Installing Glibc-2.3.3

Installation of Glibc

This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting them when building Glibc.

Basically, compiling Glibc in any other way than the book suggests is putting the stability of your system at risk.

The Glibc documentation recommends building Glibc outside of the source directory in a dedicated build directory:

mkdir ../glibc-build
cd ../glibc-build

Next, prepare Glibc for compilation:

../glibc-2.3.3-20031202/configure --prefix=/tools \
    --disable-profile --enable-add-ons=linuxthreads \
    --with-binutils=/tools/bin --with-headers=/tools/include \
    --without-gd --without-cvs

The meaning of the configure options:

• --disable-profile: This disables the building of the libraries with profiling information. Omit this option if you plan to do profiling.

• --enable-add-ons=linuxthreads: This tells Glibc to use the Linuxthreads add-on as its threading library.

• --with-binutils=/tools/bin and --with-headers=/tools/include: Strictly speaking these switches are not required. But they ensure nothing can go wrong with regard to what kernel headers and Binutils programs get used during the Glibc build.

• --without-gd: This switch ensures that we don't build the memusagestat program, which strangely enough insists on linking against the host's libraries (libgd, libpng, libz, and so forth).

• --without-cvs: This is meant to prevent the Makefiles from attempting automatic CVS commits when using a CVS snapshot. But it's not actually needed these days. We use it because it silences an annoying but harmless warning about a missing autoconf program.

During this stage you might see the following warning:

configure: WARNING: *** These auxiliary programs are missing or incompatible versions: msgfmt *** some features will be disabled. *** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.

The missing or incompatible msgfmt program is generally harmless, but it's believed it can sometimes cause problems when running the test suite.

Compile the package:

make

Compilation is now complete. As discussed earlier, we don't recommend running the test suites for the temporary system here in this chapter. If you still want to run the Glibc test suite anyway, the following command will do so:

make check

The Glibc test suite is highly dependent on certain functions of your host system, in particular the kernel. Additionally, here in this chapter some tests can be adversely affected by existing tools or environmental issues on the host system. Of course, these won't be a problem when we run the Glibc test suite inside the chroot environment of Chapter 6. In general, the Glibc test suite is always expected to pass. However, as mentioned above, some failures are unavoidable in certain circumstances. Here is a list of the most common issues we are aware of:

• The math tests sometimes fail when running on systems where the CPU is not a relatively new genuine Intel or authentic AMD. Certain optimization settings are also known to be a factor here.

• The gettext test sometimes fails due to host system issues. The exact reasons are not yet clear.

• The atime test sometimes fails when the LFS partition is mounted with the noatime option, or due to other file system quirks.

• The shm test might fail when the host system is running the devfs file system but doesn't have the tmpfs file system mounted at /dev/shm due to lack of support for tmpfs in the kernel.

• When running on older and slower hardware, some tests might fail due to test timeouts being exceeded.

In summary, don't worry too much if you see Glibc test suite failures here in this chapter. The Glibc in Chapter 6 is the one we'll ultimately end up using so that is the one we would really like to see pass. But please keep in mind, even in Chapter 6 some failures could still occur -- the math tests for example. When experiencing a failure, make a note of it, then continue by reissuing the make check. The test suite should pick up where it left off and continue on. You can circumvent this stop-start sequence by issuing a make -k check. But if you do that, be sure to log the output so that you can later peruse the log file and examine the total number of failures.

Though it is a harmless message, the install stage of Glibc will complain about the absence of /tools/etc/ld.so.conf. Fix this annoying little warning with:

mkdir /tools/etc
touch /tools/etc/ld.so.conf

Now install the package:

make install

Different countries and cultures have varying conventions for how to communicate. These conventions range from very simple ones, such as the format for representing dates and times, to very complex ones, such as the language spoken. The "internationalization" of GNU programs works by means of locales.

If you still want to install the Glibc locales anyway, the following command will do so:

make localedata/install-locales

An alternative to running the previous command is to install only those locales which you need or want. This can be achieved by using the localedef command. Information on this can be found in the INSTALL file in the Glibc source. However, there are a number of locales that are essential for the tests of future packages to pass, in particular, the libstdc++ tests from GCC. The following instructions, instead of the install-locales target above, will install the minimum set of locales necessary for the tests to run successfully:

mkdir -p /tools/lib/locale
localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE
localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro
localedef -i en_HK -f ISO-8859-1 en_HK
localedef -i en_PH -f ISO-8859-1 en_PH
localedef -i en_US -f ISO-8859-1 en_US
localedef -i es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX
localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR
localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro
localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT
localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP

The details on this package are found in the Section called Contents of Glibc in Chapter 6.