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I am in the beginning stages of building an LFS (http://linuxfromscratch.org) system, but the thing is I don't have any space on my laptop to build it on. However, recently the GPU on my desktop went down and I have been unwilling to take the steps to have it fixed (variety of reasons). My main worry about building an LFS system was about rendering the computer unusable, but since this machine was already broken...I am looking at this as an opportunity.

I had two hard-drives on the desktop, one with linux (ssh enabled) and the other had windows which I subsequently deleted. Since I can't use the desktop directly because of the broken GPU, I am thinking of using ssh to connect and build the rest from there. So far, everything seems to be going according to plan, but I am just beginning the build, so thus far I have only partitioned and built the filesystems.

What I wanted to know is from any LFS builder/linux installation expert of possible complications that may arise. Thanx in advance.

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I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I don't think you have much to worry about as long as you back up your boot loader to a media that has bootup precedence over your hard drives and don't mess with the existing linux installation's partitions.

Once you have set up your LFS installation, I guess you'll have to reconfigure your boot loader. And you'll have to switch the default bootup profile then restart every time you want to switch between the two installations. Or back up the boot loader with the less frequently used installation chosen as default.

I wonder if there are any Live CD distributions that have sshd running by default. That'd be useful for recovering your desktop system without having to get an external hard drive enclosure. LFS LiveCD Documentation has a "autosshd" section on how to make a liveCD with sshd on by default.

I should add... you'll want to back up anything you don't want to lose on your desktop. I don't know what the best solution for that is for your situation, though. Set up NFS? Or external hard drive enclosure, like I mentioned.

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  • I did some research regarding the live cd with sshd, apparently most don't have it installed much less running. However, knoppix might have it installed. But some users have used ubuntu or puppy linux to install while running and it works fine, so I am thinking it should work with any live cd which can connect to the internet.
    – Ibn Ar-Rashid
    Apr 8, 2011 at 1:05
  • I don't know how I overlooked an external hard drive when suggesting backup solutions. I guess that'd be the simplest.
    – EMPraptor
    Apr 8, 2011 at 1:06
  • As I mentioned, it seems like you can put together an LFS LiveCD on which sshd is running by default. That way you can boot off that CD and log in with your laptop.
    – EMPraptor
    Apr 12, 2011 at 7:45

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