Slackware install trouble...
 

Hello,
I just received EEE Pc 1000he with the Asus external USB CD-DVD drive. I have burned a DVD ISO (Slack 12.2) and am able to boot up to the blue screen where you setup the partition, the source media etc... The only problem is unlike a regular laptop which uses IDE (I think...) the Slack media scan (for install source) doesn't seem to recognize the USB drive?? Needless to say I can't complete the install checklist without targeting the source media. How do I get Slack to find/recognize the install data??

You could do a network install (http/ftp). Check slackware.com for your local servers offering slackware.

Alongside IDE, there is also SCSI (pron. skuzzy). Some laptop manufacturers love to mix-and-match the two. Any removable media devices hooked up to the USB ports will be considered a SCSI device (their device node will be prefixed with an "s").

Before you run the setup program to install Slackware, run and look for something like "scd0" (SCSI CD 0) and when it asks you for your drive, type in /dev/whatever-the-device-node-is.

EDIT: I second what sycamorex has to say. I installed Slackware 12.2 on my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - Dell's netbook - without use of a CD or DVD. All it required was a USB key. There's an article on my website describing how I went about it.

Indeed on the EEE Pc the USB drive shows up SCSI (SR0) In fact the Slack install program may be a bit buggy cause it actually found the drive with auto-scan after a reboot. Then it failed. Then it didn't work on auto-scan. Then it wouldn't work manually entering the SCSI id. Could my drive be broken?? (This is first day, seems to work for everything else) Maybe the DVD?? Should I just erase Crunchbang off of my 16GB USB and try to install Slack from that? Any thoughts would be great.

Did you try specifying /dev/sr0?

If you have tried it, and it failed, what was the error message?

Perhaps you should try Slackware-current (soon to be Slackware 13.0) instead. The 12.2 release does not fully support your eeepc hardware (mainly because of the too-old kernel), but the next release does!
I am running slackware-current on my eeepc 1000h with full support of all hardware.

Another thing to be aware of, is that the installer of slackware-current (aka 13.0) uses UDEV for device detection, whereas previous versions of Slackware relied on the installer's own detection routines. You will probably have better luck with that external DVD drive when you boot from a Slackware-current DVD or USB stick.

Eric

Thank you for the replies. I did finally get the install (almost) complete. It seems the source media targeting just takes a few tries to work on the EEE PC. Ultimately the auto-scan is what enabled me to continue. Now I am having problems with LILO. It returns a video error and reports that it will work in text-only mode. Fine with me. Then it doesn't complete the install and doesn't say why. (something about an error and says setup can be completed later). The install then wraps up but after the prompted reboot the computer was starting with a black screen and "Invalid Partition Table" displayed on the upper left. This screen would not budge even a bit. I just did a factory restore with the included Windows XP Disk so the computer is working again.

I will try the current Slack to see if that helps LILO behave and will post back any successes/failures regarding the EEE PC.

edit: Ok, I checked back on the Slackware page but all the downloads I could find were 12.2 which is what I have been trying. I tried a google search for Slackware -current but couldn't find the newer version. Where do I go to try soon-to-be-13??

look at http://slackware.com/getslack/ to find ftp/http sites in your country. .iso images (and torrents) are not usually available for -current so you will need to use the USB/network install.

In theory (I have not tried it) you could burn a dvd (1.3G) of the source packages /slackware/*/* and mount it before you run setup.

The norwegian mirror usually holds recently built iso's. Try here for a DVD download from 23/06/09. These are not from the Slackware team and are created by third parties but should be good.

Second that. The slackware-current install (via usb stick with packages mounted from another partition) went very smoothly and everything is working out of the box.

Well, almost everything - 3D performance is terrible. I can't expect too much from the intel 945GME, but it's much worse than an eeepc 701 with xandros, e.g. extreme tux racer works great on that but is unusuable on my slack-current eee-pc 1000h. For another thread though...

Thanks again for the replies. I did manage to find the Slack-current directory after searching through a few of the mirrors. You are right there is no .iso but I had luck with an ftp client which was able to auto save all of the files in the folder. I then used ImgBurn to make an .ISO then burned that to a DVD. This did not boot. I followed the instructions found in the USB PXE install folder. I was able to boot from USB Flash and the setup found and accepted the DVD (the same one that would not boot) as the source media. Once the install began it kept asking for the next disk and refused to proceed before installing any packages. I just tried again a few times by popping the tray in and out and it changed it's mind and started to put the packages on the drive. LILO is still behaving the same way. I tried to install both on the MBR and on root on the partition. I got KDE up and going from the installed partition after booting from the USB stick. I gathered and tried to fix LILO with the following at Konsole (/sbin/lilo -M /dev/sda) I think this puts LILO on the drives MBR so then it should read XP and the recovery too??

It seemed to work and said that LILO had been updated. I still get an Invalid PT warning when trying to boot. Here is the output of /sbin/lilo if you have any kind words to share: (this is loaded from sda2 partition install...after booted from USB Flash)

////////////////////////////
Warning: Unable to determine video addapter in use in the present system.
Warning: Video adaptor does not support VESA BIOS extensions needed for display of 256 colors. Boot loader will fall back to TEXT only operation.
Warning: Device 0x0800: Inconsistant partition table, 1st entry
CHS address in PT: 0:1:1 --> LBA (63)
LBA address in PT: 54 --> CHS (0:0:55)
Fatal: Either FIX-Table or IGNORE-TABLE must be specified
if not sure, first try IGNORE-TABLE (-P ignore)
////////////////////////////

I get the exact same error when trying to manually configure LILO using a call to pkgtools. I tried both MBR and root partition. I did expert. Went through and added and named the partitions one-by-one. No matter where I put it I get the same output as above.

Did cfdisk report any errors?
What does your lilo.conf look like?

[SOLVED]
It seems that LILO won't install if GRUB is still on the system. I had installed Crunchbang right before Slack... I got LILO up and running after erasing the MBR first.

SCSI-Emulation / USB Drives -- Pre-Slackware 13

sh /dev/makedevs.sh

You usb cdroms and usb-keys will now show up as /dev/sr0, /dev/sda


slackware-current:

Anyone noticed you can't ctrl+c out of setup? The console will lock up. Work around is sometimes ctrl+z run setup again.