Installing Slackware 12 -or another version- with the ISO images, but without burning them!

A new la entry has been added:

Installing Slackware 12 -or another version- with the ISO images, but without burning them!

Now let's get started with the installation! The idea of this

You can also do this without USB and without copying iso files to another directory.

1. Download the iso, dvd, or rsync to a directory as stated.

2. Mount the dvd iso or cd1 iso with the -o loop as indicated also. Then cd to the slackware directory that has all the package directory files. Also mount the partition where you want the slack12 to be installed. In my case it was /dev/sda3. If it is new then don't forget to mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda3 (or xfs or whatever FS you like. Then mkdir /mnt/sda3 and mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3. Now you are ready for the install.

Example cd /mnt/iso/slackware:
root[slackware]# ls
CHECKSUMS.md5 FILE_LIST PACKAGES.TXT a d f kde l t x y
CHECKSUMS.md5.asc MANIFEST.bz2 README.TXT ap e k kdei n tcl xap

3. Run a quick command line script to include all the package directories you want to install. Here I left out kdei.

# for i in a ap d e f k kde l n t tcl x xap y
> do
> installpkg -root /mnt/sda3 $i/*.tgz
> done
This will take a while to install all the packages to target partition mounted as /mnt/sda3.

4. Then mkdir /slack12 and cp -a /mnt/target/boot/* /slack12. This will put a copy of the boot directory for the new install in your current root / directory in slack12 subdirectory.

5. Copy /etc/fstab to /mnt/target/etc and edit it for the new install mount points and devices. You should only have to change where / is mounted and can even use the same home directory if it's a separate mount point.

6. Edit /etc/lilo.conf to add a section for the new target but changing /boot/vmlinuz to /slack12/vmlinuz, and the root device to your target partition.
Example lilo.conf:
boot = /dev/sda
compact
prompt
timeout = 50
lba32
large-memory
vga=791
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda1
label = Slack11
read-only
image = /slack12/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda3
label = Slack12
read-only

7. Then run lilo and you can reboot to your new install.

8. Run pkgtool after logging in as root and select the setup scripts to configure it. Reboot to test.

You can also mount your old root partition and copy over /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow if you want to maintain the same home directory. You may also want to edit some new config files using the old ones as an example. I do NOT recommend mass copy of the etc directory as things have changed in 12.0 from 11.0.

To compare the the new /etc (12.2) with the old /etc(12.1) run:

 
# run in "old" /etc

for f in *; 
do diff "$f" /mnt/slack12.2/etc/"$f" > ~/"$f".diffs 2>&1; 
done

This will also dive into the subdirectories and produce for a report for each one. You can then run a similar script in each subdirectory if you see a need.

Reports are sent to root's home directory, each named with the file name and a suffix "diff".

To delete the zero reports for files that haven't changed, run

find . -size 0b -exec  rm {} \;

against the "diffs" files in roots home directory.

Zero reports for subdirectories unfortunately don't have zero bytes because they write a confirmation that the directories are the same.

Thanks pkzj, that really does make installation even easier. Thanks too to Janux_NET for getting the ball rolling.