gargamel-

Thanks for the great suggestion. I am going to try making a downloadable PDF for my website. I've not really made PDF's before, but I believe it was a one click process in Open Office, so I'll try that out. I also need to finish up the last two sections of the website. I also need to re-read everything for content. I am trying to incorporate all of the suggestions others have made, because they've all been good suggestions.

It's taken awhile to get the website going, as I haven't had a lot of experience with HTML. I'm just learning CSS, also, so the website could get better. Working on it all, though, I've noted some parts that need some more attention. I also need to get the apache section started up. In short, I've been kinda busy, but I've got a lot more stuff to add

Thanks again for the suggestion,

Naah , the pc is fine if running from command line, it's also fine in Firefox and other apps, i'll try the transparency now as i type .......

Yeah cool, that got it...

Ok, so, i'm looking at what gnome did before it fired up :

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to load GLX

Any idea's about this? I have the latest driver on from nvidia.

Evilone....

Think this has to do with /etc/X11/xorg.conf . Does yours look like this?

It's near the top. Check it out & let me know

Hi Shilo!

Really great post! It really helped me a lot!
But when it comes to the Nvidia driver... I had to edit the XF86Config
to really make it work. I made these changes

from

Section "Device"
Identifier "RIVA TNT2"
Driver "nv"
#VideoRam 32768
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate

to

Section "Device"
Identifier "RIVA TNT2"
Driver "nvidia"
#VideoRam 32768
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate

also changed the

# This loads the GLX module
# Load "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
# Load "dri"

to

# This loads the GLX module
Load "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
# Load "dri"

This gives you a really big Nvidia logo when starting up X. If you maybe want to disable the logo, edit your XF86 config to look like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "RIVA TNT2"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "nologo" "1"
#VideoRam 32768
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate

I hope this will help anyone!

Jontamask-

Thanks. I really need to add that to my stuff. I totally forgot about having to do that

Very nice work shilo. Your recommendations on slocate are great, thanks. I checked out your site and have a few suggestions for your consideration:

1. Add "Next" and "Prev" buttons to page through the site. Right now the only way to move between pages is to click on the vertical list of links on the left.
2. Making the material downloadable would be totally cool.
3. Re: CUPS, depending on what kind of printer you have, you may need to get a driver. Check here: http://www.linuxprinting.org/
4. You may want to consider adding a "Resource" page, containing useful Slackware links (eg. www.linuxpackages.net www.sourceforge.net www.kernel.org etc)

Overall, as I said very nice work. If your attention turns to multimedia apps (DVD burning/playing, audio mixing, etc) I would look forward to future additions to your guide. -- J.W.

J.W.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm gonna try and incorporate them all. Gonna take awhile. Hopefully I'll have it all overhauled by Monday.

As for the multimedia, I'll be adding some stuff on that, too. Just gotta finish up all the internet stuff, first.

For DVD playing, short answer, I believe you will already be able to watch DVD's after upgrading to Dropline. I use Totem.

I'll have to get back to you on the others, though.

Thanks again,

Shilo,

First great guide!!! helped me through a few bugs with the ATI drivers..

but i just ran into a HUUUUGE problem... without going into nasty details, heres what happened. I decided it was time to update from stock 9.1 to current so i did the swaret suggestions that you posted. I went through and moved all the .new files that were updated as instructed and all seemed fine.. everything was working great .... UNTIL!!! i rebooted.

now instead of lilo i have a nice black screen with about 30-40 lines of 99999999999999 ... im dual booted but it doesnt even get that far so i cant get back into windoze and lilo just doesnt show up. looks like it time for a fixmbr to fix windows and then reformat and reinstall slack...

not really asking for a fix as there were so many updated files that it would be pointless to try and track down which one blew up... just wanted to maybe suggest adding a strong warning of caution about doing update all..

thanks again for the guide though.. ill have to use it again this weekend most definately! lol

Hello Systematic,

I'm pretty sure that you didn't run lilo after you'd updated /etc/lilo.conf, right? And, BTW, did you update /etc/lilo.conf? Well, this is a problem, but nothing to go reinstalling everything for. If you have a boot disk or a live CD distro (like Knoppix) somewhere, it should be reasonably easy to fix. With the "reasonably" referring to that I can't remember exactly how I've done it before myself... Hm, well, maybe it's as easy as booting up with the boot disk and then run lilo? Try that first.

Well, maybe it's not that easy. There might be some trouble with its finding the root partition where the commands are. OK, so at the boot (yes, that's boot) prompt that the boot disk gives you, give the option root=/dev/hd<something> where <something> refers to the label of your root (that's /) partition; my root partition is at /dev/hda5. To make it a bit easier you could also give the option init=/bin/bash so that you have a proper shell to play around in later.

So, to summarize: start your computer with the boot disk (or bootable CD) in it. When the (lilo) boot prompt comes up (before actually booting), enter root=/dev/hda5 init=/bin/bash (with /dev/hda5 being replaced with the proper partition on your system) and hit enter. If you get some error now, then it's probably because you have to write linux at the boot prompt too, before the other options.

...and the computer should boot up.

Now, you should land at a (bash) prompt, where you can actually do something. If you (and I) are lucky, then it's enough to issue lilo. If you see lilo run properly, showing you the labels of the kernel images, your problem is fixed. If it doesn't, then either you didn't update /etc/lilo.conf, or the boot partition might be mounted read-only. To make it read-write, you issue (something like) mount /boot -o remount,rw and it should remount. If this went well, then you can try and run lilo again. If it works now, you can reboot your computer and give it a go again. With the boot floopy taken out of course.

If this didn't work either...err... Well, I'm out of ideas at the moments, and maybe I missed some step. Perhaps someone else has something to add?

