# [PROJECT] Anybody having experience in Linux from Scratch?



## ratul (Jan 14, 2013)

Ok, so for B.tech final sem project, me and my friend chose to make an OS using Linux from Scratch, but he does'nt have any experience in linux, and what i have is just a basic set of commands, so i am working on it, and currently making my linux concepts clear before proceeding..
We have alot of time (whole sem till may), so i know we'll do it, but after reading the LFS book, i have certain doubts about it, it looks way more complicated than what i thought it would be...
Anyone here having any experience with LFS??? Please share it, and how to begin building the system, which distro will be the best choice to start working with LFS?


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## doomgiver (Jan 14, 2013)

well, i made a distro from scratch for my major project last sem.

i did the work, and the other 2 nubs slacked off. needless to say, they didnt manage good grades.

one thing to keep in mind : are your teachers aware of what a Open Source project is? one of my panel members in the final presentation was playing angry birds while i was giving the presentation.


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## ratul (Jan 14, 2013)

doomgiver said:


> well, i made a distro from scratch for my major project last sem.
> 
> i did the work, and the other 2 nubs slacked off. needless to say, they didnt manage good grades.
> 
> one thing to keep in mind : are your teachers aware of what a Open Source project is? one of my panel members in the final presentation was playing angry birds while i was giving the presentation.



yes, my teachers are sorta "aware" of open source project, but i don't see anyone of them capable of even installing linux, forget about working on it... 
but that's the norm these days i think, even my friends in big universities (DTU, Amity) complaints of low quality of teachers.. 
btw, how much time it took you to develop that distro? and how you started, which distro you selected as the base???


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## doomgiver (Jan 15, 2013)

took a couple of months, mostly debugging and finding new stuff to toss into the project to make it "viable". teachers were not satified with just the os, thye wanteded every effing thing along with that.

started out with a slackware base, then abandoned it in favor of arch. reason? im more used to arch, and AUR


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## ratul (Jan 15, 2013)

doomgiver said:


> took a couple of months, mostly debugging and finding new stuff to toss into the project to make it "viable". teachers were not satified with just the os, thye wanteded every effing thing along with that.
> 
> started out with a slackware base, then abandoned it in favor of arch. reason? im more used to arch, and AUR



i can definitely say those teachers thought of windows like OS when you said you were making an OS, coz that was the case with me when one of my teachers said: "Isme start menu wagarah accha dena.. "... haha, i had to convince them that it would be a very basic linux distro,, 

btw, yeah, arch is really good, and can you tell what helped you in debugging and all, what i have now is just this *LFS Book *to start with, does this have enough info or any other resources are needed.. (Google is always there, but if you have some specific sources, it would be better.. )


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## doomgiver (Jan 15, 2013)

hmm, basically i compiled a distro that was tailored for the hardware running on my college computers.
it was meant as a replacement for the old and slow windows xp.

then we added eye-candy, applications, some tweaks to make it boot faster(this one was important) and finally, booted it off a pen drive, so that it'd be portable.

as for resources, what exactly are you going to do?

for debugging, there were some problems with what w had done (full disk encryption, and some custom scripting i had written) that wouldnt run if the other was present. so, mostly compatiblity problems.


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## ratul (Jan 15, 2013)

doomgiver said:


> hmm, basically i compiled a distro that was tailored for the hardware running on my college computers.
> it was meant as a replacement for the old and slow windows xp.
> 
> then we added eye-candy, applications, some tweaks to make it boot faster(this one was important) and finally, booted it off a pen drive, so that it'd be portable.
> ...



ok, so i still have to learn much before i begin with it.. 
from your point of view, how much you think i need to study before starting building Linux from scratch..
means, that how much should i know before starting, now what i know are just a set of basic commands, managing directories and users, samba, yum servers, and editing boot and config files, that is some basic stuff only, do i have to master linux before starting??


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## doomgiver (Jan 15, 2013)

er, quite a lot 

you dont need to "master" linux.

you just need enough knowledge to put together a working distro.
you need a base, decide on one and stick to it.

you should be aware of how stuff works in linux, that config settings are stored and edited via files, and your entire OS behaviour can be changed just by writing some code.


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## ratul (Jan 15, 2013)

doomgiver said:


> er, quite a lot
> 
> you dont need to "master" linux.
> 
> ...



ok, so i still need to work more before starting, thanks for your kind help..
one more question, does creating distro from scratch need me to know scripting, like Bash Shell Scripting, or creating Python scripts, or C programming??


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## TheSloth (Jan 15, 2013)

very nice guys. Seems to be interesting. I too want to learn this. Currently struggling in linux to connect to wifi but want to learn. 
@ratul: if you don't mind then tell me from where you started, how much finished and what should be the approach to solve problems.


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## ratul (Jan 15, 2013)

Swapnil26sps said:


> very nice guys. Seems to be interesting. I too want to learn this. Currently struggling in linux to connect to wifi but want to learn.
> @ratul: if you don't mind then tell me from where you started, how much finished and what should be the approach to solve problems.



well, the commands and some servers were taught to me in my Networking Security course, but that was all too unfinished, as they just started telling all that without properly introducing linux to us..
Currently i have RHEL 6.3 installed in VM, and is following the CBT Nuggets linux Video tutorials, you can get them *here*..
These tuts use RHEL, so i am currently hooked to redhat..
The tuts are old though (2002), but works good to set the basics, and covers even the advanced linux course, with Shell scripting and all the topics for RHCE examinations, and have got really good reviews from many..
Acc to their course, i have completed till User administration, and is almost in the midway for the basic vids...


