Hi all,

I'm excited for Slackware 15, and I'm looking to try a few things that are brand new to me even though I've been running Slackware since the day after version 11 was released.

A brief bit of background: I haven't run Slackware on an actual computer since I bought a new desktop computer a few years ago that came with Windows 10. I didn't want to deal with dual booting and the secure boot stuff, so I have been using Slackware in VirtualBox. It runs fine, I like it, and I can do everything with it that I was doing on a real computer before.

However, with Slackware 15 out, I'd like to try running it on bare metal again. I have an older HP laptop with plenty of hard drive space already partitioned and running Ubuntu/Xubuntu (don't laugh, it runs fine and my wife and kids like it as a spare computer).

My plan is to download the Slackware64-15 iso file and mount it from Grub. Then install Slackware on its own partition. I may have the two installations share the /home directory, but I may not. This post isn't really about partitioning.

Assuming that I learn how to boot to a Grub command prompt and mount the Slackware ISO, I have a few questions:

1. Does Grub boot slackware directly, or do I need to chainload lilo?
2. Will Grub see both the huge kernel and the initrd?
3. How do I update Grub after a kernel update?

Thank you,

-Drew

I would use four partitions: swap, /home, Slackware, Ubuntu. I did this using Debian instead of Ubuntu. I installed Slackware first using the default lilo. Then when I installed Debian, it found and added the Slackware installation to its grub boot loader. After that, grub was used for both installations.

In Debian, or probably in Ubuntu, then you can edit /etc/default/grub for startup order: GRUB_DEFAULT=0 Debian, Slackware=2

Finally, run 'su - update-grub' and reboot

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'update-grub' is available in Debian (/sbin/update-grub), but not in Slackware, at least on my box. The corresponding command is:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

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I'm looking to do it the other way, since Ubuntu is already installed. We'll see how it goes.

Does Grub kick off lilo when you boot into Slackware?

Thanks.

The trick I found was in deciding which distro is going to be boss. That gets the /boot partition. All others, just a / partition for / & boot.

Then all updates go to boot, and every distro updates it's grub.conf and remains happy in it's particular nappy. You just copy over kernels & ramdisks to the /boot that matters and update it's boot loader.

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When installing Slackware on a second partition, be sure to skip making lilo boot or I think it will overwrite grub's boot.

Business_Kid's post sounds like good a good tip but I didn't exactly understand where you need to place the Slackware kernel for grub to find it when you run grub-update.

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Sorry, my bad.

Distro with the /boot partition controls booting with it's boot loader.
All other distros do their thing on their boot partition, but that's only a subdirectory of their root partition, so it doesn't affect things.

Every change of kernel, I update the master boot partition by copying the new kernel & initrd there and hand-updating the boot loader.

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