Slackware Installation FAQ #1 confounding "install from the ISO9660 image if no CD"
 

I do not understand this statement...

Is this saying that every operating system, or at least in this example, the MS-DOS filesystem is based on a kernel somewhat like Linux is based on a kernel. And that the MS-DOS kernel has a loopback feature/command/process/device that we can use to mount the ISO9660 image to the kernel?

Is this in layman's terms what this statement is basically saying???

Continuing -

Ok yes, clear enough - I have a ISO9660 image that I downloaded using a Windows 2000 Operating system. The iso96660 image is residing on C: a NTFS partition of my hard drive.

I am not sure i understand this statement.

I FIRST read this to mean that the Slackware boot and root disks were two different CD's that I would use to boot my system with. This is nonsensical because again - I am trying to boot Slackware WITHOUT a CD. This statement had me using TWO separate different slackware CD's.. the slackware boot cd-disk AND the slackware root cd-disk...I thought that Disc1 alone was enough to boot since it included ALL of package A. Resulting in utter confusion......

After reading "Boot the Slackware boot and root disks for your system." approximately 20 more times I BELIEVE this statement is saying:
Boot the computer using your existing native operating system (your root disk) your C: drive using Windows 2000 for instance. At the same time, naturally the ISO9660 image which contains the slackware boot files will also boot up since in this example they are BOTH on C:... If the ISO9660 image is on ANOTHER data drive of whatever type load/mount/boot up this drive along with your system root disk ie your windows operating system, the one containing that alleged aforementioned "loopback device"


I read this to mean that assuming your native normal operating system (windows) is running on a C: a non-scsi hard drive AND that the ISO9660 image is also on C: go to start run to open the Windows Command window and type:


mkdir is a command in both Linux and MS-DOS, to create a new directory.
I believe we are "talking" to the MS-DOS kernel so I assume this is the MS-DOS command
mkdir we are refering to. The option IN LINUX is for parents "creates the specified intermediate directories for a new directory if they do not already exist." I assume(often troublesome)this is the same for MS-DOS as well.Online MS-DOS documentation is much more sparse and non-congruent than for Linux.

makes "dos" the name of the newly created directory

Continuing to second line of code given: mount - I can not find mount listed as any type of MS-DOS command. So now I am confused as to what exactly i am issuing commands to. I am finding variations of MS-DOS commands that are different depending on the type of Windows (windows95,98,2000,xp,vista etc) running natively. I am finding a mountvol command
but again, am I talking to a Linux kernel somehow??? from the windows command prompt or should I be trying to find MSDOS commands that equate to these linux commands given or ARE these MS-DOS commands that I can't find documented??

In Linux mount -t "type device dir This tells the kernel to attach the file system found on device (which is of type type) at the directory dir. The previous contents (if any) and owner and mode of dir become invisible, and as long as this file system remains mounted, the pathname dir refers to the root of the file system on device... This invocation does not actually mount anything"http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount um - THAT is a little less than clear.

But pressing on - "The argument following the -t is used to indicate the file system type"
so in my example assuming windows 2000 I would change vfat to ntfs

reads C: directory named "dos"

The 4th line given: I am not finding any MS-DOS command mknod either. http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

So I just gotta stop here and ask for help. Does anyone here actually fully understand what Slackware's Installation FAQ#1 is detailing? I do not. But I am kinda slow. Please help me understand.

Source:http://slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=installation#1

Well, I will put this the nicest way possible...but essentially every line you just wrote is wrong. Nothing that you just wrote, or interpreted from the documentation, is accurate.

It seems that your problem stems from a misunderstanding of the very first line:

This has nothing to do with another operating system, only the filesystem. What this means is that, if you are booted into the Slackware installer, you can mount a CD ISO from another drive or device (external USB HDD, Windows partition, etc). It doesn't mean that you can install Slackware through another OS or anything like that. This is only to prevent having to burn a CD assuming you can boot via an alternate method.

Speaking of alternate boot methods, you get a little farther off track with this line:

The boot and root disks refer to floppy disks, not CDs. As a general rule, a "disk" is a magnetic device, and a "disc" is a CD/DVD (as in discus).

So the short answer is, no, you can't install Slackware through Windows. Perhaps now would be a good time to explain what exactly you are trying to do, and what your requirements for the installation are.

Once upon a time, (before my first Slackware), the distribution was done on multiple floppy disks.
Then you could boot up a computer from a single floppy disk and then build the installer root file system from further floppy disks. This facility is not available in modern Slackware as the kernel size is now too large to be accommodated on a single floppy disk.

