[SOLVED] Installed Slackware 13.37 and won't boot

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 10:24 PM

I am fairly new at this and I need some help. I installed Linux Slackware 13.37 and it installed fine. It told me to restart the computer using at+ctrl+del. I restarted all I get it is a blinking cursor. No hard drive activity or anything.

Please be gentle with me. :-)

NS

Diantre · 07-03-2011, 11:19 PM

Hello, and welcome to LQ!

One question. Do you have other systems installed in your computer, or only this Slackware installation?

Put the installation DVD back in your drive and restart with it. In the boot screen it says something like this:

Quote:

In a pinch, you can boot your system from here with a command like:

boot: hugesmp.s root=/dev/sda1 rdinit= ro

Type the underlined command at the bottom of the screen where the boot: prompt is. Note that you need to know where your root partition is, that's the /dev/sdaX above, just replace the X for the correct partition number where you installed it the first time. Also note there's a space after rdinit=.

That should boot your new installation. Try that and post back.

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 11:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diantre

Hello, and welcome to LQ!

One question. Do you have other systems installed in your computer, or only this Slackware installation?

Put the installation DVD back in your drive and restart with it. In the boot screen it says something like this:

Type the underlined command at the bottom of the screen where the boot: prompt is. Note that you need to know where your root partition is, that's the /dev/sdaX above, just replace the X for the correct partition number where you installed it the first time. Also note there's a space after rdinit=.

That should boot your new installation. Try that and post back.

Ok. I did that but I used huge.s instead of hugesmg.s so I used the command line like you said but used huge.s . Okay. It said there was an error finding sda1 so that must not be it. I'm going to go in to cfdisk and looking to see what the partition is. Also, I didn't do a swap partition... is that bad?

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturnal_Spook

Ok. I did that but I used huge.s instead of hugesmg.s so I used the command line like you said but used huge.s . Okay. It said there was an error finding sda1 so that must not be it. I'm going to go in to cfdisk and looking to see what the partition is. Also, I didn't do a swap partition... is that bad?

Also, I put a partiton for Linux for the whole 20 GB, flags are boot, part type is Primary, FS type is ext2. Sound right?

Oh and only Slackware is only going to be on the system.

Diantre · 07-03-2011, 11:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturnal_Spook

Also, I put a partiton for Linux for the whole 20 GB, flags are boot, part type is Primary, FS type is ext2. Sound right?

Oh and only Slackware is only going to be on the system.

Try using hugesmp.s first, it should work. I recommend you using ext4 instead of ext2. Nothing wrong with ext2, it's just the old Linux filesystem. What kind of computer you have anyway? Some specs would be helpful.

About the swap partition, it's not strictly necessary, but it's also recommended to have one. I always create one out of habit, suggested size is half your system RAM.

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 11:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diantre

Try using hugesmp.s first, it should work. I recommend you using ext4 instead of ext2. Nothing wrong with ext2, it's just the old Linux filesystem. What kind of computer you have anyway? Some specs would be helpful.

About the swap partition, it's not strictly necessary, but it's also recommended to have one. I always create one out of habit, suggested size is half your system RAM.

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...ov.htm#1101565 -> What I'm working with.

Should I just delete the partition then and start anew?

Diantre · 07-03-2011, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturnal_Spook

Should I just delete the partition then and start anew?

If you're dedicating the whole HDD to this installation, I don't see why not, but it's up to you.

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diantre

Try using hugesmp.s first, it should work. I recommend you using ext4 instead of ext2. Nothing wrong with ext2, it's just the old Linux filesystem. What kind of computer you have anyway? Some specs would be helpful.

About the swap partition, it's not strictly necessary, but it's also recommended to have one. I always create one out of habit, suggested size is half your system RAM.

I used hugesmp.s and I am now at root@darkstar....

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 11:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diantre

If you're dedicating the whole HDD to this installation, I don't see why not, but it's up to you.

Okay. Give me a second to redo. I will post in about a half and hour because I have to pick up my brother from work. Thank you in advance for all your help.

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-03-2011, 11:58 PM

Should I make it primary or logical? I will be back in 20 minutes. :-)

Diantre · 07-04-2011, 12:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturnal_Spook

Should I make it primary or logical? I will be back in 20 minutes. :-)

You can create up to 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and one extended. The extended can have logical partitions inside.

It actually depends on you. For instance, I find the following layout comfortable for my purposes:

Code:

/dev/sda1 -- /boot        (primary)
/dev/sda2 -- /            (primary)
/dev/sda3 -- /home        (primary)
/dev/sda4                 (extended)
/dev/sda5 -- /mnt/data    (logical)
...

Probably you can do alright with / in /dev/sda1, /home in /dev/sda2 and a swap partition in /dev/sda3.

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-04-2011, 12:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diantre

You can create up to 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and one extended. The extended can have logical partitions inside.

It actually depends on you. For instance, I find the following layout comfortable for my purposes:

Code:

/dev/sda1 -- /boot        (primary)
/dev/sda2 -- /            (primary)
/dev/sda3 -- /home        (primary)
/dev/sda4                 (extended)
/dev/sda5 -- /mnt/data    (logical)
...

Probably you can do alright with / in /dev/sda1, /home in /dev/sda2 and a swap partition in /dev/sda3.

Okay. Now how should I split them up memory wise?

Diantre · 07-04-2011, 12:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nocturnal_Spook

Okay. Now how should I split them up memory wise?

A full Slackware 13.37 installation is about 6 GB, so give the root partition at least twice that. The rest you can use for your home partition. For the swap use half of your RAM, for example, if you have 1GB of RAM, make a swap of 500MB.

What's the size of your HDD and how much RAM in your system? The specs for your computer show that you can have up to 1GB of RAM.

Nocturnal_Spook · 07-04-2011, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diantre

A full Slackware 13.37 installation is about 6 GB, so give the root partition at least twice that. The rest you can use for your home partition. For the swap use half of your RAM, for example, if you have 1GB of RAM, make a swap of 500MB.

What's the size of your HDD and how much RAM in your system? The specs for your computer show that you can have up to 1GB of RAM.

I assuming it is 256 since I haven't used this computer in ages. It's a 20 gb drive.

Diantre · 07-04-2011, 12:55 AM

Think about the software you want to install in the computer, if you plan to install a lot of software, you'll need some space in your root partition. For example, I have the full Slackware64 13.37 installation, around 70 packages from slackbuilds.org and a few I've compiled, my root partition usage is 6.9GB.

Now think about your own personal files, those go into your /home partition. Then divide the space accordingly.