7.14. Cleaning up and Saving the Temporary System

7.14.1. Cleaning

First, remove the currently installed documentation to prevent them from ending up in the final system, and to save about 35 MB:

rm -rf /usr/share/{info,man,doc}/*

Second, the libtool .la files are only useful when linking with static libraries. They are unneeded and potentially harmful when using dynamic shared libraries, especially when using non-autotools build systems. While still on the target machine, remove those files now:

find /usr/{lib,libexec} -name \*.la -delete

The current system size is now about 3 GB, however the /tools directory is no longer needed. It uses about 1 GB of disk space. Delete it now:

rm -rf /tools

7.14.2. Backup

At this point the essential programs and libraries have been created and your current LFS system is in a good state. Your system can now be backed up for later reuse. In case of fatal failures in the subsequent chapters, it often turns out that removing everything and starting over (more carefully) is the best option to recover. Unfortunately, all the temporary files will be removed, too. To avoid spending extra time to redo something which has been built successfully, creating a backup of the current LFS system may prove useful.

If you have decided to make a backup, mount the partition for backup:

mount -v /dev/sda4 /mnt

Make sure you have at least 1 GB free disk space (the source tarballs will be included in the backup archive) in the partition prepared for backup.

Replace $HOME by a directory of your choice if you do not want to have the backup stored in root's home directory.

Create the backup archive by running the following command:

cd /
tar -cJpf /mnt/lfs-temp-tools-cross-la-r11.0-228-systemd.tar.xz . \
    --exclude="dev/*" --exclude="proc/*"
    --exclude="sys/*" --exclude="run/*"
    --exclude="mnt/*"

Unmount the partition containing the backup:

umount /mnt

7.14.3. Restore

In case some mistakes have been made and you need to start over, you can use this backup to restore the system and save some recovery time. Since the sources are included in the backup archive as well, so they do not need to be downloaded again.

Mount the LFS partition and the backup partition on the host system:

mkdir -pv /mnt/lfs-{target,backup}
mount -v -t ext4 /dev/sdx3 /mnt/lfs-target
mount -v -t ext4 /dev/sdx4 /mnt/lfs-backup

cd /mnt/lfs-target
rm -rf ./*
tar -xpf /mnt/lfs-backup/lfs-temp-tools-cross-la-r11.0-228-systemd.tar.xz

Again, unmount the two partitions, reconnect the device to the target machine, boot it and continue building the rest of system:

umount /mnt/lfs-{target,backup}