Bootstrap

Disclaimer

• It is recommended that you bootstrap glaucus at least once
• This may not always work as glaucus is a moving target
• You are not expected to start from stage 0 every time

Introduction

• To truly bootstrap a distribution is to generate a self-hosting image file capable of rebuilding itself under itself from nothing
• Relying on an existing host does not count as a true full bootstrap as it starts from stage 1

Stages

Stage 0 (Nothing)

• This stage is optional
• Starts from nothing
• Does not rely on an existing host
• Not supported yet

Stage 1 (Toolchain)

• Leverages tools from the host or stage 0 to build a cross-compilation toolchain that will build stage 2
• This stage is not optimized as it needs to be correct, fast and reproducible
• This stage is built on the host in under 15 minutes on a relatively modern system

Stage 2 (Cross)

• Uses stage 1 toolchain to cross-compile the packages required to self-host glaucus
• This stage is optimized for x86-64-v3 (an early sanity check)
• This stage is built on the host system in under 25 minutes on a relatively modern system
• An image file .img is generated after a successful build

Stage 3 (Native)

• Uses stage 2 image file to perform a native rebuild of glaucus
• This stage is fully offline
• This stage is optimized for x86-64-v3
• This stage is built under QEMU in under 45 minutes on a relatively modern system
• An image file .iso is generated after a successful build

Stage 4 (Real)

• This stage is optional
• Uses stage 3 image file to perform a native rebuild of glaucus after install
• This stage is optimized for native and will only run on your machine
• Not supported yet

Host System Requirements

• A relatively modern x86-64-v3 system with a minimum of 4 GB of memory and 10 GB of storage space
• Arch and Linux From Scratch (LFS) can be used to bootstrap glaucus
• It is not recommended to bootstrap glaucus in a live environment

Required Packages (Automatically Checked)

• autoconf
• automake
• bash
• binutils
• bison (or byacc)
• booster
• bzip2
• coreutils (or toybox)
• curl
• diffutils (or toybox)
• dosfstools
• erofs-utils
• findutils (or toybox)
• flex
• gawk (or mawk)
• gcc
• gettext (or gettext-tiny)
• git
• gperf
• grep
• gzip (or pigz)
• libcap
• libtool (or slibtool)
• limine
• m4
• make
• meson (or muon)
• ninja (or samurai)
• patch (or toybox)
• perl
• pkg-config (or pkgconf) (not u-config as it does not support PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR)
• sed (or toybox)
• tar (or libarchive)
• xz
• zlib (or zlib-ng)
• zstd

Required Paths (Automatically Created)

• /var/cache/rad
• /var/lib/rad
• /var/log/rad
• /var/tmp/rad

Required Stubs (Automatically Provided)

• a2x
• asciidoc
• gtkdocize
• help2man
• ldconfig
• makeinfo
• po4a
• texi2dvi
• texi2pdf
• yodl2man

Steps

• Clone the glaucus repository:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/glaucuslinux/glaucus
git -C glaucus submodule foreach 'git checkout main'

• Bootstrap stages 1 and 2 (toolchain and cross):

cd glaucus/live

sudo ./bootstrap

• Bootstrap stage 3 (native) under QEMU:

./qemu-img

rad bootstrap 3

poweroff

• Create a stage 3 (native) iso:

sudo ./iso