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## doomgiver (Jan 16, 2013)

bash scripting is not *required*, per se, but can be useful in sticky situations, where you might want to "hack" together a working system (eg, script that runs a startup process to do something, and adding this script to the global startup script).


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## TheSloth (Jan 16, 2013)

I have no idea what you guys are talking about but as soon as my exam get over i will start learning about these things. Thank you @ratul. Keep informing how you created your own linux.


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## ratul (Jan 16, 2013)

doomgiver said:


> bash scripting is not *required*, per se, but can be useful in sticky situations, where you might want to "hack" together a working system (eg, script that runs a startup process to do something, and adding this script to the global startup script).



ok, so some time is saved for me then.. 
thanks for your help, you have given me a very good moral boost from your guidance.. 



Swapnil26sps said:


> I have no idea what you guys are talking about but as soon as my exam get over i will start learning about these things. Thank you @ratul. Keep informing how you created your own linux.



hehe, don't worry once you'll start using linux, you'll understand all these concepts..
i'll keep you informed, but i think it'd still take me a couple of months before i know enough about linux to start working in building a distro, but once i start, i'll keep you informed..


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## TheSloth (Jan 16, 2013)

@ratul: No problem, i will wait. I have lot of time.


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## Anish (Jan 16, 2013)

@ratul : but knowing bash scripting / perl would save you a lot of time. Just learn the basics. I think perl would do. Its easy enough to grasp.


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## ratul (Jan 16, 2013)

Anish said:


> @ratul : but knowing bash scripting / perl would save you a lot of time. Just learn the basics. I think perl would do. Its easy enough to grasp.



, oh, so the basics are covered in CBT nuggets, i'll get bash scripting from there, but won't python do instead of perl???
i attended a python basic course from coursera.org, so i know very basic of it, do i have to learn perl too??


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## Anish (Jan 17, 2013)

ratul said:


> , oh, so the basics are covered in CBT nuggets, i'll get bash scripting from there, but won't python do instead of perl???
> i attended a python basic course from coursera.org, so i know very basic of it, do i have to learn perl too??



No need. Knowing any one is enough. Atleast for arch. I am using arch and bash/perl would do.


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## ratul (Jan 17, 2013)

Anish said:


> No need. Knowing any one is enough. Atleast for arch. I am using arch and bash/perl would do.



thnxx for some guidance bro..


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## ratul (Mar 12, 2013)

*GOOD NEWS:* I have finally completed building my distro with LFS.. ..
Here's the login page screenshot:
*i.imgur.com/BaE6JIL.png​I started building it 5 days ago with my partner, and just half hour ago, i successfully booted into the system... .
It was slightly frustrating at times, but the whole process was enjoyable and very informative, really learned about linux alot during this process..
First two days were out, and we were'nt able to find a good distro to start (most of them had missing packages needed for LFS, and we could'nt download them as internet was not accessible to VMWare), finally found Slackware 14.0 x64, it had all the packages needed and provided a very good platform to start...
Rest was just following the instruction, some debugging, troubleshooting and now, it's built..


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## ratul (Apr 11, 2013)

ok guys, finally i have completed the build with a minimal GUI, used XFCE desktop environment, and took 20-25hrs after the LFS Command prompt build was complete (the previous one), max time was took by the debugging of errors and repairing them.. 

Firstly, compiled and build the X-Windows System (X-org) for the minimalistic GUI: 
*i.imgur.com/G82itxO.png​
Next compiled and build the XFCE for a desktop environment:
*i.imgur.com/0J9qkxk.png​


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## Shah (Apr 12, 2013)

@Ratul: Good job! Can you write a tutorial of each step you did in developing your distro, right from the starting? It will be helpful for others too.


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## ratul (Apr 13, 2013)

Shah said:


> @Ratul: Good job! Can you write a tutorial of each step you did in developing your distro, right from the starting? It will be helpful for others too.



whole tutorial??  that would be like more than 300 pages.. 
btw, all the info and tuts are found here: Welcome to Linux From Scratch!


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## TheSloth (Apr 13, 2013)

Now days i am studying OS as it is in my MCA course. Its very hard to imagine like writing code for managing threads. I want to start something like this, but understanding simple things are taking time for me, writing code for OS is impossible for now. From where to start. I am going to download books form LFS website. Let's see


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## ratul (Apr 18, 2013)

Swapnil26sps said:


> Now days i am studying OS as it is in my MCA course. Its very hard to imagine like writing code for managing threads. I want to start something like this, but understanding simple things are taking time for me, writing code for OS is impossible for now. From where to start. I am going to download books form LFS website. Let's see



there's no code usage in this, all you need to know is how to compile the packages, which is well presented in the book...


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## TheSloth (Apr 22, 2013)

thanks ratul. I saw the book, there's alot alot alot alot to read. It will take lot of time


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## ratul (Apr 22, 2013)

Swapnil26sps said:


> thanks ratul. I saw the book, there's alot alot alot alot to read. It will take lot of time



yes, but it's a good thing, everything is given in such a detail, that building a Linux distro does'nt seem to be that hard after going through the book once, the content of the book is quite good and informative..


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## TheSloth (Apr 22, 2013)

you gone through all books given there?


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## ratul (Apr 23, 2013)

Swapnil26sps said:


> you gone through all books given there?



no, only the LFS and BLFS one's, LFS book needs to be completed in order to build the basic system, and BLFS helps to add utilities to it (GUI, browsers, security, multimedia etc.)..


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