Help: installing Slackware without CD or USB
 

[friendlygreeting]
First of all, hello and may I say what a nice forum you have here. Given how difficult learning Linux has been, it seems like I'll be hanging out here a lot. I decided to start with Slackware because I want to really understand the system... or because I'm a masochist.
[/friendlygreeting]

Anyway, I got a Panasonic CF-29 toughbook, which ships with windows XP and I honestly have no idea how to install slackware because there's no CD drive and the BIOS doesn't have an option to boot from USB. The additional complication is that every other system I own runs Windows. I've figured out that I have to make a boot and install disk (though I'm not really sure how to make them or what to do with them once I have them).

So the immediate question for me is "Which image file do I put on the boot disk?"

Post removed.

The last version of Slackware which had floppy images was 11.0. Fortunately, you can still download it. It is on many of the mirror sites.

Perhaps you can use the floppy images from 11.0 to 'bootstrap' an installation of a later version from the Windows partition?

Could I use a couple floppies to do a basic install, then download the rest from the internet?

EDIT: a network boot would be cool, but I'd need another working Linux system to set up the server, unfortunately.

The plan:

1) You must to disassemble the laptop,
2) extract the hard drive,
3) connect the hard drive to another computer
4) install on it Slackware
5) return the drive to a laptop
6) collect the notebook


look to youtube "disassemble cf-29"

To learn Slackware (or any other Linux distribution), I would recommend learning the basics first and obtain a simple surplus computer with a CD/DVD drive. Many more members of this forum would be able to help you if your computer was similar to the computers used by the forum members.

(I've been entertaining myself by imagining what hitest wrote and then decided to delete. :) )

My approach would be to do a network install. Details are in README_PXE.TXT in the usb-and-pxe-installers directory of your favourite Slackware mirror.

If your laptop does not have PXE boot support in the NIC ROM then you could try a gPXE boot floppy. http://etherboot.org/wiki/removable

You will need a PXE server on a Windows machine. e.g. http://superuser.com/questions/57013...xe-boot-server.

With the specs of that laptop, I would suggest using something apart from the default KDE GUI desktop. KDE would be slooowww!

I would consider this as challenging, but doable.

I would either download the boot floppy from Slackware 11 and go from there or follow this to get a floppy which will then allow you to boot from usb.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16822...-wont-let-you/

Brilliant!

Hi

You do not need another Linux computer for a Slackware PXE installation.

If you have another computer and it has a DVD drive, or else it is able to boot from USB, then you can boot the Slackware installer on THAT computer.

If you run "pxesetup" instead of "setup" at the installation prompt, then the installer will ask a few simple questions and then start a PXE server on that computer which will let you install Slackware over the network on that DVD-less computer of yours. Try it, it's really simple.

See http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:pxe_install for all the information and screenshots (originally written as http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/out-...ackware-13-37/).

Eric

This is strange. I have a Panasonic CF-T4 Toughbook with even lower specs than yours (Pentium M, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB disk), and I installed Slackware 14.0 on it using a USB disk. What you can try:

1. Insert the USB boot disk
2. Start the PC and enter the BIOS
3. Enable the inserted disk to boot
4. Save BIOS settings and boot on USB

If you don't know how to create a bootable USB disk, here's a mini-HOWTO:

http://www.microlinux.fr/howtos/USB-Install-HOWTO.txt

Cheers,

Niki

Double post, sorry.

Haven't tried it, but I think it should be possible to start with installing Slackware 11 and then upgrade. This way you wouldn't need to set up another Linux system.

@all: Is it possible to upgrade from Slackware 11 to Slackware 14 skipping all the releases in between? Personally I think it is, but others may have more experience.

Other option: Instead of setting up another Linux system you might just download an iso image to the hard disk of one of your other systems and then boot a live system from CD on that system. Again, I am not sure, but it should be possible to enable PXE boot this way.

@all: Please correct me, if I am wrong, I have never used PXE in my life...

gargamel

Theoretically yes, practically it isn't worth the hassle.

@amenos42: go with Alien Bob's suggestion of PXE booting from another machine. That's by far the simplest way to install in your case.

All the installation methods posted here are great, but, I have to agree with suggestion in post #5 as your hdd has a door on the side for removal.
I would just purchase a usb enlosure slap the drive in the enclosure.
Plug in to another computer & install from there.
Another option would be to install an OS using wubi-installer which will work in winsxp.

+1 for latest post (EDDY1).
I do it that way all the time - infact you can buy a ide/sata->usb converter for 20 bucks or so, remove the diskdrive and plug it into the converter and take the whole garbunkle to a machine with dvd and usb ... eeezy

Update:

I spent the afternoon working on setting up a floppy boot. Didn't turn out too well, as the disks seem to be too corrupted to mount. I got the partitions right, however (decided to erase XP as I only have 40 GB), so I don't imagine it'll be TOO much more work unless the CF29 is not PXE capable.

