I have a slackware 14.1 DVD, 64 bit version. I have used it twice to install Slackware within emulation. That worked. The fact of that working establishes two things. One: the ISO is good. Two: I'm not a moron.

After that success, it was decided to take it to the real world and boot off a physical Slackware DVD. So I burned the ISO to a DVD. I verified that this DVD was mountable and noted that the files appeared good. I mounted the ISO and ran a diff against the mounted DVD. That also checked out. So far, so good.

Rebooted my computer. The computer quietly ignored the DVD and went to its usual grub menu. Quietly, as in: no error, as if DVD were not in the drive at all.

Checked settings in my computer: boot priority to USB and CD(DVD) higher than hard drive. OK: that is as it had been before, and as it should be.

Booted another liveCD for a different distro. Booted into that fine. This establishes (a) boot priority *is* set to DVD and (b) my computer is capable of booting from a valid DVD (which makes sense, as I'd had to do that to install the distro I am currently running).

So I am perplexed. How can I get my computer to boot from a Slackware DVD?

Probably the command you used to burn the ISO to the DVD did properly transfer the files but failed to make the DVD bootable.

Try with this command (assuming the image is named slackware-dvd.iso, else adapt accordingly):If the command grwisofs is not available in your system, or you don't want to waste a DVD, you could use an USB stick instead. I have provided instructions here, see under "Burn the ISO image on a DVD, a CD or an USB stick". It's for an another installer but the instructions are exactly the same, but the name of the ISO file.

EDIT: if you use the dd command, issue the command "sync" after the dd command is completed, I forgot that in the instructions that I will complete.

Did you follow the instructions in README.TXT in the /isolinux directory for preparing a bootable Slackware DVD ISO image?

You can also try if the DVD works in the VM.

If the above doesn't work out, I would still compare hashes of the iso and written drive: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM
To assure yourself everything went well.

Hi,

So this DVD ISO works to install to a VM. Maybe just someone not thinking this out!
Why create another DVD? If the first one worked then use that one.

I would suspect a bad write. Verifies do not always work, sometimes the created Image is padded out. If the first DVD you created worked to install to a VM then why not use that DVD?
Hope this helps.

@onebuck: I assume that the OP actually meant "I first tried to boot off the DVD ISO image (the file) in a VM, then burned it to a physical DVD to try in a real machine"

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi,

Not by the meaning in this;OP states He/she does have a Slackware 14.1 DVD in the opening statement. Also stated used same to install Slackware twice.

Could mean s/he downloaded the DVD iso vs the CD iso (which, granted, isn't available for Slackware64, but nonetheless, could be the reasoning s/he used the wording they did), and s/he specifically stated that Slackware was installed "within emulation".

@onebuck: Yes, but:
Anyway, let's wait for the OP to come back

Check the burnt DVD using:

and compare the result to the original ISO md5 value.