5.1. Introduction

This chapter shows how to build a minimal Linux system. This system will contain just enough tools to start constructing the final LFS system in Chapter 6 and allow a working environment with more user convenience than a minimum environment would.

There are two steps in building this minimal system. The first step is to build a new and host-independent toolchain (compiler, assembler, linker, libraries, and a few useful utilities). The second step uses this toolchain to build the other essential tools.

The files compiled in this chapter will be installed under the $LFS/tools directory to keep them separate from the files installed in the next chapter and the host production directories. Since the packages compiled here are temporary, we do not want them to pollute the soon-to-be LFS system.