I've just done a reformat, reinstalled Win 2k and wanna try out Slackware (was using RH 8 before).

I downloaded the ISO and burned it, MD5SUM is ok. I booted the disk and used fdisk to make one root partition and one swap on my /dev/hdb.

When I run setup, I'm having these problems:

Sometimes the keyboard kinda stops working; I can move down through the options and somewhere along the way, it'll just stop responding. I read this can happen if you have a USB keyboard, but mine's PS2.

When I manage to get through to actually installing stuff, the menu screws up and a whole load of text shows up (sometimes the command prompt), once one of the lines was 'Bad EIP Code' or something :/.

Any ideas as to what I can do to fix this? Usually, I just reboot and try the install again, hope it gets a bit further :/.

No idea about the keyboard freeze, but you might try copying the slackware directory from the cd to your hard drive then reboot and tell setup to install from there. You'll want to skip the (re)formatting step, of course. [edit] Afterwards, you can delete the slackware directory, if you like [/edit]

I've had troubles in the past with slack not being able to read from the cd (even a good cd) during the install procedure. For some reason, it seems to be more finicky during install.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

I finally got it to install. The only problem I had was not being able to set up LILO, so it said I've gotta boot from a disk (didn't give me any specific reasons as to why LILO couldn't be set up).

The bookdisk I created doesn't seem to work. Restarted my machine, it tried to boot from CD first and then the floppy. The light on the drive went on and could hear it reading. It didn't say 'non system disk' or anything, but didn't book Slack. Windows loaded :/.

Edit: my fstab file is kinda screwed:

/dev/hdb2 swap swap defaults 0 0
(IN USE) / defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults 1 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

Hmmm, sounds like a job for Tom's root/boot (google for it) the best rescue disk around for my money (or for no money at all)

Boot from it then look at man lilo (or man chroot, I'm not sure which) it'll tell you all you need to know.

Your problem with lilo may be due to your root partition (and your /boot directory, I presume) being on a slave drive. You may actually be better off using the NT boot loader, but I'm certainly no expert on this. I recall a site that explained how to use w2k to choose between slack and windows boot. Again, try google or the search for this forum.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

I can boot from the Slack CD using this at the boot prompt:

bare.i root=/dev/hdb1 noinitrd ro

Is it possible to boot without ro, so I can edit the fstab file? Actually have a lilo.conf file too, which is a little screwed also (I think):

# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
lba32 # Allow booting past 1024th cylinder with a recent BIOS
boot = /dev/hda
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 1200
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
vga = 773
# Normal VGA console
# vga = normal
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
# vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
# vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
# vga=788
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
# vga=787
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
# vga=771
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
# vga=785
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
# vga=784
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
# vga=769
# End LILO global section
# DOS bootable partition config begins
other = /dev/hda1
label = DOS
table = /dev/hda
# DOS bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = (IN
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Will try the stuff you suggested though, thanx.

Go ahead and use the 'ro', it's only read-only during the boot procedure when it's checking the file system. Once you've booted, you can edit lilo.conf and run /sbin/lilo.

Your lilo.conf looks good, except you need to specify the root=/dev/hdb1

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere

Error messages as well:

/sbin/e2fsck: Is a directory while trying to open /
/:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains and ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device>.

Heh, I chose ext3 on install.

Also:

An error occurred during the root filesystem check. You will now be given a chance to log into the system in single user mode to fix the problem.

It then asks for the root password and then I'm getting /dev/console: Read-only file system, so can't edit lilo.conf or my fstab.

Would it be better to just reformat and repartition the disk and start over?

dude, reinstall

(if still shitty problems try to burn a new cd... might be a disk problem, happend to me once..)

Don't need to now, seems to be working alright. Just need to fix LILO. Thanx .