Your host system should have the following software with the minimum versions indicated. This should not be an issue for most modern Linux distributions. Also note that many distributions will place software headers into separate packages, often in the form of “<package-name>-devel” or “<package-name>-dev”. Be sure to install those if your distribution provides them.
Bash-2.05a (/bin/sh must be a symbolic or hard link to bash)
Binutils-2.12 (Versions greater than 2.18 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Bison-1.875 (/usr/bin/yacc must be a link to bison or small script that executes bison)
Bzip2-1.0.2
Coreutils-5.0 (or Sh-Utils-2.0, Textutils-2.0, and Fileutils-4.1)
Diffutils-2.8
Findutils-4.1.20
Gawk-3.0 (/usr/bin/awk must be a link to gawk)
Gcc-3.0.1 (Versions greater than 4.2.3 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Glibc-2.2.5 (Versions greater than 2.7 are not recommended as they have not been tested)
Grep-2.5
Gzip-1.2.4
Linux Kernel-2.6.x (having been compiled with GCC-3.0 or greater)
The reason for the kernel version requirement is that thread-local storage support in Binutils will not be built and the Native POSIX Threading Library (NPTL) test suite will segfault if the host's kernel isn't at least a 2.6.x version compiled with a 3.0 or later release of GCC.
If the host kernel is either earlier than 2.6.x, or it was not compiled using a GCC-3.0 (or later) compiler, you will have to replace the kernel with one adhering to the specifications. There are two methods you can take to solve this. First, see if your Linux vendor provides a 2.6 kernel package. If so, you may wish to install it. If your vendor doesn't offer a 2.6 kernel package, or you would prefer not to install it, then you can compile a 2.6 kernel yourself. Instructions for compiling the kernel and configuring the boot loader (assuming the host uses GRUB) are located in Chapter 8.
Make-3.79.1
Patch-2.5.4
Perl-5.6.0
Sed-3.0.2
Tar-1.14
Texinfo-4.8
To see whether your host system has all the appropriate versions, run the following:
cat > version-check.sh << "EOF"
#!/bin/bash
export LC_ALL=C
# Simple script to list version numbers of critical development tools
bash --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f2-4
echo "/bin/sh -> `readlink -f /bin/sh`"
echo -n "Binutils: "; ld --version | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f3-
bison --version | head -n1
if [ -e /usr/bin/yacc ]; then echo "/usr/bin/yacc -> `readlink -f /usr/bin/yacc`";
else echo "yacc not found"; fi
bzip2 --version 2>&1 < /dev/null | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1,6-
echo -n "Coreutils: "; chown --version | head -n1 | cut -d")" -f2
diff --version | head -n1
find --version | head -n1
gawk --version | head -n1
if [ -e /usr/bin/awk ]; then echo "/usr/bin/awk -> `readlink -f /usr/bin/awk`";
else echo "awk not found"; fi
gcc --version | head -n1
/lib/libc.so.6 | head -n1 | cut -d" " -f1-7
grep --version | head -n1
gzip --version | head -n1
cat /proc/version
make --version | head -n1
patch --version | head -n1
sed --version | head -n1
tar --version | head -n1
makeinfo --version | head -n1
EOF
bash version-check.sh