Below is a list of packages you need to download for building a basic Linux system. The listed version numbers correspond to versions of the software that are known to work, and this book is based upon them. Unless you are an experienced LFS builder, we highly recommend not to try out newer versions, as the build commands for one version may not work with a newer version. Also, there is often a good reason for not using the latest version due to known problems that haven't been worked around yet.

All the URLs, when possible, refer to the project's page at http://www.freshmeat.net/. The Freshmeat pages will give you easy access to the official download sites as well as project websites, mailing lists, FAQs, changelogs and more.

We can't guarantee that these download locations are always available. In case a download location has changed since this book was published, please try to google for the package. Should you remain unsuccessful with this, you can consult the book's errata page at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/print/ or, better yet, try one of the alternative means of downloading listed on http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/packages.html.

You'll need to store all the downloaded packages and patches somewhere that is conveniently available throughout the entire build. You'll also need a working directory in which to unpack the sources and build them. A scheme that works well is to use $LFS/sources as the place to store the tarballs and patches, and as a working directory. This way everything you need will be located on the LFS partition and available during all stages of the building process.

So you may want to execute, as root, the following command before starting your download session:

mkdir $LFS/sources

And make this directory writable (and sticky) for your normal user -- as you won't do the downloading as root, we guess:

chmod a+wt $LFS/sources