Dell Inspiron 1100 Install Trouble
 

I'm trying to install Slackware 10.2 on my laptop and get stuck on the same step each time. First: I have very little experience w/linux before this, just set up mandrake 9.0 to mess around with a year or two ago but never took to it.

I followed Grogan's post on the BitBender forum for the install - new user so i can't post the link, search BitBender + install + Slackware if you need a link - and everything goes according to plan until I have to switch to the 2nd installation cd. When I'm looking at the "Insert next disc" menu and put the second install disc or any other disc in the drive and hit enter, I see a brief unmount message below the menu and then the disc is simply ejected. At first I thought it was a bad disc so I downloaded another .iso copy from a different website and the results were the same. Out of frustration I tried downloading the 10.1 .iso's and ran into the exact same problem when it came time to insert the 2nd installation disc.

Since I can't chose the "Continue" option at that menu, I'm stuck quitting/finishing up the install at that point. But with my lack of knowledge w/Linux I have no idea if this is enough to start X since I think Mandrake automatically started X on boot when I tried it awhile back.

Thanks for the help

are you choosing a full install?
if so then you can just choose the configure option from the setup menu, go through those steps, make sure lilo gets on there, then reboot.
once you reboot it will boot up to a command prompt, at that point you can mount the second cdrom and install the remaining packages, don't install the 2.6 kernel, unless you are wanting to use it.
after you have done that then you can run xwmconfig and choose an Xwindows desktop.
then you configure Xwindows to work with your hardware
then you can edit /etc/inittab and change the init level to 4, that will make it boot to Xwindows.
then reboot and slack away

if you need more details or get stuck on any of these steps let me know

Yes I picked full install.

I quit the software install after the first disc, then got lilo on and can boot into slack from there.

As I mentioned earlier, I have little experience with linux so i've got no clue how to even mount a cdrom drive from command prompt, let alone install files from the disc once its mounted. Some basic searches on this site didn't help much, but i'm not really sure what to specifically search for i guess.

ok type these in

mount /dev/cdrom
upgradepkg --install-new /mnt/cdrom/slackware/*/*.tgz

that will mount your cdrom, then install the remaining packages on disc 2

let me know when you are done

when i try to mount the drive I get: mount: No medium found

but eject cdrom still works, and if i toss the disc on an xp machine I can see the files

type:
cat /etc/fstab
and post that

/dev/hdc5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc2 / ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hdc6 /usr ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc7 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc1 /dev/hdc1 vfat defaults 1 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto 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

ok so you put disk2 in the cd drive, close the drive
then type:
mount /dev/cdrom
and you get an error?

correct, and i've tried it with both copies of disc 2 i've got(downloaded the each .iso from separate sites so its not the disc itself i don't think)

what is the output of:

df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc2 950M 77M 824M 9% /
/dev/hdc6 2.4G 1.8G 452M 80% /usr
/dev/hdc6 4.5G 32K 4.2G 1% /home

ok, just making sure you weren't out of space
so if you put cd1 in and type:
mount /dev/cdrom
it works?

no, i get the same error

what kernel did you pick

had to pick the skip option (use the default /boot/vmlinuz) since whenever I tried to pick the cdrom option from the menu, the installer just ejected every disc I tried