Noobie to Linux! First time installer!

chowda633 · 10-12-2003, 01:47 AM

Well I am a noobie to the linux world and have moved out of "windows land" I have no idea what I am doing with linux lol. But I am very eager to learn!

Hopefully by the time I finish this post I will have slackware installed on my Dell Labtop. I tryed Mandrake and that was a mess! Redhat wouldn't boot because of somthing with not finding the LCD screen. Said 0 monitors found.

Can anyone give me any tips for using Slackware? Any books? Stuff I should read?

Thank you very much!

Doc
(A linux Noob!)

arunshivanandan · 10-12-2003, 01:52 AM

The docs at www.slackware.com are really good.But still,you could have stayed with redhat or mandrake.They are the easiest distros for newbies!!your problem with 0 screens etc could have been solved if you had posted it here.
--arun

chowda633 · 10-12-2003, 02:03 AM

Well problem is I just found this forum about 5 minutes ago. I still have the red hat distro and would like to use it if I can get it working.

Also on the Slackware install I rebooted the system and all it says is GRUB_

And thats it.

Thx,
Doc

arunshivanandan · 10-12-2003, 02:12 AM

did you make a bootable floppy??if yes boot from it,and then post your /boot/grub/grub.conf and the output of 'fdisk -l'.if no,then boot from slack cd 1,type 'linux rescue' to enter rescue mode,then do a 'chroot /mnt/sysimage' and then do the same.(post those files.)
--arun

chowda633 · 10-12-2003, 02:25 AM

Ok typed the linux rescue and it came up with:

VFS: Cannot open root device "" or 03:43
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:43

Thanks for the help,
Doc

chowda633 · 10-12-2003, 02:30 AM

O and didn't make a boot floopy.

arunshivanandan · 10-12-2003, 02:42 AM

I think it is due to a wrn drive specification.boot from your redhat cd,and it will show all your partitions.(at disk druid).make sure which is your root (/) partition(/dev/blahblah).and then reboot from slack 1,then do 'boot:linux rescue root=/dev/blahblah' hope this solves your problem
--arun

asklepios · 10-12-2003, 06:35 AM

do you still have that slackware install or you formatted it?
if you still have it here is what you can do to get it working.
pop in your first slackware CD and on the prompt where you type setup, type

Code:

mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt -t reiserfs

here hdb1=your disk partition where Linux is installed while /mnt is location where you want to mount the partition.
now do

Code:

cd /usr/bin

and then

Code:

pkgtool

.
chose "Setup" and run liloconfig again. that should take away that GRUB_.

shepper · 10-12-2003, 03:02 PM

If you are still using slackware then the install did not clean out the Grub Bootloader from your Redhat install.
Slackware uses the Lilo boot loader instead of Grub.

You have two options both of which involve reinstalling your system.
1) If Slackware then start installation from the cdrom. After log in as root
run "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1" This writes a bunch of zero on the boot record
(also known as zeroing it out). Then run cfdisk and reformat your disk and proceed with the slackware
install

2) Go Back to redhat and install redhat. The "No Screens Found" error is usually a problem with the
XF86Config file which Redhat tries to setup automatically. Redhat is great when you are using
supported hardware but IMHO much harder to trouble shoot when something goes wrong.