Glibc installation Before starting to install Glibc, you must cd into the glibc-&glibc-version; directory and unpack Glibc-linuxthreads in that directory, not in /usr/src as you would normally do. This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting them when building Glibc. Basically, compiling Glibc in any other way than the book suggests is putting the stability of your system at risk. Though it is a harmless message, the install stage of Glibc will complain about the absence of /etc/ld.so.conf. Fix this annoying little error with: mkdir /stage1/etc touch /stage1/etc/ld.so.conf The documentation that comes with Glibc recommends to build the package not in the source directory but in a separate, dedicated directory: mkdir ../glibc-build cd ../glibc-build Next, prepare Glibc to be compiled: ../glibc-&glibc-version;/configure --prefix=/stage1 \     --disable-profile --enable-add-ons \     --with-headers=/stage1/include \     --with-binutils=/stage1/bin \     --without-gd The meaning of the new configure options is: --disable-profile: This disables the building of the libraries with profiling information. Omit this option if you plan to do profiling. --enable-add-ons: This enables any add-ons that were installed with Glibc, in our case Linuxthreads. --with-binutils=/stage1/bin and --with-headers=/stage1/include: Strictly speaking these switches are not required. But they ensure nothing can go wrong with regard to what kernel headers and Binutils programs get used during the Glibc build. --without-gd: This switch ensures that we don't build the memusagestat program, which strangely enough insists on linking against the host's libraries (libgd, libpng, libz, and so forth). During this stage you will see the following warning:
configure: warning: *** These auxiliary programs are missing or too old: msgfmt *** some features will be disabled. *** Check the INSTALL file for required versions.
The missing msgfmt program (from the Gettext package, which we'll install later) won't cause any problems. The msgfmt is used to generate the binary translation files that can make your system talk in a different language. Because these translation files have already been generated for you, there is no need for msgfmt. You'd only need the program if you change the translation source files (the *.po files in the po subdirectory), which would require you to regenerate the binary files. Continue with compiling the package: make make check make install The locales (used by Glibc to make your Linux system respond in a different language) weren't installed when you ran the previous command, so we have to do that ourselves now: make localedata/install-locales An alternative to running the previous command is to install only those locales which you need or want. This can be achieved by using the localedef command. Information on this can be found in the INSTALL file in the glibc-&glibc-version; tree.