The above commands are to be used in the Slackware Linux installer environment, a very minimal Linux environment with the tools needed to install Slackware.

If you are wanting to install Slackware on a system without an optical drive, then you need a way to boot your system with the Slackware installer environment. This can done by USB if your system supports booting from USB (see http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/welcome-windows-user/ ) or via a network boot if you make an appropriately setup PXE server available.

MS3FGX, Thank you for the fast response and letting me down gently. I am with you.

I believe I am still just trying to "boot into the Slackware installer".

I have an image that i have not been successful buring to disc. (not to be confused with disk, thank's again)

After reading this Installation I ASSUMED this to mean INITIAL installation of Linux kernel onto hard drive. Not that I had already booted up from Linux and looking a way to move data to hard drive.

OK, so I am back to finding some way to boot into the Slackware installer.

Option A. Figure out how to burn a good copy of disc 1 to 650MB optical media.
Been using InfraRecorder for burn but "Process exited with code: 254" Twice in a row.
Additionally, I've been unable to learn a way to checksum of burned copy from windows.
Boot attempts using this burn results in Disk error 20, AX=42FD, drive EF

Option B. Learn/discover how to update the BIOS on an Intel 85010A.0078 Motherboard currently does not currently support USB boot.
I have never done before and not sure if even physically possible for this model MB
Although would be really nice to be able to boot from USB in future

Option C. Learn how to network Vista laptop to Windows 2000 desktop and what in the world a "PXE server" is thank you allend.
I have never done this before seems the most complicated/difficult.(but i don't really know)
But again would be REALLY nice to learn how and do this in the future. I believe the LESS i have to do in windows as far as configuration the better. Who knows, this might be the simplest option and i am just ignorant

Option B - success!

Never was able burn an error free disc using Infra Recorder, Power2Go, or Roxio

STILL haven't successfully installed Slackware yet but at least I have a bootable USB drive now.

Thank you MS3FGX and allend! I could not have even made it this far without you. That http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/welcome-windows-user/ link so far has been great.

You could also try Iso Recorder: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
Also, be sure to always burn iso image CDs at the slowest possible speed for best results.
There is a program to check md5sums on Windows: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ho...20on%20Windows
You could also try downloading your Slackware iso images from another mirror just to rule out a corrupted iso image as the source of the problem.

@Allend
Great link

dc4bbf11c0779e2ef16c8aca99aeabd0 slackware-13.1-install-d1.iso

"MD5 Check Sums are the same."

Add ISO Recorder to the failure list

ISO Recorder- "Operation has failed. Code:80004005, Reason: Unspecified error"

InfraRecorder version 0.51.0.0 (x86) - "Process exited with code: 254."

Roxio - "Roxio failed to burn this disc (Extended error: 0x80041024)."

Power2Go - I failed record the error message from Power2go.

All of these various media result in a "Disk error 20, AX=42FD, drive EF" error message during attempts to boot slackware 13.1.

Attempted burns by using two different types of blank optical media.

Hi,

'Disk error 20' is a media error. The media is CD-RW or DVD-RW?

What about some hardware information, type of Optical drive(s)? You are using the same R/W drive too boot the system? If not can you change the boot order to the R/W drive to boot from?

You could have a compliance error for the R/W drive and the boot drive.

You marked this thread as Solved. How did you solve the issue?

ONEBUCK! The man, the myth, the legend (and Magician)-

I wanted to first say thank you for your many contributions to the so you want to be a slacker sticky.

I first marked this thread solved because:

A. MS3FGX answered the original question of the thread " what in laymen's terms was Installation FAQ # 1 saying" and that

Quote:

essentially every line

that i first interpreted from FAQ #1 was NOT accurate.

B. Following allend's informative post regarding creating a bootable USB drive I successfully completed this task and THOUGHT that my issues with my initial installation of slackware were resolved.

At that time and marked the thread as "solved" at that time

unfortunately however, I have since discovered that contrary to Intel's documentation GB85010A.86A Standard BIOS P18 BIOS does NOT support USB Boot.

I am not any closer to installing Slackware 13.1 than I was nearly 100 man hours ago.

Following allend's 3 options:
Option A Burn a good ISO image - Failure
Option B Boot from USB - Failure due to BIOS incapability
Option C PXE installation - Still attempting

I just saw tommcd's suggestion of using ISO Recorder to attempt an error free burn on this 'solved' thread so i wanted to inform any readers of my failure using this software package as well as document the various error messages issued by the various burning software packages while attempting to burn my slackware-install-d1.iso image.

