Old PC won't boot 14.1
 

I am trying to install Slackware 14.1 on my oldest PC, a circa-2000 Dell with a 750MHz Pentium III.

I made the installation CDs. When booting, I see "Loading /kernels", "Loading initrd", "Decompressing Linux", and then the kernel panics in the routines "free_initrd_mem" and "free_init_mem".

This happens with both the hugesmp.s and huge.s kernels.

If I add the boot option "retain_initrd", the kernel panic goes away. The kernel recognizes the devices and then says "RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0". It then expects me to put in a floppy disk containing the initrd. It appears that the machine is unable to load the initrd properly.

Any suggestions? This PC ran Slackware 14.0 fine.
Ed

Same here. My 733 MHz Dells (Intel 8xx-style mobo) were fine with it, but my 500 MHz Dell (PIIX4-style mobo) had the same panic from the install CD. I might take my 14.0 installer disk, then have it load the 14.1 packages that are on my USB stick. Either that, or I'll install from PXE boot. Right now, I'm taking it as a sign that the PC should be left running FreeBSD 9.2. I was in a grumpy FreeBSD-purge mode at the time, but really, the PC is doing an excellent job as is.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

This PC has an Intel 440BX (PIIX4) chipset. It also has PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0.

I would like to install Slackware 14.1 to keep all of my PCs consistent. Slackware 14.0 runs fine. I use this machine as a music player.
Ed

One possible solution: install a minimal Slackware 14.0 (or trim down your existing installation), configure slackpkg, upgrade your minimal system to 14.1, and then go on from there.

Cheers,

Niki

Thanks, Niki.

I tried two things that didn't make any difference:

• Booting from a floppy with sbootmgr, and then using sbootmgr to boot the installation CD. sbootmgr took longer to read the initrd, but the result was the same kernel panic.
  
• Creating a CD with isolinux.bin downgraded from 4.06 to 4.05.

This is looking like a kernel problem.
Ed

I'll take a look at it tonight and see what I can find...then let you know what I did to get my PIII/500 going. I'm trying to avoid this classic scenario:

1. Place the target drive in a working Slackware PC,
2. Build a chroot system out of it using `installpkg --root /mnt/target-drive packages-to-install.t?z`, usually the a/, ap/, n/, d/, and a reasonable subset of the l/ package sets;
3. chroot into the system and make simple changes, maybe place a custom kernel in it,
4. Put target drive back into the target PC,
5. Boot the target PC with a disc that can mount the target drive (i.e., not using the installer CD to boot the system),
6. Run lilo with an absurd number of flags so that everything is pointed at something on the target drive,
7. umount the target drive and reboot. Pray for the best.
8. Adjust /etc/lilo.conf until lilo runs without issuing warnings.
9. Reboot, to be sure that LILO is happy at this point.
10. Fix what's broken, running all those helpful installer scripts manually. Install the rest of the desired package sets.

Thing is, my memory is fuzzy: I could have sworn that I had a bootdisk that could boot this PC. That disc was well into the slackware-current series for 14.1. That puts me on a mission, and I'll try not to let you down.

Hi, I have P3 500 1G mem, 3 hd file server, runs continuously, except for extended power outages.

I always clean installed new slackware releases, never upgraded.

I found THIS POST and it all went fine.

I removed 14.0 slackpkg, installed 14.1 slackpkg, backed up all my conf and followed above post steps.

My suggestion, if you still have 14.0 do above, if you don't, reinstall 14.0 then do above.

Thanks, mlslk31 and glorsplitz.

I have decided to keep the machine on 14.0 until the kernel bug gets fixed.
Ed

Thanks for letting me off the hook. My network card (or switch) decided that it didn't want to hold link any longer, so my Slackware 14.1 install was done between the Slackware 14.0 install CD-ROM and a 14.1-populated USB stick. That session fell under the "don't try this at home" category, and both /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf had to be done manually.

The huge kernel works fine, and it was replaced with a custom kernel, but neither one could fully initialize my sound card or make the network card hold link. So it looks like I'll be opening my PC's case tonight, anyway, to see if I can't get the network and sound cards on their own interrupts. I'll get to bring home the network cable tester and crimping tools as well (sigh)...

Good luck!

I am not sure it´s an excessive prudence, but I´ve been changing runlevel 4 for 3... Then no graphical mode use!

That will break your system if you do that. because the newer glibc is not installed first and you will have a broken system before the "a" has installed.
please read pats upgrade text. here
such as step 1

It's not an upgrade: It's a fresh system installed into a different directory. There could be some issues with the kernel on the host system being too old, though. For an all-hard-drive setup--host system runs `installpkg --root /somewhere-else` with packages on one hard drive to a /somewhere-else directory on another hard drive--I don't worry because I run git kernels on my main system. For that emergency install I did, it was coincidence (and nothing else) that the Slackware 14.0 installer CD-ROM kernel was happy with packages installed from a 14.1-populated USB stick. I could have gotten "kernel too old" messages from improvising like this.

Also, the chroot steps are for convenience when testing. Sure, I could have configured everything without using chroot. But have it all set up and boot on first try? My memory's not that good! My memory is also not good enough to go playing with LILO and not wonder if I just ran lilo on the wrong drive, so I tend to do that from an installer disc, with the target hard drive installed at its final destination.

yes I missed that was reading the up grade I understand. Thank you for pointing that out. --root dah

My latest update on this is that my poor network switch is on the fritz again, but my network card works at 10Mbps full duplex. The sound cards worked fully after I installed the alsa libs. Cards were moved around so the only shared interrupt is between ACPI and UHCI (USB). So I'm rocking and rolling now. It's beautiful!

Y'know, Drakeo, I'd imagine that you could upgrade a chroot through something like this...

...but I just haven't tried it yet. Most of my chroot activities become either utility partitions or one-off envirnoments for testing. I was too busy thinking about how to get my own setup to install, and that involved zeroing both hard drives first. Linux can read GPT partitons the way that FreeBSD makes them, but I didn't want to go that route. Thanks for the sobriety check. It's appreciated.

actually I have a script that installs slackware from puppy linux. I have made this for my friends. they just give me there blkid and I customize the install. it is a 4 step
process step one step one they use gparted with puppy linux to partition. step 2 is the mirror script that you edit to place a Slackware mirror on that said drive.
step three installs the sytstem. step 4 installs all the multimedia and other needed things for the /etc, pluss two scripts placed in /root.

then they edit the fstab to match there blkid. the password on it is already set. grub is installed from puppy. after their first boot run pkgtool there is two more scripts.
one one downloads the multi arch from alien bob. and installs it the other installs all the prebuilt 32compat for extra multimedia.
I have done this for people that want multi arch and want all the correct multimedia for the 32bit and 64 bit to run all the virtual worlds.

Upgradepkg does not work in the chroot install. because it uses your local /var/.and this can be hit or miss.

if you plan on upgrading follow the upgradetext from Slackware.

I created scripts named it slackupdate from the upgradetxt. so in run level one I only had to
run a script. !!!!remeber to upgrade the glibc first. as in the upgradetext. this has helped me
with systems jumping a couple versions.

the reason I have done this with puppylinux. it allows me to have communication on the internet while they install on the same computer.
Linux is about community.And helping our fellow users.