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# Installing Glibc-2.3.2

    Estimated build time:           14.0 SBU
    Estimated required disk space:  369 MB

## Contents of Glibc

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Glibc is the C library that provides the system calls and basic functions such as open, malloc, printf, etc. The C library is used by all dynamically linked programs.

Glibc installs the following files:

### Program Files

catchsegv, gencat, getconf, getent, glibcbug, iconv, iconvconfig, ldconfig, ldd, lddlibc4, locale, localedef, mtrace, nscd, nscd_nischeck, pcprofiledump, pt_chown, rpcgen, rpcinfo, sln, sprof, tzselect, xtrace, zdump and zic

### Library Files

ld.so, libBrokenLocale.[a,so], libSegFault.so, libanl.[a,so], libbsd-compat.a, libc.[a,so], libc_nonshared.a, libcrypt.[a,so], libdl.[a,so], libg.a, libieee.a, libm.[a,so], libmcheck.a, libmemusage.so, libnsl.a, libnss_compat.so, libnss_dns.so, libnss_files.so, libnss_hesiod.so, libnss_nis.so, libnss_nisplus.so, libpcprofile.so, libpthread.[a,so], libresolv.[a,so], librpcsvc.a, librt.[a,so], libthread_db.so and libutil.[a,so]

##

## Glibc Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.2.5.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: ar, as, ld, ranlib, readelf
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, cut, date, expr, hostname, install, ln,
mknod, mv, mkdir, rm, pwd, sort, touch, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
Gawk: gawk
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp, gcc
Grep: egrep, grep
Gzip: gzip
Make: make
Sed: sed
Texinfo: install-info, makeinfo

##

## Glibc installation

Before starting to install Glibc, you must `cd` into the `glibc-2.3.2` directory and unpack Glibc-linuxthreads in that directory, not in `/usr/src` as you would normally do.

> Note: We are going to run the testsuite for Glibc in this chapter. However, it's worth noting that the Glibc testsuite we run in this chapter is considered not as critical as the one we run in Chapter 6.

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 `/tools/etc/ld.so.conf`. Fix this annoying little error with:

    mkdir /tools/etc
    touch /tools/etc/ld.so.conf

Also, Glibc has a subtle problem when compiled with GCC 3.3.1. Apply the following patch to fix this:

    patch -Np1 -i ../glibc-2.3.2-sscanf-1.patch

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-2.3.2/configure --prefix=/tools \
        --disable-profile --enable-add-ons \
        --with-headers=/tools/include \
        --with-binutils=/tools/bin \
        --without-gd

The meaning of the new configure options:

- `--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=/tools/bin` and `--with-headers=/tools/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 glibc make check process is highly dependent on certain functions of your host operating system. The most common is a host that fails to mount a tmpfs filesystem at /dev/shm, which may cause glibc tests to fail.

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-2.3.2` tree. However, there are a number of locales that are essential for the tests of future packages to pass correctly, in particular, the libstdc++ tests from GCC. The following instructions, in place of the install-locales command above, will install the minimum set of locales necessary for the tests to run successfully:

    mkdir -p /tools/lib/locale
    localedef -i de_DE -f ISO-8859-1 de_DE
    localedef -i de_DE@euro -f ISO-8859-15 de_DE@euro
    localedef -i en_HK -f ISO-8859-1 en_HK
    localedef -i en_PH -f ISO-8859-1 en_PH
    localedef -i en_US -f ISO-8859-1 en_US
    localedef -i es_MX -f ISO-8859-1 es_MX
    localedef -i fr_FR -f ISO-8859-1 fr_FR
    localedef -i fr_FR@euro -f ISO-8859-15 fr_FR@euro
    localedef -i it_IT -f ISO-8859-1 it_IT
    localedef -i ja_JP -f EUC-JP ja_JP

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