Short version, Is there anyway to install Slackware64 from a DVD which contains all the files, but is not an ISO or bootable DVD?

Explanation:
I have a slow connection so a friend, who knows how to download an ISO and burn a DVD and sent it to me.
However, he did not burn the ISO to the DVD, he just, for whatever reasons copied the files and directories to a folder on the DVD labeled "SlackDVD."
It is all there, just as it appears at any of the download sites, text files, directories and all.

So my question is, Is there anyway to install it from this DVD? Anyway to make this a bootable DVD by burning it to another DVD?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

If you have a USB stick to spare, and the computer is able to boot from "USB HDD" then you can copy the usbboot.img found in the "usb-and-pxe-installers" directory to the USB stick (using "dd" in Linux).
After you boot from the USB stick, select "Install from a Slackware CD or DVD" as the SOURCE from which to install packages.

Eric

Thank you for the idea, but that is not an option.

I've noticed when looking at the DVD in Konqueror it shows the DVD drive as "Burn Folder" and the the SlackDVD as a directory under it.

Would it be possible to copy the SlackDVD folder to another partition on the hard drive and install it from there?

Would it be possible to copy the SlackDVD folder to the Hard drive and the use K3b to burn it to another DVD and be able to boot that DVD?

Would it be possible to have K3b burn another DVD directly from the first DVD?

Again, Thanks.

would it be possible to do this with a DVD? That is burn the SlackDVD directory to another DVD and also put a boot.img on the DVD along with the SlackDVD directory?
Thanks.

How to make a bootable Slackware DVD ISO image is explained in the file README.TXT in the isolinux directory of your DVD.

You do not need K3B for that, just follow the instructions.

Tried that. The resulting "iso" was 38k in size, so that didn't work.
I have a drawer full of old hard drives so I put one in an external USB hard drive case and copied the usb boot image to it and was able to boot from that, but it wouldn't install the files from the DVD. So I then took another hard drive out of storage and tried to copy the DVD to a 10 gig FAT partition. Konqueror told me it was copying 72.1 GIGs to the partition and sure enough, when the copy window said it had moved 10 gigs of data it stopped and said the disk was full.
Took yet another hard drive and installed in the case and while it copied the data faster, the result was the same. No joy............

Well, after about 11 hours of trying various things I was able to transfer the SlackDVD directory to a linux partition on the computer hard drive without any errors.
I then made a second attempt to create an ISO image using the commands as pointed out by Didier Spaier in reply #5. It looked promising, but at about 20% it reported,

"mkisofs: No space left on device. cannot fwrite 32768*1"

It is running on a 100 Gigabyte partition and it runs out of space??!!! How much room does it need to create an ISO?

Thanks.

Please send output of "df -h" and the exact command you issued to create the ISO image.

Well, this is what happened, believe it or not. Perhaps someone could explain how?

After many hours of moving things around and copying the Slackware64 files from the DVD to the hard drive, I made an ISO. The result was 72 gigs or so in size. While the ISO process was running I noticed the same directory name over and over again so I went through the directories one at a time until I came to the slackware64 directory.

There is suppose to be a text file in that directory labeled, "filelist.txt." Instead, I found a directory with that name. Inside that directory were all the folders and files from the parent directory slackware64 along with another copy of the directory "filelist.txt." Clicking on that revealed another "filelist.txt" directory, and another, and another, and another. It was duplicated 40 times.

Now all of this couldn't have fit on the DVD so somehow when one goes to copy the information to the hard drive there is some sort of error (or hack) that copies all those directories and their files FORTY times! Forty-one counting the parent directory.

I deleted all but the parent directory and the next ISO was 23 gigs which is still too big, so I went looking again and found a similar problem a folder with the name of "rawrite.exe" in the isolinux/sbootmgr directory. Again there were 40 copies.

The next ISO was 12 gigs so I went looking around again and found the same problem with /source/xap/vim-givm. I deleted those 40 copies of all the source directories and files and was finally able to make a 3.7 gig ISO.

Once made and burned to a DVD it booted up and the installation of Slackware64 went flawlessly and in record time. A full "everything, including the kitchen sink" install in 32 minutes flat.

So, again, does anyone know how something like this could happen. Oh, BTW, I checked the DVD and, yes, the duplicate directories are there, but that much data couldn't possibly fit on the DVD so how was it copied 40 times to the hard drive?

Thanks.

There is more than one way to skin a cat.

The good question is: how did that happen in your case.

It's hard to say, as we still don't know exactly what command you did issue.

I suggest you find it with the 'history' command (typed as the user under which identity you were logged in) and post it here.


Tip: you can filter all commands you typed containing some word (say apple) this way:
EDIT. Or simply type:
and append the file "attachment.txt" to your next post (check first that it doesn't contain confidential information).