I reinstalled it... again. Still not working.

The thing I don't understand is why the Mandrake thing keeps coming up when I start my computer. I (think I) have formatted the three partitions (in the setup).
One partition on my first harddrive (hda), two on my second (hdb), that's one for / and one for /home. I didnt choose where to mount(?) the partition on hda but it does format it anyway, doesn't it?
And there are two swap partitions (that's what they were called right?), one on hda and one on hdb. Those also get formatted when I choose to use them in setup.

So where is this Mandrake thing saved? I'm thinking maybe everything would work if I could just delete everything on the partitions.

Another question. The partition that Linux uses on hda, I don't want it. I typed in cfdisk and deleted everything on it and was going to choose "write" too. But then I got a warning that I might lose data or something. Is it safe to do it? Is that even the correct way of getting rid of the partition?

-----edit-----

I now read that "write" saves the changes and exits cfdisk. I thought the changes were automatically saved.

Does d delete the entire partition or just what's on it? I thought it was the latter but now I think it's the entire partition that's deleted.

Once again I reinstalled it. This time I deleted the partition (and the swap partition) on hda thinking that there might be little pieces of Mandrake there but still I have the same problem.

It says that it formats the partitions that I install Slackware on, so why does the Mandrake thing keep coming up?

post your /etc/lilo.conf ...

I'm don't know what that is. How do I find out?

boot using a bootdisk

cat /etc/lilo.conf

then paste whats in there

Got to the Slackware login.
Logged in as root.
Typed cat /etc/lilo.conf and then it said "No such file or directory".

When installing Lilo I chose simple install.
I don't remember where I chose to install it but it wasn't floppy and it wasn't Master Boot Record. Which leaves only one left.

Mandrakes boot-loader sits in the MBR.
To get rid of it, install LILO to MBR

Cheers,
Tink

Ah, thanks a lot. It worked. Now the only problem is that when I come to the darkstar login my keyboard doesn't seem to be working. I can't type anything at all.
Any ideas on what could be wrong?

what kind of keyboard do you have? usb? or ps/2?

ps/2.

hehe

indeed, the "hd.." shouldn't be taken literally. it's something like /dev/hda1, or /dev/hda3, or even /dev/hdb1 it it's stored on the second disk.

a = master on primary ide
b = slave on primary ide
c = master on secondary ide
d = slave on secondary ide

and the number is the partition number.



Mount shouldn't return "with some message". A basic UNIX rule is, only tell something if you have something to say. commands line cp (copy) will never tell you they've copied the file. It's pointless. However, if the operation failed, they will give you an error message.

and the other commands only work the others worked too

Here is what the commands are supposed to do:

- mount -t ext2 /dev/hd.. /disk
"mounts" the drive as a certain folder. the UNIX file hierarchy is one large tree where all devices are attached to. When I insert+mount a cd-rom drive, it's file system will be attached to /mnt/cdrom. The mount command I gave you attaches your root-partition to the /disk, and you should put a space between /dev/hd.. and /disk The -t ext2 specifies the file system type. I assumed it was ext2 (or ext3), since this is the default file system used by linux machines. perhaps you've used "reiserfs" as file system.

- chroot /disk
runs a command with a different folder as file system root (in this case, a new shell)
In other words, /disk becomes your root, and when read /etc/lilo.conf, you're actually reading /disk/etc/lilo.conf. You need this command to make lilo work.

- lilo
just typing lilo causes the lilo-bootloader to reinstall itself. Again, you're actually running /disk/sbin/lilo

- exit
quits the shell, and you're returned to the original shell where you'd logged into. (and your root folder is also restored)

hope this helps.

I already got Lilo to work by installing it in the master boot record.
I get to choose between DOS and Linux.
The problem is that I can't trype anything when I get to the darkstar login.
I've tried typing my password, "root", "root password" (where "password" is my password), but nothing works and since there's no text showing when I type I don't even know if my keyboard is working when I get there.

just type "root", an enter, and the password, and enter again.

Indeed the password isn't shown.
and if your password is incorrect, you'll get the login screen again.

once you're in the terminal, you can configure your system, or type "startx" to start the X/KDE environment

I reinstalled everything and this time I wrote up everything I did in the installation and with cfdisk before setup so that maybe someone would see what I was doing wrong.
But this time it worked and I could type when I got to the darkstar login. I don't know what I did to make it work, the only difference was that I chose ext3 instead of reiserfs (at least that's all I think I did different), but now everything seems to work alright.

Thanks a lot to everyone who helped me!