I don't understand why you would need a floppy boot to boot through PXE. Don't you have another computer at hand with either a CD drive or an USB slot and a network card?

If yes you'll just have to link the two computers with a wire.

The target Panasonic CF-29 toughbook needs to boot and to connect to the PXE server. Older hardware often has a network card, but no BIOS support for PXE boot (there may be an option ROM slot on the network card, but the ROM is not present). This is where gPXE comes in. It boots the hardware, initialises the network card and connects to the PXE server so that the Slackware installer kernel can be downloaded.

Much easier to use gpxe/ipxe on funky old pxe or non-pxe boot nic.

A gpxe/ipxe can boot to almost unlimited sources.

Shame you can't run Zipslack anymore.

Might look into seeing if you could take a wubi install of slack and move it.

Okay, so thank you guys very much for all of your help so far. I've made a little bit of progress. Managed to get the CF29 to boot off of some floppies just so I can poke around the OS a little. I learned CD and LS! It's not turning out to be useful in terms of actually installing the OS because the disks are a little corrupted. So I've decided to go the net boot route.

The problem is this: I can't make a boot usb! I tried downloading a program to do it for me, using a usb disk and a install dvd .iso, but my other computer wasn't able to boot from it. So how do you guys go about making your boot usbs? Keep in mind that I have to do this from windows.

(P.S. Maybe this was the wrong thing to do, but I used fdisk to partition the usb so there's one partition for booting and one partition for data storage. Or course, windows can only see the first one. No idea why.)

I use README_USB.TXT.

In that case you might want to use a program like Rawrite32 to do the transferring the usbboot.img file to a USB device, instead of 'dd'.

I don't see any reason why you make it so complicated. The first thing to try is to look if the laptop can in fact do a PXE boot. You should have an option in your BIOS for that. If it is possible you have nothing more to do then to set PXE as first boot device, connect it to your main machine via Ethernet cable, boot your main machine from the Slackware DVD (or a USB device with the Slackware installer) and follow the advice from AlienBob in post #10.
Actually, I would really be surprised if this machine would not be able to do a PXE boot.

I wonder if it's worth installing Slackware on a such an old device. You would be better off with Puppy or Slax.

Slackware should run just fine on older devices like this, no need for such a limited distro as Puppy.

Here's the problem... Rawwrite is designed to floppies. I run RawWrite 0.7 for windows and it says "no floppies detected." It doesn't give me the option to write to a USB drive. I think that means I have to use dd, which is a little more dangerous and probably not as easy to use. What kind of syntax do I use?

I imagine it might look like this, but I'm not sure...

dd if=C:/...slackwareDVD.iso of=E:/

Does that look right? Will that be bootable?

perhaps, but if i'm not mistaken you really shouldn't have to use DD to create a bootable USB, something like unetbootin should work fine, since a bootable usb is usually a squashfs volume sitting on a vfat partition, or something of that nature, so really it's just a matter of copying the files, making the disk bootable with fdisk, then installing syslinux into the device's boot sector.

I have downloaded the reference manual for the Panasonic CF-29 series. There is a BIOS boot option for PCI LAN (see attached image). The BIOS Setup Utility is accessed by using F2.
If you change this to be be the first boot device, you will likely enable PXE boot.
Do as TobiSGD and AlienBob have already described in posts #24 and #10.
1. Connect the CF-29 to another computer that can boot the Slackware install media with a crossover ethernet cable.
2. Boot the other computer so that it becomes a PXE server.
3. Boot the CF-29.
4. Conduct the installation.

You can use the Win32 Disk Imager to write the image file to an USB device: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
Windows does not have the dd program, so using that won't work.

Please look at the excerpt from the reference manual that I posted in #29.
i.e. Only a USB floppy device can be used for booting. No other USB devices are supported.

I successfully navigated the BIOS of the CF-29 and I have the net boot option at the top of the boot order. The part that's been giving me trouble is creating the boot disk.

I just read up a little bit on SYSLINUX. I understand I've got to place a bootable kernel on my USB formatted as a FAT filesystem (FAT32 in this case) then run syslinux from DOS.

This is what I plan to run:

syslinux -a -d c:\...\syslinux-5.10\win32\syslinux.exe f:

with f: being my removable USB drive. Am I doing it right?

And another question. When I copy the kernel (hugesmp.s) onto the disk, should I copy bzImage, config, and System.map.gz into f:/ or f:/hugesmp.s ? Does it matter? Does SYSLINUX automatically detect kernels?

Thanks so much for your help so far. It's true what they say about slackware. I'm learning a lot about how Unix works, and it's really exciting.

as long as the partition is flagged as bootable with fdisk, it should work. and yes, you should copy those files, the bzimage is actually the kernel

You do not need a boot disk, if:
(1) You have another computer at hand.
(2) This other computer can boot from a CD/DVD or an USB key.
(2) You link the two computers with an Ethernet wire (with a RJ45 connector at each end).

