To build a new Erlware Faxien bootstrap for your Unix or Unix like OS (Linux, OSX, BSD, etc...) you must first obtain the boostrap package. To do this you may either download it from this site and untar it or run

git clone git://github.com/erlware/bootstrap.git

Once you have the boostrap builder cd into the newly created bootstrap directory and run ls. You should see a file called create_bootstrap.sh

Now either install or make sure you have installed Erlang from source on your local machine. It is usually installed in /usr/local/lib/erlang. Be sure to use the following options when configuring erlang

./configure --enable-kernel-poll --enable-smp-support --disable-sctp

When building for OSX snow leopard or later use this

./configure --enable-kernel-poll --enable-threads --enable-smp-support
--with-ssl=/opt/local --enable-m64-build --enable-darwin-64bit
--build=i686-apple-darwin10

Once you have verified that you have Erlang installed it is time to create the bootstrap package. This is done either interactively by running the create_bootstrap.sh script with no arguments or with an invocation similar to the following:

./create_bootstrap.sh [path-to-erts]

for example on Mac OSX Leopard running on an Intel machine.

./create_bootstrap.sh /usr/local/lib/erlang/erts-5.5.5

Be sure that you are not adding in erlang/lib/erts-Vsn which is an application named erts but not actually the run time system. The above invocation will create a file named: faxien-bootstrap-i386-Darwin-9.1.0-V4.sh where V4 is the version of the bootstrap creator.

That file can be used to bootstrap Erlware Faxien on your system.