Installation of Glibc Before starting to install glibc, you must cd into the glibc-&glibc-version; directory and unpack glibc-linuxthreads inside the glibc-&glibc-version; directory, not in /usr/src as you normally would do. This package is known to behave badly when you have changed its default optimization flags (including the -march and -mcpu options). Glibc is best left alone. Therefore, if you have defined any environment variables that override default optimizations, such as CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS, we recommend unsetting or modifying them when building binutils. You have been warned. Also, don't pass the --enable-kernel option to the configure script. It's known to cause segmentation faults when other packages like fileutils, make and tar are linked against it. Basically, compiling Glibc in any other way than the book suggests is putting your system at very high risk. Install Glibc by running the following commands: mknod -m 0666 /dev/null c 1 3 && touch /etc/ld.so.conf && cp malloc/Makefile malloc/Makefile.backup && sed 's%\$(PERL)%/usr/bin/perl%' malloc/Makefile.backup > malloc/Makefile && cp login/Makefile login/Makefile.backup && sed 's/root/0/' login/Makefile.backup > login/Makefile && mkdir ../glibc-build && cd ../glibc-build && ../glibc-&glibc-version;/configure --prefix=/usr \    --enable-add-ons --libexecdir=/usr/bin && echo "cross-compiling = no" > configparms && make && make install && make localedata/install-locales && exec /bin/bash --login An alternative to running make localedata/install-locales is to only install those locales which you need or want. This can be achieved using the localedef command. Information on this can be found in the INSTALL file in the glibc-&glibc-version; tree. During the configure 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 (from the gettext package which we will install later in this chapter) won't cause any problems. msgfmt is used to generate the binary translation files that are used to 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 msgfmt if you change the translation source files (the *.po files in the po subdirectory) which\ would require you to re-generate the binary files.