If these conditions are met, just boot the second computer with an bootable USB key (Slackware installer) or a Slackware DVD, then run 'pxesetup' instead of 'setup' after booting and follow instructions. Of course you will have to link the computers with the Ethernet wire and, once th PXE server is up and running (in memory, so it will install nothing on the hard disk) on the second computer, just switch on the CF-29 and you should see Slackware installer's greeting screen appearing on it.

PS I just saw that allen already told that in post #29, sorry.

Anyway...

@amenos : do you have another computer at hand to do a PXE boot? If yes, please just do it.

I just finished making the boot USB, which I figure is a form of boot disk. I wasn't talking about a floppy. I'm working on the PXE thing now.

Out of curiosity... is it possible to do this using wireless, without an ethernet cable? I have a cable and I'm going to use it, but some time in the future I might not.

PXE only works with wired connections, AFAIK.

Okay, well the USB is working. However, I'm having a problem identifying the source for pxesetup. On Windows I see f:/kernels and f:/slackware (which contains the packages) and I assume this is what the installer wants. But if I give it "f:" or "/dev/sda" or "/dev/sda1" it doesn't work. In fact, I took a look in /dev and it doesn't even have /sda or anything. What's going on here?

Using a USB will not work. The BIOS on the CF-29 does not support booting from USB.

If you do want to install Slackware on the CF-29, review posts #34, #29, #24 and #10 (together with the links therein).

If you want to keep playing with boot images, feel free, but it will not achieve the aim of installing Slackware on the CF-29.

I'm using the USB disk to boot the other computer.

Before runnng 'pxesetup', or when it asks for the source, fire up another console with ALt+F2 then just press [Enter] to log in as root (no password needed).

Then type The drive which is called f: on Windows should be called /dev/sd<something> on Linux. You should be able to find out which it is considering its size. To check what it contains (let's call that partition /dev/sdx for now), type this:If it is not the good one, just type: and redo that with another one, till you find the good one.

If you don't succeed, it would help to report here the output of 'cat /proc/partitions'.

After having found the good partition go back th the first console with Alt+F1. If it is mounted choose the relevant menu entry 'from a pre mounted partition', else choose 'from a hard disk directory' as source and type what you have found.

Good news and bad news. The good news is that the install was successful. It couldn't find the kernels in /windows even though they were visible with ls. No idea why, but I just gave it /dev/sdb1 instead (which is where the USB turned out to be).

The bad news is this: two errors.

1) LILO couldn't install because "cannot open: /etc/lilo.conf" It told me to edit that file and install LILO manually. I think maybe it would actually be better to use a different bootloader?

2) I couldn't set a password for ROOT because "cannot lock /etc/shadow/" and it told me to "try again later" which didn't sound convincing.

Hi, flashing the BIOS might help - for USB or connecting en external DVD.
ref Post 10 - the description of PXE installation is very detailed and good, I read it today.
Is it possible to use dd if= of= on a second HDD to copy the .iso in analogy to Unetbootin ?

Not with the ISO, but with the USB boot image that should work.

So the install has been successful, but I wasn't able to install LILO for some reason. This means I have a full Slackware install (I think) but I'm not able to boot except with PXE. I decided to install GRUB, which was among the things on the USB. There's a file in /extras/grub with a .txz extension, and I'm not able to open it with tar. I found a help thread elsewhere suggesting but tar tells me it doesn't understand -J. It would help if I knew how to scroll up when I get a message longer than the screen. >.> Even if I were able to unzip that file, I don't really know how to run a script.

Anyway, I decided to use pkgtool instead, which told me I had to mount my root partition at /mnt, but when I did that and ran pkgtool it returned a page full of blank lines and gave me the prompt as if nothing had changed.

TL;DR What do you do with .txz archives?

Those are Slackware packages, you can install them with installpkg. Do do that from the install system (booted over PXE) mount your /-partition to /mnt, then run

If you aren't able to install THE DEFAULT SLACKWARE BOOTLOADER, then you don't have a full install.

Actually yes, you have. That Lilo is not installed to the MBR does not mean that the Lilo package isn't installed, you have the same number of packages, so it is a full install.

Then why is the OP unable to install lilo?

Probably a problem with the configuration? Without more information we can only guess.

I thought it might help to expand the size of the partition. I adjusted the partition to which I targeted /root to be 10000M (this for an install that claims to require 7.8G). I don't know what the sizes of LILO and GRUB are, but it didn't turn out to matter since the entire install process was stopped short by a segfault. I don't actually know what a segmentation fault is, and I certainly don't know how to solve it. Might it mean there's not enough free space?

Does the installer overwrite whatever might be on the target partition, or does it try and use only empty space? Does this mean I should check for bad blocks next time? Delete everything on the device?