Thanks for the responses.  It helped knowing that my gnu compiler/c library configuration was correct.  It also helped knowing what the bbconfigopts.h was supposed to look like. I did some digging into the problem and found the following.  The immediate cause of my problem is that Ubuntu 6.1 uses the "dash" shell 0.5.3-3 for /bin/sh.  At the same time, scripts/mkconfigs uses an echo "`...`" construction for generating bbconfigopts.h.  This construction contains a "\n" sequence, which the dash echo command interprets literally.  (See the attached bbconfigopts.h production to see what happens.)  Linking /bin/sh to /bin/bash resolved this problem and allowed the build to complete successfully. The fix that could be made to scripts/mkconfigs in order to work more generally, be less indirect, and avoid some of the backslash quoting would be to eliminate the echo "`...`" construction and just execute the command directly.  That is, change this: echo "`sed 's/\"/\\\\\"/g' $config | grep "^#\? \?CONFIG_" | awk '{print "\\"" $0 "\\\\n\\"";}'`" to this: sed 's/\"/\\\\\"/g' $config | grep "^#\? \?CONFIG_" | awk '{print "\"" $0 "\\n\"";}' I tested this change under bash and dash and it works in both shells. Alternatively, since awk is being invoked anyway, this line could be changed to just a single line awk invocation to do away with the sed, the grep, and the echo: awk '/^#? ?CONFIG_/ {gsub(/\"/,"\\\\\"",$0); print "\"" $0 "\\n\"";}' $config I tested this change under bash and dash and it also works in both shells. I have also attached a patch file to mkconfigs for the single line awk version. <div>On 2/1/07, Denis Vlasenko <<a href="mailto:vda.linux@googlemail.com"> vda.linux@googlemail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">On Thursday 01 February 2007 07:26, Brion Finlay wrote: > This seems like it should be a simple question that other people have had > problems with, but I cannot get Busybox to build.  I have tried google-ing > for similar problems, searching the mail archives, and reading the FAQs and > all of the documentation, but I cannot figure out what is going on. > > I am using a fairly fresh install of Ubuntu 6.1, and I have installed enough > of the development packages to build a custom kernel.  (I mention this > because Ubuntu does not preinstall many development packages, so it is > possible I am still missing some, but I have installed quite a few.) > > The GCC version is 4.1.2. > sed is GNU Sed version 4.1.5 > > Here are the compile problems that I get: > > Busybox 1.4.1 > # make defconfig; make > > ... > include/bbconfigopts.h:1088: error: missing terminating " character > (repeated for each line) > include/bbconfigopts.h:1089: error: expected expression before ';' token > make[1]: *** [miscutils/bbconfig.o] Error 1 > make: *** [miscutils] Error 2 gcc 4.1.1, glibc 2.4, gnu sed 4.1.5, bbox 1.4.1: # make defconfig; make   HOSTCC  scripts/basic/fixdep   HOSTCC  scripts/basic/split-include   HOSTCC  scripts/basic/docproc   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/conf.o   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/kxgettext.o   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/mconf.o   SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.c   SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/lex.zconf.c   SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.hash.c   HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.o   HOSTLD  scripts/kconfig/conf scripts/kconfig/conf -d <a href="http://Config.in">Config.in</a> /.local/tmp/busybox-1.4.1/scripts/defconfig:351:warning: trying to assign nonexistent symbol E2FSCK /.local/tmp/busybox- 1.4.1/scripts/defconfig:354:warning: trying to assign nonexistent symbol MKE2FS /.local/tmp/busybox-1.4.1/scripts/defconfig:355:warning: trying to assign nonexistent symbol TUNE2FS /.local/tmp/busybox-1.4.1/scripts/defconfig:356:warning: trying to assign nonexistent symbol E2LABEL /.local/tmp/busybox-1.4.1/scripts/defconfig:357:warning: trying to assign nonexistent symbol FINDFS /.local/tmp/busybox-1.4.1/scripts/defconfig:635:warning: symbol value '' invalid for FEATURE_COMMAND_HISTORY * * Busybox Configuration * * * Busybox Settings * * * General Configuration * See lots more (probably unnecessary) configuration options. (NITPICK) [N/y/?] n Enable options for full-blown desktop systems (DESKTOP) [N/y/?] n ... envdir (ENVDIR) [Y/n/?] y softlimit (SOFTLIMIT) [Y/n/?] y   SPLIT   include/autoconf.h -> include/config/*   GEN     include/bbconfigopts.h   HOSTCC  applets/usage   GEN     include/usage_compressed.h   CC      applets/applets.o   CC      applets/busybox.o ...   CC      util-linux/switch_root.o   CC      util-linux/umount.o   AR      util-linux/lib.a   LINK    busybox_unstripped include/bbconfigopts.h from build tree is attached. -- vda </blockquote></div>