Normally the functionality of uname is somewhat broken, in that the -p switch always returns "unknown". The following patch fixes this behaviour for Intel architectures: patch -Np1 -i ../coreutils-&coreutils-uname-patch-version;.patch We do not want Coreutils to install its version of the hostname program, because it is inferior to the version provided by Net-tools. Prevent its installation by applying a patch: patch -Np1 -i ../coreutils-&coreutils-hostname-patch-version;.patch Now prepare Coreutils for compilation: ./configure --prefix=/usr Compile the package: make This package has a test suite available which can perform a number of checks to ensure it built correctly. However, this particular test suite makes some assumptions that aren't quite valid at this early stage of Chapter 6. We therefore make a few adjustments to allow the tests to run properly. Should you choose not to run the test suite, skip down to "Install the package". The following commands will prepare us for the test suite. Create two dummy groups and a dummy user name: echo "dummy1:x:1000" >> /etc/group echo "dummy2:x:1001:dummy" >> /etc/group echo "dummy:x:1000:1000:::/bin/bash" >> /etc/passwd The su program from Coreutils wasn't installed in Chapter 5 because it needed root privilege to install. We work around this problem by installing it now: make install-root Some tests are meant to run as root: make check-root The remainder of the tests are run as the dummy user: su dummy -c "make RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes check" Remove the dummy groups and user name: sed -i.bak '/dummy/d' /etc/passwd /etc/group Install the package: make install And move some programs to their proper locations: mv /usr/bin/{basename,cat,chgrp,chmod,chown,cp,dd,df} /bin mv /usr/bin/{dir,dircolors,du,date,echo,false,head} /bin mv /usr/bin/{install,ln,ls,mkdir,mkfifo,mknod,mv,pwd} /bin mv /usr/bin/{rm,rmdir,shred,sync,sleep,stty,su,test} /bin mv /usr/bin/{touch,true,uname,vdir} /bin mv /usr/bin/chroot /usr/sbin Finally, create a few necessary symlinks: ln -s test /bin/[ ln -s ../../bin/install /usr/bin