**This page should use cross references to avoid duplicate content. Please help us by cleaning it up. ?**

**Contents**

[[!toc levels=2]]

#See

[README.Linux](http://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/bootstrap/README.Linux)

[pkgsrc guide](http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/)

#Software requirements

Before you can use pkgsrc, you may need a few packages installed on your Linux system upfront.

* gcc (and libstdc++)
* libncurses-devel
* zlib and zlib-devel
* openssl-devel (optional but required for some packages) 
* libudev-dev (optional but required for some packages)
* gawk

The names may vary, depending on what Linux distribution you are using. Also be mindful of the platform you are using (eg. i686 vs. x86_64 - some have different pre-required packages). Also note that some very basic tools such as file, patch, sed, and others are required, as well.

#Troubleshooting bootstrap
##Shell's echo command is not BSD-compatible

If you see this error

    ERROR: Your shell's echo command is not BSD-compatible.

This error is known to occur if /bin/sh is linked to /bin/dash (recent Ubuntu versions).

The fix is to issue the following before commencing bootstrap: export SH=/bin/bash
##ARG_MAX undeclared

If bootstrap stops at

    In file included from glob.c:12:                                                
    __glob13.c: In function globextend:                                             
    __glob13.c:836: error: ARG_MAX undeclared (first use in this function)

Then apply this patch [1](http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-bugs/2008/06/21/msg026977.html)
##FORTIFY_SOURCE

If bootstrap stops at

    /usr/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/bmake/arch.c: In function 'Arch_Touch':
    /usr/pkgsrc/bootstrap/work/bmake/arch.c:1038: warning: ignoring return
    value of 'fwrite', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
    *** Error code 1

This error occurs because Linux uses -DFORTIFY_SOURCES by default. Bootstrap can be achieved by:

    CFLAGS="-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE" ./bootstrap 

##libncurses not installed

If bootstrap stops at

    ERROR: This package has set PKG_FAIL_REASON:
    ERROR: No usable termcap library found on the system.

Then install the libncurses-dev package

On an RPM based system this might be via 'yum install ncurses-devel', and on a Debian/Ubuntu system 'apt-get install libncurses5-dev'