'configure' fails when compiling some GNU tools

To compile a lot of software you need to be able to run the 'configure' script. To do this you should install most of the additional packages available for Minix with 'packman', especially the gcc compiler and the autoconf tools. You'll need to modify your PATH to be able to run them:

export PATH=/usr/gnu/i386-pc-minix/bin:/usr/gnu/bin:$PATH

Some of the utilities installed may need their memory requirements changed using 'chmem'. For example, when running 'configure' for the first time I encountered this error:

$ ./configure
./configure: xmalloc: ./parse.y:2716: cannot allocate 64 bytes (0 bytes allocated)

To track down the command causing this problem run the 'configure' script explicity using 'sh' passing the '-x' option which displays all commands run:

sh -x ./configure+ test -n
+ test -n
+ DUALCASE=1
+ export DUALCASE
...
+ CONFIG_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/bash
+ export CONFIG_SHELL
+ exec /usr/local/bin/bash ./configure
./configure: xmalloc: ./parse.y:2716: cannot allocate 64 bytes (0 bytes allocated)

This shows that 'bash' ran out of memory. Changing the memory value of 'bash' gets 'configure' working:

$ su
Password:
# chmem +1000000 /usr/local/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/bash: Stack+malloc area changed from 131072 to 1131072 bytes.
# 
$ ./configure
...

Categories: minix, development