The host must be running at least a 2.6.2 kernel compiled with GCC-3.0 or higher. There are two main reasons for this high requirement. First, the Native POSIX Threading Library (NPTL) test suite will segfault if the host's kernel has not been compiled with GCC-3.0 or a later version. Secondly, the 2.6.2 or later version of the kernel is required for the use of Udev. Udev creates devices dynamically by reading from the sysfs file system. However, support for this filesystem has only recently been implemented in most of the kernel drivers. We must be sure that all critical system devices get created properly.

In order to determine whether the host kernel meets the requirements outlined above, run the following command:

cat /proc/version

This will produce output similar to:

Linux version 2.6.2 (user@host) (gcc version 3.4.0) #1
    Tue Apr 20 21:22:18 GMT 2004

If the results of the above command state that the host kernel was not compiled using a GCC-3.0 (or later) compiler, one will need to be compiled. The host system will then need to be rebooted to use the newly compiled kernel. Instructions for compiling the kernel and configuring the boot loader (assuming the host uses GRUB) are located in Chapter 8.