%general-entities; ]> Set up a good working environment by creating two new startup files for the bash shell. While logged in as user clfs, issue the following command to create a new .bash_profile: cat > ~/.bash_profile << "EOF" exec env -i HOME=${HOME} TERM=${TERM} PS1='\u:\w\$ ' /bin/bash EOF When logged on as user clfs, the initial shell is usually a login shell which reads the /etc/profile of the host (probably containing some settings and environment variables) and then .bash_profile. The exec env -i.../bin/bash command in the .bash_profile file replaces the running shell with a new one with a completely empty environment, except for the HOME, TERM, and PS1 variables. This ensures that no unwanted and potentially hazardous environment variables from the host system leak into the build environment. The technique used here achieves the goal of ensuring a clean environment. The new instance of the shell is a non-login shell, which does not read the /etc/profile or .bash_profile files, but rather reads the .bashrc file instead. Create the .bashrc file now: cat > ~/.bashrc << "EOF" set +h umask 022 CLFS=/mnt/clfs LC_ALL=POSIX PATH=/cross-tools/bin:/bin:/usr/bin export CLFS LC_ALL PATH unset CFLAGS unset CXXFLAGS EOF The set +h command turns off bash's hash function. Hashing is ordinarily a useful feature—bash uses a hash table to remember the full path of executable files to avoid searching the PATH time and again to find the same executable. However, the new tools should be used as soon as they are installed. By switching off the hash function, the shell will always search the PATH when a program is to be run. As such, the shell will find the newly compiled tools in /cross-tools as soon as they are available without remembering a previous version of the same program in a different location. Setting the user file-creation mask (umask) to 022 ensures that newly created files and directories are only writable by their owner, but are readable and executable by anyone (assuming default modes are used by the open(2) system call, new files will end up with permission mode 644 and directories with mode 755). The CLFS variable should be set to the chosen mount point. The LC_ALL variable controls the localization of certain programs, making their messages follow the conventions of a specified country. Setting LC_ALL to POSIX or C (the two are equivalent) ensures that everything will work as expected in the temporary build environment. By putting /cross-tools/bin at the beginning of the PATH, the cross-compiler built in will be picked up by the build process for the temp-system packages before anything that may be installed on the host. This, combined with turning off hashing, helps to ensure that you will be using the cross-compile tools to build the temp-system in /tools. The CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS variables should not be set while building the temporary system, so we unset them. Finally, to have the environment fully prepared for building the temporary tools, source the just-created user profile: source ~/.bash_profile