Topic: Even better "Built my own"

[D-Dan]

I'm taking some time off trying to solve the problems with quantum physics, and decided to try something even more difficult, sooo...

Yesterday, after 3 days of typing and work, at 20:32, I booted for the first time my very own Linux OS built entirely from sources.

Now, granted, it didn't do much at that point. Just bash functions and, more importantly, a fully functioning development system to enable building the rest of the system.

This morning, I wiped it and I'm going to see if I can get the total time down to half a day. BUT, I'm feeling pretty damn pleased with myself

[GillE]

Well done!  I wouldn't know where to start.

[Simon]

Well done Steve!     

[Rik]

Now if you could just pop round, Steve...

[daveeb]

I don't understand what you did but it's very impressive 

[sam]

Good man! I've been having "fun" with shared libraries all day and some code that just doesn't want to compile..

I've only managed to build a linux system by hand once, gentoo, and I ain't going through that again!

[D-Dan]

Well, I did something wrong on the repeat exercise, and whilst I have a basic tools system and file structure ready, I can't chroot into it, so I cocked up permissions somewhere and I have no idea where. Not to worry, I'll try again. Desperately want to succsessfully repeat this so that I can move to a Real system build rather than a VM.

Just have to decide which drive I'm going to mangle to make room for a development system and the new system. I'm eyeing my Windows 7 partition with a gleam in my eye - 160Gb of useless crap that I could reclaim

--

For those unsure what the big deal is, first acknowledge that your operating system (Windows, MacOS, Linux etc) doesn't just magically appear, but has to be built from source code packages, patched and tweaked, compiled, and configured, then imagine that your operating system consists of hundreds, or even thousands of programs, libraries etc. which all have to be prepared in this way, and then image that they all have to be put together to actually work. That's what I've done

[Simon]

It's a very worthy achievement, Steve.  Maybe we could try it one day, if you can make a 'live' version?

[D-Dan]

There's already one - http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/livecd/ - but don't expect a nice, shiny GUI with all the utilities etc. that you want in an OS. As I understand it (I haven't tried it), this will simply boot the developer system that you need in order to actually build the OS. In fact, maybe I'll test it - it will save me an extra partition on my HD building a development environment in order to build the system, though I imagine that you would have to complete the build process at least as far as chrooting to the new system in a single sitting, or be prepared to recreate necessary softlinks and, possibly, users for development each time you return. Of course, once you have your base system built (not the live one) then you can do remaining building directly in your new OS.

I'll report back after a test and let you know

[Simon]

What have I said!   

[sam]

just get a ubuntu disc Simon! :-)

I spent yesterday compiling some radio astronomy software - it reminded me of building Gentoo from source in that it took 10x longer than installing Ubuntu to compile, blooming code! I blame the person who was adding code to it.. oh wait that was me!

[Simon]

[D-Dan]

Well,

I've started the "real" install now, got the base system and kernal built and booting, sorted out my wireless and wpa (which caused no end of problems, but working now) and a couple of basic utilities. Need to get lynx (text based web browser) sorted out, though this is causing me some problems since one of the pre-requisites refuses to build (4 separate choices for this, and none of them will build). I'll probably get back to it later. Once I get that done, I'll build python (which in tests built very easily, so not expecting problems there) and then I'll make a start on a desktop. When I have that working, I'll take a screen grab (or possibly, at that stage, a photo) and post

[Simon]

Good luck!

[sam]

Well,

I've started the "real" install now, got the base system and kernal built and booting, sorted out my wireless and wpa (which caused no end of problems, but working now) and a couple of basic utilities. Need to get lynx (text based web browser) sorted out, though this is causing me some problems since one of the pre-requisites refuses to build (4 separate choices for this, and none of them will build). I'll probably get back to it later. Once I get that done, I'll build python (which in tests built very easily, so not expecting problems there) and then I'll make a start on a desktop. When I have that working, I'll take a screen grab (or possibly, at that stage, a photo) and post

build scipy :-)