I've been using Slackware since version 9.something. This blog is as more my effort to document what I have done with the distro as it is to tell anyone else about what I've done. But it might be helpful to someone.

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Minimal Slackware Installation

Posted 04-28-2009 at 10:02 PM by TSquaredF

A while back, I was using a live CD, Slax Frodo, which presented a minimal command line interface, for a "recovery disk" whenever I would mess up my primary partition. My wife would say that I do this regularly & on purpose. Well, I don't do it on purpose, but it does happen semi-regularly. I finally decided to take the list of packages in Frodo and load that list from my local Slackware tree. I think Slackware was at ver 10.1 at the time. I made a 1G partition & installed the package list into it. After tweaking the package list, I had a good "recovery partition" to use; didn't have to dig for the CD when I blew things up.
Things went well until I had upgraded the installation a couple of times. I kinda wanted to use some of the new features (udev, hal, etc), but wasn't sure exactly which new packages to add. Matter of fact, I didn't upgrade to ver. 12 at all.
Then a few weeks ago I saw this post. As samac says in the thread, not much can be done with the original package list. These are my notes on what I wanted to do with the partition & the packages I had to add to get there.
Started with the following packages, a slightly modified list from samacs post, in a Sun Virtual Box environment.

Code:

aaa_base-12.2.0-noarch-1
aaa_elflibs-12.2.0-i486-1
aaa_terminfo-5.6-noarch-1
bash-3.1.017-i486-2
bin-11.1-i486-1
binutils-2.18.50.0.9-i486-1
bzip2-1.0.5-i486-1
coreutils-6.12-i486-1
devs-2.3.1-noarch-25
dhcpcd-2.0.8-i486-1
dialog-1.1_20070930-i486-1
diffutils-2.8.1
e2fsprogs-1.41.3-i486-1
etc-12.2-noarch-1
findutils-4.2.31-i486-1
gawk-3.1.6-i486-1
gcc-4.2.4-i486-1
gcc-g++-4.2.4-i486-1
getty-ps-2.1.0b-i486-1
glibc-2.7-i486-17
glibc-solibs-2.7-i486-17
gnupg-1.4.9-i486-1
grep-2.5.3-i486-1
grub-0.97-i486-6
gzip-1.3.12-i486-1
kbd-1.12-i486-2
kernel-generic-smp-2.6.27.7_smp-i686-1
kernel-headers-2.6.27.7_smp-x86-1
kernel-huge-smp-2.6.27.7_smp-i686-1
kernel-modules-smp-2.6.27.7_smp-i686-1
lftp-3.7.4-i486-1
make-3.81-i486-1
mc-4.61_20070623p14-i486
module-init-tools-3.5-i486-1
net-tools-1.60-i486-2
network-scripts-12.2-noarch-4
openssl-solibs-0.9.8i-i486-2_slack12.2
pkgtools-12.1.0-noarch-7
procps-3.2.7-i486-2
rsync-3.0.4-i486-1
sbopkg-0.26.2-noarch-1_cng
sed-4.1.5-i486-1
shadow-4.0.3-i486-15
sysvinit-2.86-i486-6
sysvinit-scripts-1.2-noarch-26
tar-1.16.1-i486-1
udev-135-i486-2
util-linux-ng-2.14.1-i486-1
wget-1.11.4-i486-1
which-2.16-i486-1

==================================================================

Did not like what should be log entries showing up in the terminal. Added:

Code:

logrotate-3.7.4-i486-1
sysklogd-1.4.1-i486-10

to fix this. I probably don't need logrotate, but it isn't very big, so WTH. I could then plug in a USB key & there was no verbosity at all. [Current size: 620M]

==================================================================

Next, wanted to add capability of working with NTFS volumes, so added:

Code:

fuse-2.7.4-i486-2.tgz
ntfs-3g-1.5130-i486-1.tgz
ntfsprogs-2.0.0-i486-2.tgz

Again, probably didn't need ntfsprogs, but disk space is cheap, right? [Current size: 622M]

==================================================================

Wanted to be able to use the rodent. Added:

Code:

gpm-1.20.1-i486-5

& ran pkgtool -> Setup -> mouse to create /etc/rc.d/rc.gpm. [Current size: 623M]

