Hi-

I tried to install Slackware last night, but I ran ito a few problems. I created the boot and root disk correctly (i think) using bare.i and color.gz .

When using the boot disk, everything seemed to go fine (ie hardware recognition seemed to be correct), but ther kernel would not boot. It gave me an error message about not being able to mount the root filesystem.

I assume that it was trying to mount on Windows side (FAT32), rather than the blank side of my hd. If this is indeed the problem, Is there anyway to control where it tries to mount during install? Anybody have any ideas as to anything else that could be going wrong here?

Thanks a lot,

Andrew

you should be able to use this


mount root=/dev/hd??

hd?? being the partition like hda5

Is there any reason why your not booting the install cd?

Yea-

When I issue the command:

mkisofs -o /tmp/slakware.iso -R -V "Slackware Install" \
-v -d -D -N -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \
-b isolinux/isolinux.bin \
-c isolinux/isolinux.boot \
-A "Slackware 8.0 Install CD"

It says that my command is missing pathspec (whatever that means). Seeing as I am totally ignorant about the mkisofs command, I thought the disks would be easier (obviously I was wrong).

Thanks a lot,
Andrew

<edit>
I just reread the command that you have and the end it states Slackware 8.0. There should be an iso image out there somewhere for that. IS there a reason though you didn't download the 8.1 iso image?

</edit>

The only reason I can think of for mkisofs is if you are using the slackware-current directory. Slackware 8.1 has an install iso image that only needs to be burned without using mkisofs, just cdrecord. Unless you need to reauthor for another reason.

But anyway I think that you are using the command that was provided in the README.TXT file in isolinux directory. That command was written to be executed from inside the slackware-current tree as the root of the cd image and at the very end of the command was a single period separated by a single space from your last closing quote. That period indicated the path to mkisofs as the current directory. That path can be modified to point to the correct directory but it is dependent on the current directory of the command execution unless a full explicit path from the root is specified. Since that may vary from one system to another, they choose to just reference the path using the simple period.

Hope it helps.

For Slackware 8.0, only two disks are required for a floppy boot. The kernel disk and the root file system. The kernel is the bare.i file and the root file system is the color.gz disk. After the kernel boots it should prompt for the second disk to be inserted and continue to decompress and mount the image as a ram disk. If it didn't prompt for the second disk then I can only suppose the wrong bare.i image was used that had a different root device specified without any prompting. Or the root disk was corrupted and it couldn't read it and it didn't have a root system to mount.

The files to use from the slackware 8.0 CD are bootdsks.144/bare.i and rootdsks/color.gz. But if you have the iso image or the 8.0 install CD, it should be a bootable CD.

Let us know what you are attempting to work with. It could really help in trying to provide some advice.

I have the iso for the 8.0 install CD. I downloaded it at school before i left for break, now I feel like a moron because I'm stuck with the older version. I'm on 56k at home, so it would take days to download the 8.1 iso.
Today I'll see if one of my friends with broadband will dl the 8.1 iso for me and burn it. Then I'll just use the install iso, and everything will good.
Thanks for putting up with my *complete* ignorance on the subject!

-Andrew

no problem, just boot the cd and your good to go

OK~

I paid a surprise visit to one of my buds from school, and dl'ed the 8.1 iso. I just finished installing everything succesfully (kind of).
The only problem is that when I issue the 'startx' command, my monitor just goes blank. I manually re-installed all of the gnome packages, and when I tried to use it with 'switchdesk', it said the command did not exist.
I'm probably only having trouble b/c switchdesk is a pamper-the-user redhat thing or something, but I really don't know what is going on.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

-Andrew

yes there is no switchdesk

you need to configure X first

you can try xfree86setup first, it is fool proof. If the screen is too big, 1600x1200 or 1800+ and you can't see anything that's easy to fix by switching screens with ctrl_+ or ctrl_- with the + and - on the numlock keypad. By adding a modes line in the default Depth's subsection in /etc/X11/XF86Config with the screen size you like you can get it the way you like it.

Modes "1024x768" "800x600"


you can use kdm on boot if you want to, which loads a login screen with a menu. You can do this several ways

one way would be to add this to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

/opt/kde/bin/kdm
you could also setup /etc/inittab to run it when you go to the specified runlevel

If you just want to use startx, the command to set a default window manager is xwmconfig

okay - xwindows is up and running! thanks!

my screen resolution is killing me though. i tried adding

Mode "600x800"

into

/etc/X11/XF86Config under the colour depth i chose, but it didn't work - what can i do to adjust it

Thanks a lot for ur help
Andrew

try to mount it by root=/dev/hdxxx (x is your linux partition).

did you try 600x800 or 800x600

800x600 will work
here is mine
My default Depth is 24

SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
EndSubSection


Make sure you have Modes not Mode

Just in case anyone was wondering. To make an ISO of the slackware-current tree make sure to put a '.' after the whole mkisofs command. It took me a while to figure it out. I thought it was an error in the README at first


--tarballedtux

lol~o well, too late now! slack is working great. thanks for all ur help everybody.

-Andrew