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11. Reinstalling statically linked software

In this section we're going to reinstall all software that has been linked statically before dynamically. It's pretty straightforward like it was when we prepared our system for the Glibc installation.

It's important that you take a close look at this section. If you decide you can't be bothered reinstalling all the previously installed software, at least look at the new libraries and programs in this section. A few programs that are already installed depend on certain libraries when dynamically linked. But these libraries aren't only used by the already installed programs; other software might require it as well, so you want to install those. Also, a few programs recommend other programs to be installed. We didn't require those programs for the Glibc and GCC installation, but we might as well install them now to avoid problems later.

11.1 Installing the Termcap library

11.2 Installing the Readline library

11.3 Reinstalling Bash

The just installed Bash version is compiled with the -g compiler flag, which means it's compiled with debugging information. This means that when you ever need to run bash through a debugger, the output is human readable, whereas a binary compiled without debugger information is very hard to debug. The downside is that the Bash executable is now about 1MB in size. If you remove the debug information, you'll have an executable of around 340KB in size. This is quite a difference and worth it if you don't debug programs at all.

You can edit the Makefile files whenever you compile a program so you can remove the -g compiler flags (often found in a CFLAGS variable), or you can run the strip program with one or more executables as the parameter(s). All debugging information will be deleted (this won't affect the program itself in any way whatsoever). The choice is yours.

11.4 Reinstalling Sysvinit

11.5 Reinstalling Make

11.6 Reinstalling Sed

11.7 Reinstalling Shell Utils

11.8 Reinstalling File Utils

11.9 Reinstalling + Installing Util Linux

11.10 Reinstalling Text Utils

11.11 Reinstalling Tar

11.12 Reinstalling Gzip

I'm using version 1.2.4 and during the compilation process I'm getting this error: conflicting types for basename. If you're also being troubled by this error, here's how to fix it:

Recompile the package now (with make) and the compilation process should finish properly this time

11.13 Reinstalling Bison

11.14 Installing Flex

11.15 Reinstalling Binutils

11.16 Reinstalling Grep

11.17 Reinstalling Mawk

11.18 Reinstalling Find Utils

I'm using version 4.1 and during the compilation I'm getting this error. Although it is a fatal error, the compilation process doesn't stop when the errors occurs, so you need to watch your compilation output closely to find out if you also get the following error: defs.h:304: conflicting types for `basename'. If you're also troubled by that error, here's how to fix it:

This line is separated over two lines ("char *" is on the first line and "basename(fname)" on the second line).

You don't need to keep this line separated over two lines. It doesn't matter at all whether you keep it like that or not.

Recompile the package (with make) and the compilation process should finish properly this time.

11.19 Reinstalling Diff Utils

11.20 Installing Less

11.21 Reinstalling Perl

If you agree on all default values, you might want to configure the package by running Configure -d . This way you don't have to press enter all the time to accept the default values.

11.22 Reinstalling M4

11.23 Reinstalling Texinfo

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