Hello,

I have the following problem. I want to install Slackware on an very old PC, Pentium 133 MHz, 128 Mb RAM, etc. The problem is that the BIOS doesn't support CD booting, and the floppy booting has been corrupted (i get a corrupted CMOS message at start-up). Fortunately, the hard drives is recognized, also the CDROM (but without booting from it, like i said). I have tried to install Slackware on the hard drive (with the huge.s kernel for old PCs) on another system (the hard is 40Gb WD, by the way) and then transfer the hard drive on the old system, but a problem occurs when i start Slackware, i get a message that says something about ata.... error. The only solution i have is to put the Slackware installation image from DVD/CD, on a hard drive partition, and boot it from there. This way i can install Slackware from the hard disk directly on the old PC, and hopefully the problems will disappear.

The question is, how can i make a bootable image of the installation DVD on the hard drive partition? I don't know how to do this.

Anyone can help? Thank you very much, in advance.

Ok, let's see what can we do with this.

In order to have a bootable "CD or DVD" inside of a Hard Drive, you should format it, copy the contents of the CD to the partition and then install a bootloader to the disk. Grub-legacy or LILO should do the trick. After that, ensure that the bootloaders are configured to launch the kernel of your "install".

I have managed to get Knoppix and other Live CD up in this manner, bu you'll need to have some basic familiarity with the bootloaders and understand the booting proecess.

After you have the install CD placed into the partition, you will be able to launch it.

ok, thanks.

please tell me how can i format a partition. I don't know how to do this. ok, i think i know, mkfs.

but i need to know how to set up lilo to load the Slackware installation image and kernels found in the created partition.

This might help.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...cd-rom-633460/

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This is one way to install slack

1. copy initrd.img from slackware/isolinux and bzImage, System.map.gz from slackware/kernels/hugesmp.s to your boot directory
2. edit your boot lilo as follows:
title slackinstall
root (location of your boot directory)
kernel /(location of your boot directory)/bzImage
initrd /(location of your boot directory)/initrd.img
3. reboot and select slackinstall.
4. Before running setup make a two directories let say slack and isolocation. mount you hardrive 40gb hardrive to isolocation and the slackware dvd to the slack directory.
to partition your hard drive run cfdisk /dev/sd? where "?" is the letter of the harddrive you want to partition

5. When setup ask where the install files are at, point to the slackware directory of the mounted dvd, which would be /slack/slackware

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@colorpurple21859

Sorry but i don't understand the points 4 and 5. Let me explain again. I want to put the content of slackware dvd into the 40gb hard drive (one partition), and with the correct mbr setting (lilo, like in the 1,2,3 point you explained), transfer the hard drive to another PC which doesn't have floppy and doesn't boot from CD. This way, hopefully i can access the partition containing the slackware files for install.

Can you please explain again the 4 and 5 points?

when you transfer the 40gb to the other pc I assume you will then boot with lilo the bzimage and initrd.img taken from the iso and /or download mirror. That will bring you up to the same console as if you booted form a cd drive. Then you will have to mount the 4ogb hard drive so as to access the files located on it. IF all you have on the 40gb is the iso file, then the iso file will have to be mounted to a directory to access the intallation files.

I do this all the time but without the hardrive stuff.

I usually do something like this after booting from the DVD on USB or hdd in your case, after logging in as root

(to identify hdd and partitions)

then mount the partition where the DVD is and then mount the DVD

then run setup
skip formatting the partition and when it asks where the media is (DVD) use the "premounted directory" choice and enter
/isolocation/slackware

then the installer should work OK

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@colorpurple21859
so i don't need to mount the slackware cdrom to some directory if i have the isoimage mounted on?
Lets say the iso image (slackwaredvd.iso) is on /dev/sda1 partition. how do i mount it before running setup? Also the boot files (kernel, initrd.img) are at another partition /dev/sda2 lets say (but i think they may be on the same partition).

That's all that i need to do? I don't need mounting the cd containing slackware? (because on the other pc, cd is available, not dvd, but that's another point, i have cds also prepared)

Thank you very much linus72 and colorpurple21859.

I did it like you said and it worked. But there is still a problem, which i have encountered before when tried to install Slack on the modern PC (with huge.s instead of hugesmp.s) and then transfer the hdd to the old PC. I get this message:

ata.301.qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata.301 failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
...
ata.3.00 failed to......

or something like this, and it continues like this forever.

I hope the problem is from the drivers and not from the corrupted BIOS. I noticed that the hdd is refered to as /dev/sda and possibly on the old PC is /dev/hda. So , maybe here is the problem.

On my journey to discover how to do it, i found a USB installer for Slackware at Alien Bob's page: http://connie.slackware.com/~alien/a...slackboot/usb/
I putted the image on the partition:

dd if=usbboot.img of=/dev/sda1

installed lilo on MBR and it succeeded to load it. After that, i remember that i was able to see the hdd both with:

fdisk (cfdisk) /dev/sda

and

fdisk (cfdisk) /dev/hda
but, of course they were reported differently, i mean the partitions. But i'm not very sure of how i managed to see them like this, why was that.

Now i can only see it at /dev/sda. I noticed that the Alien Bob's image is from Slackware 11.0. So i think that maybe it supported the hda, so maybe the kernel version is the issue.

Can you please help? Thank you again.

Did you try and see if the smp kernel will run on the older computer. That may get rid if your error. If not slackware 12.2 may be a better choice for that hardware. About version 13.1 slackware changed the naming of ide drives from hda to sda. That is why the 11.o version shows the drive as hda and 13.37 shows it as sda.

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About the smp kernel, i think i have tried it. Let me explain. Before that, the hdd was on a modern comp, with slackware, which has broken. So i took simply the hdd and tried it on the old comp. It was 13.37. But the same error occurred. Thanks for the response. I'll try to find another version i think. But i don't understand why at the beginning it recognizes the hdd, load the boot images and in the middle of the process, it cracks. If the hdd wouldn't be supported, it wouldn't load anything from it, right? By the way, i remembered something. A similar problem occurred on the modern pc from which i write this message, but very rarely on 13.37 and a little more often on 13.1. But not the same problem, because i think it passes over it if i give it enough time. It is something about ata.6, slow to respond, i think.

Sorry, i have made a mistake. The hugesmp.s kernel doesn't work at all on the old comp, it reports something about an unsupported feature when it starts it.

what is in your /etc/fstab, If you have an entry to mount your cdrom might be causing the problem. This is just a wild guess.

I think you might be right about that, maybe i can mount the cdrom manually before running setup, and this way i get rid of the image loading from hdd. Thanks for the tip with loadlin.

About the error with ata, you said that maybe the 12.2 would work. Before that i have found a ata66smp.i at
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwar...ld/ata66smp.i/
and i hope it will work with it. But i don't know if this bootdisk will work with the 13.37 packages, in the end.