Install from NFS Share Failing
 

I've been hung up on this issue most of the afternoon so I'm throwing in the towel and seeing if anyone else has a solution I have not tried yet.

Trying to install slackware 10.1 on an old laptop. I'll cover what Ive done then explain the error/issues. For reference the laptop has no CD drive, maybe a 1.5Gb HDD, no built-in ethernet.

:: Downloaded ISO's for disc 1 and 2 - no Linux box available right now so I'm left with a windows 2000 box as a remote file holder to make things more fun and interesting

:: Unzipped ISO's to a single directory (C:\slackware-10.1-iso) on 2000 box

:: Set up an NFS share for C:\slackware-10.1-iso\ called \slack with anon rw access for all (whee)

:: Downloaded the floppy disk images for bare.i, install.1, install.2 and also pcmcia.dsk (for the pcmcia 10/100 card to give laptop eth capabiltiies).

:: Booted up laptop, juggled floppies, got to login and prompt

:: ifconfig'd eth0 and route'd it. Can ping various machines on my network so that works

:: mount'd a folder (/install) to the dfs folder on the 2000 machine
"mount 192.168.173.2:/slack /install"
i can walk the directry so i assume it either worked or my laptop has the mysterious mind-reading package already built in

:: started setup (fdisked on a previous boot so partitions are already setup)
ADDSWAP option used, swap setup ok
TARGET option used, partitions all assigned
SOURCE <<<==== ARGH

SOURCE selection is also the source (heh) of all my problems, I have tried:
1) FAIL manually pre-mounting my share to /install then setting /install as the install source
2) FAIL manually pre-mounting my share to /install then setting /install/slackware as the install source
3) FAIL auto-magically setting the DFS share from the SOURCE menu option and using the /slack DFS share folder as the source
4) FAIL same as above but using /slack/slackware

I would outline all of the specific results for each option but I seem to be getting mixed results (and have done this like 20+ times so i'm getting hazy and don't have the energy to set up my partitions 4 more times right now)

Basically the only two things I have gotten are:
1) It gives me the general package selection screen (kernel, gnome, X, etc), then afterwards the selection method screen (ie, expert, newbie, etc), then 7 seconds later tries to tell me everything was installed and I should reboot (which is obviously a dirty evil trick to confuse me, sincethis machine can't do anything in 7 seconds)
2) 3 lines of error messages flash by on the bottom of the screen. Alt-F4 isn't giving me any info but it looks something like:

/var/log/setup/tmp/tmpscript: cannot create /var/log/tmp/series: Is a directory
rm /var/log/setup/tmp/series: is a directory
rm /var/log/setup/tmp/series: is a directory

*warning, I had to hit the button like 50 times to watch those scroll by, so they may be a little incorrect


i'm going to try wiping out that folder manually and retrying the install pointing at /slack/slackare one more time. If anyone has some input I'd love it. Plan on writing this up afterwards since I think the last writeup for this laptop was a Slack 3.0 install (don't ask how old this thing :) ) and I want to see how well it handles 10.1 as a couch browsing machine (I'm betting on slow :P )

-T

Tried one more thing that was kinda nasty :)

mounted a directory to my nfs share /slack andthen i mounted another location to the original disc1 iso in /slack
Gotthe package selection screen, selected xpert on the next page, about 20 lines flashed by and apparently my installation is complete and I should reboot. Course it was the fastest install inthe world coming in at about 4 seconds :P

Basically still up the creek. Going to have a cigarette, maybe i'll think of something or someone will tell me the magic solution ;)

the message looked repetitvely like:
cannot create /mnt/etc/fstab [more stuff here]

I don't know if it is normal for a slack install to put the /etc/fstab under mount (seems to make sense since it is mounting /, /boot, etc under mnt) but that message was repeated about 15 times with one or two others i can't read (etes are blurry...durn 9" screens)

-T

When you set the path on an NFS share installation, you need to make sure you specify the directory that contains the packages, ie the that has "a", ap", "d" and so on, not the top level directory. If you don't then you get those 4 second installs. So if you're sharing slackware at /slackware then the proper path would be /slackware/slackware

Yeah, I found that one from one of the other posts and tried it (the type #2 and #4 attempts) but had to mess with some stuff before it worked again.
I looked at the package list file the slackware folder and it was 0 bytes (empty). The file one level higher had a package list that was good, so I tried moving that to slackware and altering all of the ./slackare/.../pkgname's to ./.../pkgnames (where ... was whataver, I just did a replace ./slackware/ with ./)

Unfortunately before i begin beating on it today I have to reboot windows (yet again) as it seems to be locking out NFS requests now, which locks up the install kernel's rpc call. I've tried restarting the portmap, et al services but it looks like it's going to take another black magic windows reboot :)

tried reading through some of the install scripts to see where the point of failure was (I'm assuming it's something I haven't done right) but so far I haven't found it. The streak of errors I received above seems to be related to cleaning up files after the install, which leads me to believe I'm messing something up mid-install that isn't creating the specified files correctly.

On a good note, I found a 4th floppy disk, so now I have the boot disk, 2 install disks, and pcmcia disk all on hand without juggling the image on the last disk between pcmcia and install.2 :)

Ok, I guess I banged into submission because I finally got to the individual package selection screen. Basically I uninstalled and reinstalled the NFS services for windows, re-modified the filelist file in the slackware folder to direct to the correct paths (originally it was empty) and now everything seems to be magically working. Thanks to everyone that read this and spared some thought for my plight :)

If I figure out exactly what I did I'll be sure to document it :P

-T

I hapened with me too.

The point is: Copy the contents of disk 1 and 2 to some directory in your nfs server, lets suppose, /home/slackware and export /home/slackware/slackware, that's it.

Hope it help.