..... but the system hangs during boot at "Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed"

i used the default kernel hugesmp.s
machine is a pIII/500
320M ram


looking at a dmesg of slack 10, i find that the next step (at least in v10) is adding swap:

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
Adding Swap: 2417772k swap-space (priority -1)
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann

so, does this mean i have a problem with my swap space config for slack 12?

are there any other files i should look at?
are there any files in slack 12's system that i should post here for help?

i have the new install mounted in V10 as /lin12 so i can browse files and edit them if need be.

i think i should also mention that i edited lilo.conf on my slack 10 installation so i could boot slack 10, win2k or slack 12, maybe i made a mistake with this edit?
here's the lilo.conf from my slack 10 installation...

boot="/dev/hda1"
lba32
prompt
timeout="1200"
root=/dev/hda1
vga="773"

image="/boot/vmlinuz"
label="vmlinuz"
root="/dev/hda1"
read-only

image = "/boot/vmlinuz"
root = "/dev/hdc3"
label = "slack12"
read-only # Partitions should be mounted read-only for checking

other=/dev/hda2
label="NT"

Hi there, first, maybe this thread could help: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...mory..-211275/

Also, is "Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed" the last thing you get to see before the freeze? anything else?

What's your partition scheme? Are you sharing your swap between the Slackware 10 and 12?

The last thing printed was the "agpgart" interface so that seems to be the problem. A failure to configure swap space won't normally cause the system to hang during boot.

What I suggest is to use the "vga = normal" option in "/etc/lilo.conf". You may also want to try one of the other kernels. Does your existing Slackware 10 system use the same kernel configuration and load "agpgart"?

I think the problem might be this.

vga="773"

You may have to leave out the quotes.

vga=773

Perhaps that's confusing LILO about the graphics mode and then causing problems with the frame buffer console text display. I've never tried quotes so I can't be sure if that's a problem.

I think this should be - root = "/dev/hda3"

ok.... i did some poking around...

i looked again at lilo.conf, and said to myself "hmmm.... the image lines point to the same kernel, but the root filesystems are different. so i tried this. i went to the slack 12 /boot directory (which is on /dev/hdc3) and copied it into the /dev/hda1/boot directory, so now there's a copy of the new kernel in /dev/hda1/boot/boot. then i changed lilo.conf to this:

boot="/dev/hda1"
lba32
prompt
timeout="1200"
root=/dev/hda1
vga="773"

image="/boot/vmlinuz"
label="vmlinuz"
root="/dev/hda1"
read-only

image = "/boot/boot/vmlinuz"
root = "/dev/hdc3"
label = "slack12"
read-only # Partitions should be mounted read-only for checking

other=/dev/hda2
label="NT"


and rebooted, this time trying slack 12 again. it boots up perfectly now. i was trying to load the wrong kernel with the wrong filesystem. tnx for the help anyways. i really appreciated the quick and informative replies. everybody's replies got me to open lilo.conf back up to look at it again.

Now I feel foolish for not noticing that.

I keep forgetting that lilo locates files based on the OS used to configure lilo and not the OS being booted. Lilo actually stores a drive ID (0x80, etc.) and the sector locations of files in the boot sectors. Then lilo doesn't use the file-system to locate the files during boot.

I prefer using GRUB because it actually looks at the file-system using the BIOS during boot. That means it isn't necessary to do anything when updating the kernel files or modifying the boot menu. With lilo you have to remember to run the "lilo" command if you update any files mentioned in "lilo.conf" or you change "lilo.conf".

Anyway, I'm glad that you got past the problem.

so now it boots up...... in console mode. when i run startx, i don't get what i expected, the kde desktop, but xfce desktop. i only had the first two cd's when i installe, as i thought everything was on those, and the rest was source code. i do have everything except the source code stored on one of my win2k partitions (extra, pasture, and patches i think...) so how do i add these?

i'm looking up the man page on startx, so hopefully i can figure out how to get it to boot straight into x.

KDE packages are available on CD3 (see http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php for an overview of what to find on each Slackware CDROM). Using only the first two CD's you will not have KDE available.

You can use slackpkg to install the KDE packages directly from an internet mirror server (edit /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and uncomment exactly one URL for the Slackware version you are running). Alternatively you can download a CD3 ISO, loop-mount this ISO and then use installpkg to install the packages that are contained on the CD.

Eric

Open /etc/inittab in your favourite editor.

Change this part:
to this:
This changes to runlevel 4 (i.e. the GUI) on bootup.

ok, i tried editing inittab, and the system hangs, can't even get another text session.

i had a copy of the kde install from when i was making a hard drive based copy of the slackware install.
i ran the install-packages script, and it seemed to install kde. when i run xwmconfig and select kde, x starts up, and then gives me an error saying something is wrong with kdeconfig4. i click on the OK button and it exits to the console. is there something in the library packages dependent on kde being installed? or should i go ahead and install the /extras packages? something seems to be missing somewhere... good thing i kept the slack 10 intact, so i can get back in and edit things like inittab when things don't work right. i just have to make backup copies of the files i change so i can return slack 12 to a working state. i will try the slackpkg though. maybe the script in the kde installation directory has something missing....

y'know, there is the old joke about even numbered revisions of software being buggy or unstable......

quick up date.....
first of all, tnx for the help.

i did a slackpkg update kde, and it updated the kde install, and kde worked. also for some reason, changing inittab to start runlevel 4 began working. one thing i screwed up while trying to install kde was that i turned swap off. i didn't find out about the swap until after i installed Wine and a SPICE program i was using under windows. after running a few test sims of some circuits, everything got real s..l..o..w..... because i had no swap. i guess maybe i should do a slackpkg update all before too long.

I'm glad that you got it up and running. I usually just install all the packages in Slackware. That does use about 4 to 5 GB of hard disk but so does another operating system that I won't mention (actually twice that amount).

I also usually don't update Slackware. I usually make a copy of my existing system or move the directories to an "oldsys" directory. Then I just completely install the new Slackware. I have to edit a few configuration files but that usually doesn't take too long. I don't worry about things that I seldom or never use. That way those things eventually go away and I don't waste time updating them.

I might not do that with another distro but Slackware releases are so stable that I don't need to update much in between. Using everything exactly as it's released and installing from scratch reduces the chance of package compatibility problems. Installing everything avoids problems with dependencies or the order that packages were installed.

i had to do an install on a different drive anyway. the drive slack10 is on has 200megs free on it, and that's after deleting a bunch of stuff i didn't need. i had it crash once because i was restoring kde sessions, and the session files eventually filled the disk, and it would dump out when loading kde. when i turned off "restore previous kde session" it stopped trying to fill up the disk.