i could use some help.

i'm trying to install and setup from the slackware 9.1 CD's. i got to the stage where the kernel has booted using a ramdisk as root. i have run cfdisk and gotten my disk partitions initialized. i have the files from the CD's on a FAT file system, and i've mounted it.

now, i run setup. i've answered all the questions, and selected all the packages i want. i select the "full" option to install with no prompting....

i hit "enter", and setup says it's doing the work. in about 10 seconds, it comes back and says it's done. wow, that was fast.

too fast. when i look at my new root file system, it has not been populated.

what's going wrong? i didn't see any error messages from setup. there was some text, maybe one or two lines, that flashed by really fast, and then disappeared before i had a prayer of reading it. i also checked /var/log/messages and some other places for error messages. nada.

suggestions, please?

i booted with:

loadlin bzimage rw root=/dev/ram initrd=initrd.img load_ramdisk=1

where the initrd.img came from the isolinux/ dir on CD disk 1.

thanks for any advice.

why are you doing this?? can't you install from the CD's??

thanks for your reply.

i'm not sure that i need the files to be on the FAT fs. i did put them there because i wasn't sure i could access the CD-ROM under the circumstances. my CD-ROM drive is a USB drive. how do i access it? i don't see any usb stuff in /proc.

Slackware setup will scan for a CDROM with the Slackware setup files. They can be used from elsewhere, but it's a little trickier.
If you'll boot with a RUNT Linux(Slackware 9.1 compatible) boot disk, that should let you use your CDROM.
Otherwise, search the forum for 'install from HD'

i'm not sure i understand your answer. are you saying that i can use my USB CD-ROM drive in the setup? when i scan the list of supported CD-ROM drives, i don't see "USB".

RUNT does sound cool. but i'm already past the stage of being able to boot linux, and i've already got the data on a FAT partition on the hard disk.

You can install fine from hard disk also. just make sure you have duplicated the Slackware directory structure, with a folder called 'slackware' and sub-directories 'a', 'd', 'l', etc, like the ones on ftp.slackware
Then during setup choose to install from a partition and give the name of the partition. then it will ask for the exact directory, in case you have the files in a sub-directory. It should find them this way.
the thing about the RUNT disk is that it loads the USB modules, which aren't availabe in other boot disks.
have a look at www.amigolinux.org for an easier way to start a Slackware 9.1 compatible install.