The media was CD-RW and the "Disk error 20, AX=42FD, drive EF" during boot is to be expected given that every one of my burn attempts have resulted in some sort of error message DURING the burn itself. Just out of curiosity I still attempted to boot from the media even though I had received an error message during the burn and I did not really expect it to work. It does not.

The booting CDRW is attached to a Intel 850GB desktop motherboard with a clean 80gb ide drive. The burn attempts were completed using two different Vista laptop's on two different dvd-rw's.
Burns were attempted using both 650MB Zenith and 700MB Optimum CDR media. I followed the various documentation instructions to complete the burn attempts and I have successfully burned iso images using both this media and these DVD-RW's in the recent past. Infra-Recorder is usually my software of choice. However, no such luck this time.

If I had a job in the matrix I would've purchased a box copy weeks ago. Rather than the ongoing wall to forehead.

Hi,

Look at 'sbootmgr/' to see if you can boot that way. If your BIOS is that old then you probably do have a floppy drive.

You should be able to create 'sbootmgr' and then boot available devices from the recognized device(s). Be sure to have the media in the desired device.

Another way would be to have the /slackware on the HD or USB and use mini ISO image which is a CDROM to boot, and install packages from an NFS server or local hard disk or even the USB.

The above link and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

Your media error could be related to the 4K vs 8K block issues with the older BIOS.

Oh yes, I am sorry. No Floppy drive...

I am not making any progress turning my Vista laptop into a PXE server to boot and install slackware. I hate window's dialog box chaos. I wish I could just run a script like would work for any linux machine.

I will try and burning the smaller image with the mini-ISO image. I remembered reading about those earlier but couldn't find them again when I tried to find them. Was searching under minimal or minimalistic rather than mini.

thanks onebuck.

No error on burning the mini-iso with infra-recorder and for the FIRST time after working at it for about 90 man hours I AM FINALLY LOOKING AT A Slackware Boot prompt!!!

Onebuck YOU are the man, thank you so much. Now, I just need to figure out how to mark this thread solved TWICE!

I love the Linux Forum Community.

For future reference, there is a way that you may be able to boot ISO images from USB even when the BIOS does not support booting USB hard disks.

Some flash USB "thumb" drives have support for a feature called U3. Sandisk Cruzer thumb drives are one example of a product with U3. U3 has hardware to make the thumb drive appear as both a USB CD-ROM and USB hard disk. There is open-source software that can be used to partition the space assigned to the CD-ROM versus hard disk on a U3 drive. You can partition the CD-ROM space to 650 MB (or whatever is needed) and then write the ISO image into the CD-ROM area of the U3 drive. The BIOS will see that as a USB CD-ROM drive and may be able to boot it like a normal CD-ROM.

Ordinary flash drives without U3 will appear as USB hard disks and the BIOS might not support booting them. Also, in order to boot from a (non U3) flash drive you may have to create multiple partitions. Some BIOS software assumes that a USB hard disk with only one partition is not able to boot. You can create a second, small partition with no files to get around that problem.

Be careful if you are creating flash drive partitions in Windows. Windows has some limitations when accessing a flash drive. If the drive hardware indicates that it is removable, Windows will not create or detect more than one partition on the drive. On some (not all) flash drives you can clear the removable bit reported by the hardware. Lexar flash drives have that feature and can be set to "not removable" to support multiple partitions. There are also special "filter" drivers that you can install on Windows to make Windows think the drive is not removable.

I keep one U3 flash drive around just so that I can boot older computers with USB CD-ROM support but without USB hard disk support. I also try to use Lexar drives to make my USB boot sticks because Windows can see all the partitions if I clear the "removable" bit on the Lexar thumb drive.

If you're having problems burning CDs, check that the drive is configured correctly for Master versus Slave on the IDE bus. Also, some optical drives only work when configured as a Slave. I've even seen some that have to be configured as Slave when they are the only drive connected to the IDE controller. Be careful of using Cable Select, since that only works when the motherboard, cables and drives all support Cable Select. It is always safe to set the drives specifically to Master versus Slave without using Cable Select. Just make sure you have one Master and one Slave on each IDE port connected to one cable.

Other CD burning problems can be due to setting the DMA mode incorrectly in the BIOS. Try using slower DMA modes in the BIOS configuration to see if the drive behaves better. If higher speed modes don't work, check that you have the required 80-wire grounded cable for high speed EIDE.

When multiple programs and operating systems report errors burning disks, you usually have a hardware problem or a batch of bad media. Try at least two brands of media and don't let blanks sit around for a few years (they may no longer burn properly).

This is interesting. Can you provide an example of such software please? Would GParted or Parted Magic do this? Or do you need something else for this?