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.
The remaining topics, Customizing your Logon with /etc/issue, Random number generation, Autofs-5.1.1, and Configuring for Network Filesystems are then addressed, in that order. They don't have much interaction with the other topics in this chapter.