Help! Messed up slackware install
 

I am upgrading my RedHat9 to Slackware 9.2 (I think thats the latest one). I backed up my /home/user directory to a windows partiton, and then used parition-magic to erase hda1 and hda3 so they could be used for slack. I installed it ok, and set /dev/hda3 as the primary partition and /dev/hda1 as the place for my home directory. The only problem with in install was when I tried to write the boot loader and it was unable to write it to the Master Boot Record, so now I have to boot from a floppy. Any ideas how to fix that?
I started up for the first time and got dozens of errors about something in /proc and having to do with a file that controls joysticks. I am sorry I csant be more specific, but I had to go to the other side of the house to use the kid's windows pc to type this.
Now that I am booted up, I have no internet, and my sound is off. When I type 'alsamixer' it says the command cannot be found, but I made sure to install alsa. I set the internet to DCHP, which worked with redhat, and I know that it is recognizing my pcmcia modem because the lights come on, but I can not ping anything.

Please please help me with this, I am unable to use the computer right now. Even if I could just get the intenet back working again I might be able to deal with the other stuff, but slackware's lack of configuration tools is really hard for me and I cant seem to do anything with it.
:newbie:
Thank you,
LBB

For the network part open a terminal and type
su
(enter root password)
ifconfig

Can you copy and paste the output

New BIOS'es have some antivirus-function that prevents viruses (but also linux...) writing to the MBR. Try if you can disable that function in the bios, and then install LILO to the MBR again. Hope it helps...

As a result from ifconfig I get:

lo Link encap:Local loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX Packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX Packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:)
RX bytes:1280 (1.2 Kb) TX bytes:1280 (1.2 Kb)

That does not make any sense, because in net config I set it to DCHP, but now this thing is telling me it's loopback. How can I change it?


I checked in the BIOS, but I did not see anything about it. I dont tink it is the problem, as I am pretty sure that I had the boot loader installed in the MBR with RedHat. The only thing I changed from that last install was to convert /dev/hda1 (the primary drive) from fat32 to ext3.

Thank you to both of you

Your ethernet card has not been setup yet. Go to /etc/modules.conf and remove the # from the line that has the driver for your nic.

If you don't know what type of nic you have run lspci from the terminal as root. Once you have the nic working then you need to run netconfig from the terminal.

Strange. What error message did you get when you tried to install linux?

If you only have tried to install it from the installation, try to run /sbin/lilo (as root). This will install lilo.

Alsa is divided in multiple packages. You probably only installed alsa-driver and alsa-libs. Alsamixer is included in a package called alsa-utils. You can download it from www.alsa-project.org

BTW the loopback device is just a virtual device. If the network works, you will also see an eth0 device.

/etc/modules.conf is blank. The file is empty, 0 bytes. I can reinstal slack if you think it would fix these problems.


I ran /sbin/lilo, and got the following:

Fatal: Partitions enrty not found.

Thats all it does. I dont remember what the error was specifically, but it was not very detailed and just said that it was unable to write to the MBR and that I would have to use a boot disk.
Thanks for the suggestions

sorry I miss led you. Should be /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

I found this from http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~mibe...d4hnode74.html

Are you trying to boot from a logical partition?

No problem. I went in and uncommented the first network card, as I could not figure out what mine was, and lspci had nothing I could understand. I am using a PCMCIA network card (Linksys NP100), so I think that lspci was just telling me about my card port and not the card, it reads:

00:02.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1450 (rev 03)

On boot I got a message, something like "You dont have a ###### card!!" where the # signs are some number that I couldnt remember. Any idea where I can get the boot log in slackware? I checked in /var/log, but I didnt see a 'bootlog'.
I did not see any mention of PCMCIA network cards in rc.modules, but I am pretty sure mine is working. The laptop does a system beep when I take it out or put it in, and the green lights on my network status indicator come on.


I just rebooted to partition magic, and it says that both my linux partitions (/dev/hda3 and /dev/hda1) are primary. The only change I have now from when this worked was that I changed /dev/hda1 from windows to linux, but it is still primary and I would think I should still work. Is it possible that having two primary drives is causing this problem?

Did you run fdisk or cfdisk during the slackware install? If you did run one of those ( I usually use cfdisk) did you make the root partition bootable? Also, try running the command "netconfig" as root to setup your network card. Another thing to wath for is, during lilo section of the slackware install, make sure you add /dev/xxx as active partiton to install lilo onto. In your case the xxx would be hda3. Yet another thing to try is to zero out you MBR, enter the following as root "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1" after that pop in your slackware cd and run setup again and skip to configure linux system (something like that I cant remember exactly what the menu entry is but it's close) this should take you back through some config stuff as well as installing lilo.

This is just your PCMCIA bus, lspci is really the easiest and *should* tell you something about your card. It sounds like the install had some major problems. If you cannot get the network card to work, I would suggest removing the partitions, and thoroughly checking your BIOS for options pertaining to MBR virus checking, plug and play, etc... I have had my BIOS setup to where the slackware install wouldn't even get past 5 minutes without major errors. If all else fails do a FULL install when prompted. That way you should never be missing alsamixer, or anything like that. Should be included with Slackware 9.1 (latest). Good luck!

Sounds like I need to do a reinstall. I will try that today using all of your suggestions and this time I'll make sure to take notes on any errors that come up. Wish me luck :)

I ran that line (dd if=/dev/zero..), and tried to install again. What the hell did it do? My partition table is completely erased! and now I can't start the install because it requires at least one partition to be designated as linux. I dont want to create a new partition table, because I am afraid it will make me lose all my old data which is being stored on another partition. Did you just erase my hard drive?

for the boot messages you can look in /var/log/messages or syslog Also you can check your partition and make sure it's toggled as bootable (with fdisk or cfdisk)

also you could try fdisk /mbr to rewrite your mbr