HTH

Systematic-

WOW!!! I've never had anything like that happen at all. My guess is that Bebo has hit it on the head. There's something afoot with lilo, that much we know. That's where the strangeness starts. I look at my /etc/swaret.conf file and see:
That's default. Swaret shouldn't be upgrading lilo or the kernel. Those are two things which could eff your box like that. Did you remove those from the exclude list? I hope not. There's a reason those things are in there. I know a lot of people suggest getting rid of things in the exclude list. They are the ones who should post a strong warning. Mess with the kernel on your own, you've accepted that you may thrash your box. Let swaret mess with your kernel, you may be sorry. That's why I have the kernel compiling section.

Let me know if you didn't change the exclude list. I'll try and figure out what else it could have been so that no one else has to have their system jacked up.

Bebo-

That's a great post on how to get your sytem fixed after you trash it. Everyone should know how to do that, cause if your like me, you'll end up needing to know how to do that eventually.

Is there something like swaret for source code? I have spent the last few weeks using arch, and while I like the package system and the i686 optimizations.... it is still rough around the edges. It has issues that I can't even begin to explain.

I'd like to have something where I can do a make world and have everything optimized to my box. Yes, I've used gentoo before... but I just don't like it like I like slackware.

thanks for the suggestions shilo and bebo...

i did actually run /sbin/lilo after i edited lilo.conf and i made sure to NOT remove those excludes from swaret.conf (i know those are BIG no no's.. lol) Honestly ive never had this type of f00xorage happen. BTW im on a dell inspiron 9100 lappy not a desktop and it was pissy about certain drivers, ie -- network card, audio.. and i have an ATI with running xfre86 4.3 -- but swaret upped me to 4.4 so that could be one issue (if i get lilo fixed).

i havent attempted to repair anything yet.. i gotta locate my slax cd... damn distro cd's always walking off on me..

Shilo -- i will do my best to document it if i get it fixed and share it with everyone. I was working on a slack installation guide for inspiron 9100/PXS laptops but thats on hold for now

Bebo -- soon as i locate my slax disc im going to go through your suggestions.. your setup and mine are the same.. mine is also hda5. Im betting that its just lilo thats hosed so when (if) i can get to a shell i can fix it or post the output here so you can have a go.

Thanks for the help again!!!

kleptophobiac-
I don't know of anything like that, but make sure you let us know if you find something. I seem to recall something about Emerde, so on a long shot, check that out. As someone else pointed out, though, Emerde is like French for E-shit. That makes me laugh every time I think of it.

Systematic-
The thing I'm confused on is you keep talking about editing lilo.conf. It also sounds like you think your problem is related to swaret. I don't think swaret had anything to do with your problem. Why did you have to edit lilo.conf? Did you upgrade to current via swaret and then try to compile a new kernel without a reboot in between? I really am interested to know because I want to make sure that I clarify things in my post so that I don't have a whole bunch of people hosing their systems on my advice.

Also, no need for a slax disk. Just use installation disk one.

I think maybe I should add more "and then reboot, checking to see that you have no errors." That's something I didn't think about as I was writing this whole thing. It took me weeks to get all of these steps done. Now that they are all in a single guide, even someone new to Linux could probably get all of this done in a couple of hours. I can see that there are some drawbacks to that. Namely, if you make an error somewhere along the line, you're gonna have a hard time tracking it down.

So, a couple of words of advice for everyone. The power users are always giving ways to restart processes and such without rebooting. That's a handy thing once you start getting proficient with Linux and Slackware. I recommend, though, that you go with a full reboot after you complete a step. After every reboot, you need to know what is broken. Two tools I use to help check things out are:
and
Pressing q will get you back to your prompt when you are done reading through those. You want to look for any error messages you see. Fix them when you first see them. They can pile up quickly if you aren't paying attention.

Hello shilo and Systematical,

First: this is a really great post, shilo - kudos to you!

Systematical, the 99's you get when you boot up tells you there is an "invalid second stage index sector (LILO)", according to lilo's man page. Oh, BTW, when you have managed the break-in in your computer, use the -v option when you run lilo; that way you see more of what's going on.

I have had that kind of problem once before, when my brain was in win-mode and I wanted to defrag the boot partition; I mean I had like 18% non-contiguous (or whatever the word is in linux contexts) blocks there for cryin' out loud! So I copied everything on the boot partition to some temporary place, then I removed everything from /boot (I think I did not reformat it - no one knows what could've happened then Or?), and then I copied everything back. And then I rebooted for some reason. And 99, and 99, and 99, and 99, and well, you know what, a 99... I managed to get hold of a boot disk, and went through those steps I described above, and ran lilo this time! And it could boot again!

Now, afterwards I know that of course it didn't work, since lilo didn't know where my kernel images were any more. But the problem is that I can't remember exactly what I had to do to be able to get into my computer that much so that I could run lilo. The post above is from my fragmentary memories from that day, and some thinking of what I would try if it happened again. So, shilo, these last ramblings are a very lengthy way to tell you to use my post in your guide if you want, but I'm not entirely sure that it will work. I'm only a bit sure. Blaah... Anyways, feel free to use it as you want.

There are lots of these small happenings in My Way of Linux; try it and see if it breaks. It usually does, but I've also (comparing with other's experiences) been lucky. I've never had any problems with installing, for instance, and I have as yet never been able to solve (EDIT: of course this is wrong, it should be: "always been able to solve"!!!) any of these problems I've made for myself.

Why am I writing all this? I have no idea...

Cheers!

<EDIT>
"My Way of Linux"? Lindo? Linjutsu? ...anyway...
</EDIT>

Bebo-

Thanks. I'll definately add your post. Hopefully I can get it crammed in this weekend.

I like your "Linjutsu", that's the same as me. I always break everything.