source: BOOK/materials/common/introduction.xml@ da6d840

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<sect1 id="ch-materials-introduction">
  <?dbhtml filename="introduction.html"?>

  <title>Introduction</title>

  <para>This chapter includes a list of packages that need to be downloaded
  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
  on their use. We highly recommend not using newer versions because the
  build commands for one version may not work with a newer version. The
  newest package versions may also have problems that require work-arounds.
  These work-arounds will be developed and stabilized in the development
  version of the book.</para>

  <para>Download locations may not always be accessible. If a download
  location has changed since this book was published, Google (<ulink
  url="http://www.google.com/"/>) provides a useful search engine for
  most packages. If this search is unsuccessful, try one of the
  alternative means of downloading discussed at <ulink
  url="&packages-root;"/>.</para>

  <para>Downloaded packages and patches will need to be stored somewhere
  that is conveniently available throughout the entire build. A working
  directory is also required to unpack the sources and build them.
  <filename class="directory">$CLFS/sources</filename> can be used both
  as the place to store the tarballs and patches and as a working
  directory. By using this directory, the required elements will be
  located on the CLFS partition and will be available during all stages
  of the building process.</para>

  <para>To create this directory, execute, as user <systemitem
  class="username">root</systemitem>, the following command before
  starting the download session:</para>

<screen><userinput>mkdir -v $CLFS/sources</userinput></screen>

  <para>Make this directory writable and sticky. When a directory is
  marked <quote>sticky</quote>, that means that even if multiple users have
  write permission on that directory, any file within that directory can only be
  deleted or modified by its owner. The following command will enable the
  write and sticky modes:</para>

<screen><userinput>chmod -v a+wt $CLFS/sources</userinput></screen>

</sect1>