I have a machine that can only boot from the HD or the floppy. I can copy files to it through various means but I cannot boot from a CD, USB Drive, or the network card. I need to know if Zipslack has been updated to 12 before I waste my time downloading it to try to do a HD setup. I'm on dial-up.

Use the Forum search function as we just discussed this a few days ago.

I dont see it in the tree for 12.... im getting that it may have been replaced by "usb-and-pxe-installers"

It is however, present in 11

If I heard it right, there will/should not be ZipSlack12, because it's meant to be installed on a DOS partition, and the new kernel 2.6 used in Slack doesn't do that. Something like that. There are more precise pieces of information on other threads, please search.

EDIT: one way that you could try is install ZipSlack11 and try to upgrade the needed software to the versions of Slack12.

I should have thought of using the dist-upgrade route from 11. It seems so obvious. See, the main thing is that I can't make a bootable CD of 12, but I DO have a bootable CD of 11, so I guess I'll just throw on 11 and go to 12 from the HD. I'll remember to search the forums next time, too. It's kind of good to know other people have the same idea, but I wonder if it's a good idea.

Sure it's a good idea! The thing is that kernel-2.6 does not support the umsdos file system. But once you have migrated your zipslack installation to a parttion with a regular linux file system like reiserfs or ext2 you can upgrade all you want and use the new kernels.

Over the years zipslack has gotten a lot of undeserved bad press. I use to always start my installations with zipslack. Now I just install from my running system after making a slight change to the doinst.sh for glibc which makes this possible.

A Smart Boot Manager floppy will allow you to boot from your CD-ROM even when your BIOS doesn't support it. It's also on the Slackware 12 distribution media.

If you DO install 11 first and then upgrade, make sure you follow the directions in the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT file. Just doing a dist-upgrade with slapt get or the like, or in any other way not following thoes instructions, WILL break your system.


ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.slac..._AND_HINTS.TXT


On that thought, two other ideas for you
Do you know WHY it wont boot to cd? Mabey there is a way around that.
If your on dialup, do you have a friend or a library where you can download .iso's and burn them?

Hi, guys! First, thanks to everybody. I got 12 installed by:
1. Switching CD drives and booting from there.
2. Installing Slackware 11 - just the "a" series.
3. Using the most of instructions in UPGRADE.TXT.
4. Installing everything else using the "install-packages" scripts.

I used a kind of ugly hack on my /etc/groups file to get hal working, and I built a smaller, non-smp 2.6.21.5 kernel which seems to be fine even though I'm not using an initrd. Overall, I'd say it worked pretty well. The network's up, sound is working, and X was a breeze. I'm using XFCE and I was pleasantly surprised by its progress. I haven't tried KDE yet but I'm sure I'll like it. Now, I just have to figure out why my Nvidia drivers don't want to compile. I already like 12 better than I did 11. I tried 11 and went straight back to 10.2, but I think I'll probably stick with 12.

what errors are the nvidia drivers giving you?



do you have all of the packages from the development series installed? (compilers and stuff)

Is the kernel source saved in the same place slackware puts it, or in your home directory (since you compiled your own)?

kernel headers in place?

I just needed to get the new nvidia drivers and everything was great. KDE was a little too much for this old P3 550, but XFCE is cool. I even upgraded the kernel to 2.6.22. I can't wait for the new scheduler in 2.6.23.