Well, I chose the recommended option for the kernel (or what seemed to be the recommended one!) and have ended up with a slack 10 install that asks for a root floppy! (I don't have a fdd so I couldn't have made 1!) I can boot from the install disk and mount my partitions though. Now, do I need to reinstall again and if so, what kernel should I choose? Best of all, can I repair this without doing the whole n-hour long re-install???

Also, whats the "usual" kernel, the one that works on most comps?

Thanks,

Anshul

Could you give more details? I don't get the problem. The most generally used kernel is bare.i which has supports for IDE devices. I think you've chosen bare.i because Slackware offers it as default. But there are options for specificly configured kernels which have SMP or SCSI support also. Here is a list of kernels and little explanations (but i think this file is out of date):

http://www.slackware.com/install/bootdisk.php

As i remember there is an option in kernel choose step of installation that lists and explains the kernels. This may be wrong but this list was accessed with F2 or F3 (There should be a note about that on installation screen). Hope these helps.

Sorry, if I wasnt clear on that. When it came to the boot selection screen I went for the one that seemed to be the recommended one (it wasnt clear to me which one was being recommended). It asked me for a boot disk. I hit cancel and then chose the skip and use vmlinuz option. Looking back, that seems to be a mistake. Is hould have gone for a choose from cdrom bare.i perhaps.
So you see I am in a soup. It seems I have a Slack 10 install without a kernel. Can I install just a kernel somehow? Or do I *have* to install Slack 10 all over again?

1. Boot system from CD and mount drives.
2. Go to CD, /kernels/bare.i
3. Copy those files into /boot of your hard drive. (Overwrite the ones in there currently)
4. Run LILO. If you have the HD mounted on /mnt/root, for example, you would type /mnt/root/sbin/lilo. That should update the bootloader so you can boot the new kernel.
5. Reboot system.

That should get you going.

Thanks a trillion and thirteen tons! You just saved me another tedious reinstall. I am up and running and now about to configure x.

Well, what I did was log onto a nfs server from the broken comp. Copied down the complete /boot of a PC running College Linux (which is slack based). Deleted all files starting with System and map (since they must be system specific I thought), updated my lilo.conf and ran the lilo command. Worked like a charm. This kernel is called vmlinz... and meanwhile how do I request the Slack 10 powers that be to put a (recommended) in bracket somewhere on that package. It just confused me like hell.

And while we are at it, can someone give me some good online resource on the Linux boot process and linux kernels?

Thanks again,

Anshul

for boot process
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO...mpt-HOWTO.html

A 13 trillion and one thanks!

I have just started reading it and its great.