==================================================================

Need to be an nfs client/server. Added:

Code:

network-scripts-12.2-noarch-4
nfs-utils-1.1.4-i486-1
portmap-6.0-i486-1

Ran "chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.rpc" & added the server info to /etc/hosts. Can now at least connect to nfs shares on my network server. [Current size: 624M]

==================================================================

The next project is to install pmount.
Errors in the pmount configure process led me to install:

Code:

intltool-0.40.5-i486-1
perl-5.10.0-i486-1
gettext-tools-0.17-i486-1

The above caused pmount to build & make OK, but pmount-hal was not present. Installed:

Code:

pkg-config-0.23-i486-2
hal-0.5.11-i486-3
hal-info-20081127-noarch-1

Still no pmount-hal. Added:

Code:

dbus-1.2.6-i486-1
dbus-glib-0.70-i486-1

& pmount finally built, installed & worked properly.

==================================================================

Wanted to use sbopkg to install pmount, but got warnings

Quote:

clear: command not found
tput: command not found

on closing sbopkg. Installed:

Code:

ncurses-5.6-i486-3

to keep from getting those warnings. [Current size: 698M]

==================================================================

Added:

Code:

less-418-i486-1

for ability to scroll through files.

==================================================================

Time to put in ivman. Per the README:

Quote:

Ivman depends on glib, libxml2, dbus, and hal.

I added:

Code:

glib-1.2.19-i486-1
glib2-2.16.6-i486-2_slack12.2
libxml2-2.6.32-i486-2

& ivman successfully configured, via sbopkg. BUT, it would not make. The error was:

Quote:

/usr/lib/gcc/i486-slackware-linux/4.2.4/../../../../i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lz.

Operating on a hunch (from "lz"), added:

Code:

gzip-1.3.12-i486-1

The ivman package built & installed OK, but would not run in the minimal environment. In my desktop environment, the same package worked perfectly. Figuring that I was missing a library of some kind, I added all of the libraries from the "l series". ivman then detected a USB key & mounted it with pmount. This took no other work to ivman, just adding the libraries. Then I started removing groups of library packages a few at a time & checking whether ivman worked after each group was removed. ivman finally quit after one of the deletions, I put that group back in, checked that ivman worked again (it did) & began deleting the ones after that group. I finally had just that group (about 10 packages) & began deleting them one at a time. The necessary package turned out to be:

Code:

parted-1.8.8-i486-2

& ivman would then mount USB keys & CDs/DVDs automagically. I have no clue why this works, I can find no reference to parted as a runtime dependency for ivman, but ivman will not do its thing without parted being installed.

==================================================================

Wanted to "slocate" a file. Added:

Code:

slocate-3.1-i486-1

[Current size: 732M]

==================================================================

Got tired of not being able to read man pages. Added:

Code:

groff-1.19.2-i486-1
man-1.6f-i486-1
man-pages-3.15-noarch-1

==================================================================

Wanted to be a Samba server, added:

Code:

samba-3.2.7-i486-1_slack12.2

& copied in my smb.conf file.
Received the following errors when running

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.samba

Quote:

/usr/sbin/smbd: error while loading shared libraries: libldap-2.3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

/usr/sbin/nmbd: error while loading shared libraries: libcap.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Added:

Code:

openldap-client-2.3.43-i486-1
libcap-2.14-i486-1

On loading rc.samba, got:

Quote:

/usr/sbin/[sn]mbd: error while loading shared libraries: libsasl2.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Added:

Code:

cyrus-sasl-2.1.22-i486-1

& then samba loaded properly.

==================================================================

At this point I made a set of tagfiles for the installation, using Alien Bob's tagfile generator. Ran a fresh install in my recovery partition. I then added sbopkg and the other non-Slackware packages listed above. The last package I added was:

Code:

terminus-font-4.28-noarch-1_SBo

I don't usually use a custom font, but I like terminus. I moved "/etc/rc.d/rc.font.new" to "/etc/rc.d/rc.font" & modified it to:

Code:

setfont -v ter-116f

[Current size: 778M]

==================================================================

I still want to add software to add a (CUPS) print server & a (SANE) scanner server to this mix, but those can wait a while.
TSQuaredF, Bill Kirkpatrick

Minimal Slackware Installation

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