ping on the external interface
#iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j ACCEPT
#iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type echo-reply -j ACCEPT
# Reject ident packets with TCP reset to avoid delays with FTP or IRC
#iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 113 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset
# Allow HTTP and HTTPS to 192.168.0.2
#iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i WAN1 -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to 192.168.0.2
#iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i WAN1 -p tcp --dport 443 -j DNAT --to 192.168.0.2
#iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -d 192.168.0.2 --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
#iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -d 192.168.0.2 --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
# End /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables
EOF
chmod 700 /etc/systemd/scripts/iptables
With this script your intranet should be reasonably secure against external attacks. No one should be able to setup a new connection to any internal service and, if it's masqueraded, makes your intranet invisible to the Internet. Furthermore, your firewall should be relatively safe because there are no services running that a cracker could attack.
This scenario isn't too different from the Creating a Masquerading Router With iptables, but additionally offers some services to your intranet. Examples of this can be when you want to administer your firewall from another host on your intranet or use it as a proxy or a name server.
Outlining specifically how to protect a server that offers services on the Internet goes far beyond the scope of this document. See the references in the section called “Extra Information” for more information.
Be cautious. Every service you have enabled makes your setup more complex and your firewall less secure. You are exposed to the risks of misconfigured services or running a service with an exploitable bug. A firewall should generally not run any extra services. See the introduction to the Creating a Masquerading Router With iptables for some more details.
If you want to add services such as internal Samba or name servers that do not need to access the Internet themselves, the additional statements are quite simple and should still be acceptable from a security standpoint. Just add the following lines into the script before the logging rules.
iptables -A INPUT -i ! WAN1 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o ! WAN1 -j ACCEPTIf daemons, such as squid, have to access the Internet themselves, you could open OUTPUT generally and restrict INPUT.
iptables -A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPTHowever, it is generally not advisable to leave OUTPUT unrestricted. You lose any control over trojans who would like to "call home", and a bit of redundancy in case you've (mis-)configured a service so that it broadcasts its existence to the world.
To accomplish this, you should restrict INPUT and OUTPUT on all ports except those that it's absolutely necessary to have open. Which ports you have to open depends on your needs: mostly you will find them by looking for failed accesses in your log files.
Have a Look at the Following Examples:
Squid is caching the web:
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --sport 80 -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED \
-j ACCEPTYour caching name server (e.g., named) does its lookups via UDP:
iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -j ACCEPTYou want to be able to ping your computer to ensure it's still alive:
iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type echo-reply -j ACCEPTIf you are frequently accessing FTP servers or enjoy chatting, you might notice delays because some implementations of these daemons query an identd daemon on your system to obtain usernames. Although there's really little harm in this, having an identd running is not recommended because many security experts feel the service gives out too much additional information.
To avoid these delays you could reject the requests with a 'tcp-reset' response:
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 113 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-resetTo log and drop invalid packets (packets that came in after netfilter's timeout or some types of network scans) insert these rules at the top of the chain:
iptables -I INPUT 0 -p tcp -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID \
-j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:INVALID "
iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID -j DROPAnything coming from the outside should not have a private address, this is a common attack called IP-spoofing:
iptables -A INPUT -i WAN1 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i WAN1 -s 172.16.0.0/12 -j DROP
iptables -A INPUT -i WAN1 -s 192.168.0.0/16 -j DROPThere are other addresses that you may also want to drop: 0.0.0.0/8, 127.0.0.0/8, 224.0.0.0/3 (multicast and experimenta