Building linux from scratch: glibc gives linker errors about libstld.so. [SOLUTION]

__open, __close, etc. etc. etc. in libstld.so aren't found linker errors while trying to build glibc.

I searched google for a good ten hours and did not find the solution to my problem, and then I spent about three hours looking through makefiles, source codes, error logs, etc. to try to figure it out. I figured it out. Before I tell you what it is, I'm going to go ahead and say that I know I'm an idiot for spending thirteen hours on a problem when all I had to do was read what the compiler was telling me. I should've had this solved in seconds. However, I am consoled by the fact that there are many other people on google who seem to have this same problem and are having no luck either. I want this solution to be out there (I didn't see the solution on google), and I'm starting here at the QBasic Forum Community Forum's Linux forum.

The problem is that I was using a flash drive with a FAT32 file system to compile everything. I was booting from a livecd with ext3, installing to a harddrive with ext3, and doing my compiling on a flash drive with FAT32. When making glibc, symbolic links are created to the libraries (libstld.so, etc.) -- and FAT32 does not support symbolic links.

The solution is to not use FAT32 for what you're compiling on. I made another partition on my harddrive and formatted it ext3. I copied all the source codes from my flash drive to there and just started over.

Note: I have noticed that another problem has been solved by this. When compiling gcc, I had an error with the dependency PATCHES. It went away after this as well.

In short: If you are having a problem compiling glibc, check a little ways above where the errors are displayed. It should give an error like "ln: creating symbolic link ...... operation not permitted." If you see that, then this post is about your problem and the solution. If you don't see that, then try google. There are solutions out there for other problems that can come up while compiling glibc.


I hope someone who needs this finds it, and it saves them a long time looking for the solution.