Linux from Binaries

binarylfslinux

I thought Linux from Scratch was a pretty cool tutorial, but I felt having to wait for everything to compile was a bit nerve-wreaking.

Is there a tutorial similar to LFS except pre-compiled binaries are used whenever possible? I would imagine that if you were running a specific liveCD (e.g. Ubuntu) you could just copy over a lot of the pieces of the liveCD for the system you're building (e.g. kernel, libraries, executables, etc.).

Best Answer

A less time consuming option is Gentoo Linux. The install process starts further along than the Linux From Scratch book and there are options to install some of the bigger packages from binary to avoid compiling your Desktop Environment from scratch for example.

As a side note the only reason to install Linux from Scratch is as a educational experience.

Related Solutions

Make ls distinguish scripts from binaries in output

You need to look at the contents of a file to distinguish between binaries and scripts. ls won't do this, it only looks at file names and metadata (type, permission, etc.).

Here's a crude parser for file that colors scripts and binaries differently. It acts like ls -d; adding metadata would require a patch-up job that calls for a more direct approach (e.g. in Perl or Python); use lsx somedir/* to list the contents of a directory. File names are assumed not to contain newlines nor colons (you can change the : separator for some other string with the -F option to file).

lsx () {
  file -iN -- "$@" |
  while IFS= read -r line; do
    name=${line%%: *}; type=${line#*: }
    color=0
    case $type in
      application/x-executable*) color='32';;
      text/x-shellscript*) color='01;32';;
      application/*zip*) color='31';;
    esac
    printf '\033[%sm%s\033[0m\n' "$color" "$name"
  done
}

Where to download binaries of coreutils

The least painful way to install Linux utilities on an Android device is to install a whole distribution in a subdirectory. “Normal” distributions (Debian, Arch, Fedora, etc.) provide binaries that are dynamically linked with Glibc, which Android doesn't provide. They need to be executed with the loader (/lib/ld-linux*.so) of Glibc.

A simple way to set up such a system is to use Debian's deboostrap to build an initial Debian directory tree, transfer it to the Android device, and from then on install packages with apt-get and other standard Debian tools. There are a couple of pages on the topic on the Debian wiki: ChrootOnAndroid, HotwoDebianInAndroid.

First, install Debootstrap. On Debian or derivative, just install the debootstrap package. On some other Linux or other Unix variant, just grab the debootstrap source tarball or check it out from Git: it's only a shell script and supporting data files.
Determine whether your device supports hardware floating point. If it doesn't, replace armhf by armel below. You can tell by checking /proc/cpuinfo under Android (or anything else using a Linux kernel): you must have ARMv7 (or ARMv8) with the features thumbee and vfpv3.
If you don't already have it, install BusyBox on the Android device. While it isn't strictly necessary, it'll come handy below. You can retrieve the busybox-static Debian binary package, extract the BusyBox executable with ar p busybox-static_*_armhf.deb data.tar.gz | tar -xzf - ./bin/busybox, and transfer the busybox binary to the Android device. Below, I assume that BusyBox is located at /vendor/bin/busybox.
If your Android device is capable of mounting an SD card that's formatted as ext2/ext3/ext4 (or any other filesystem that supports unix permissions, i.e. not FAT), mount the SD card on your Unix PC and run the following command as root:
```
debootstrap --arch=armhf --foreign wheezy /media/sdcard/debian http://http.debian.net/debian
```
If not, run the following command as root (or under fakeroot, if you have it):
```
sh -c 'debootstrap --arch=armhf --foreign wheezy /tmp/debian http://http.debian.net/debian && tar -zcf /tmp/debian.tar.gz -C /tmp debian'
```
Now you need to transfer /tmp/debian.tar.gz to your Android device. You can do it over adb (adb push /tmp/debian.tar.gz /) or any other way that works for you, then unpack the tarball (use the BusyBox tar):
```
tar -zxvf /debian.tar.gz
```

Set up a comfortable environment to run Linux programs. The easy way is to run them in a chroot. I assume that the Debian system is located at /media/sdcard/debian and that you have BusyBox. Create a shell script:

#!/vendor/bin/busybox sh
LINUX_ROOT=/media/sdcard/debian
alias bb=/vendor/bin/busybox
unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH SHELL
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
# Bind-mount filesystems if not already done
for d in /dev /media /proc /sys; do
  bb grep -q " $LINUX_ROOT$d " /proc/mounts || bb mount -o rbind "$d" "$LINUX_ROOT/$d"
done
for d in /data /system; do
  if ! bb grep -q " $LINUX_ROOT$d " /proc/mounts; then
    mkdir -p "$LINUX_ROOT/android/$d"
    bb mount -o rbind "$d" "$LINUX_ROOT/android/$d"
  fi
done
exec bb chroot "$LINUX_ROOT" /bin/bash "$@"

Make this script executable and put it in /vendor/bin or anywhere else on the Android PATH. Before you can fully enjoy the Linux installation, you need to finish debootstrap's job: in the chroot, run

/debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Make ls distinguish scripts from binaries in output

Where to download binaries of coreutils

Related Question