Not sure if this is the right forum, please move if appropriate.

I followed the instructions in the Slax documentation to download the 64 bit Slax 7.0.8 ZIP, unzipped it onto an SD card, and ran bootinst.bat to make the card bootable. This was done from a Slax liveCD session. The progress messages indicated that everything was successfully completed.

When I boot from the SD card, I get a message early in the process: failed to load com32 file /slax/boot/vesamenu.c32, and the boot hangs (the file does exist). I found some online links to other people with the same problem. For example, this one. However, I can't make any sense of the discussion.

Is anyone familiar with this problem and can describe, in newbie terms, how to fix it?

It could be that you didn't do it right, IDK, I wasn't there to see. Delete the filesystem on the flash drive and try using YUMI to install it. Worked for me. If you're running Adbuntu or Debian, you can use their Linux util, otherwise, just use WINE.

Thanks for your reply. From what I've read, this is some sort of bug.

Slackware is much more of a do-it-yourself Linux than, say, Ubuntu or Debian. You need to know your way around Linux to even get started with Slackware and I don't. Slax looked like an out-of-the-box solution and the LiveCD worked fine. Unfortunately, when Slackware has a problem, the solutions require way more than my present knowledge. The discussions of the problem and solutions are incomprehensible from my starting point.

I have limited familiarity with the inner workings of Linux, so I don't know what the implications are of mixing and matching boot components, for example. Pendrivelinux.com has a number of "universal" boot installers for flashdrives, including YUMI, but none of them mentions Slackware among the supported distros.

Perhaps this is a sign that I should just leave Slackware alone until I develop more fluency in Linux.

Which version of windows are you using to run the script? The link below to the Slax forums has some info. The second link is the Slax site with more info.

http://old.slax.org/forum.php?action...parentID=77740

http://old.slax.org/documentation_install_slax.php

If I am reading you correctly, you are running the script to install Slax from a liveCD of Slax.

So you should be following the Slax instructions, not running the Windows .BAT file.

You should either follow the instructions for Windows from within Windows, like this:
http://straightedgelinux.com/slax/start/zip.html

or you should boot from a liveCD of Slax and then follow the Linux instructions:
http://straightedgelinux.com/blog/py...ml#slax-to-usb

The error is because the vesamenu.c32 in the iso is old
copy isolinux.bin, vesamenu.c32, menu.c32, etc from /usr/share/syslinux (in slackware) to the /slax/boot folder and isolinux folder (isolinux.bin) of the Slax iso (extract iso first, replace as above, then run makeiso.sh/.bat to create new iso

Hey you're in Virginia too
Since you're using USB just replace vesamenu.c32 with a newer version from like a slackware install or another livecd like Porteus
Since Slax is kind of dead have you tried Porteus?
http://www.porteus.org/

newest is here
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=3977

1 members found this post helpful.

Slackware is supported. I've used it.

Yancek and notKlaatu, thanks for your input. I had tried to run the bootinst.sh but was unsuccessful. The instructions said to try bootinst,bat if that didn't work. They were missing the detail about setting bootinst.sh as executable. I did that, no luck. Ran chmod a+x bootinst.sh per the instructions. Still no luck. tried bash bootinst.sh (on a guess, not in the instructions), and it executed. It said the card was already bootable and produced the same progress messages as when I ran bootinst.bat. Then it failed the same way.

So, linus72, it looks like you're familiar with this error. Thanks for the solution. Do I need to create a new iso or can I just replace the files on the SD card?

no need to recreate iso since you're running from usb, just replace vesamenu.c32 from another newer distro either in /usr/share/syslinux or /usr/lib/syslinux or just download syslinux and grab it out of there.

bootinst.sh is only usable from Linux, bootinst.bat from windows

You dont need any of that if you have a Linux box to use to transfer contents of slax iso to usb

as root
mount your usb, say on /target, assuming it shows up as 'sdc1' in file manager or by doing 'blkid' as root.
mkdir /target
mount /dev/sdc1 /target
mkdir /tmp/iso
mount -o loop path/to/slax.iso /tmp/iso
cp -r /tmp/iso/* /target
syslinux /dev/sdc1
and you're done

1 members found this post helpful.

linus72, you answered my question before I finished typing it. I wasn't aware that Slax wasn't being maintained. Their web site is still pretty. I had tried Porteus and forget why I didn't use it. I'll have to look again.

BTW, I thought Gordonsville sounded familiar. We drove through a number of times on the way to western VA. I remember the circle. Love the area.

Ihatewindows522 - an analogy: Say you decided to learn Mandarin (Chinese) and had picked up a couple of words, and then had a question about it. If you received an answer that was several pages, entirely in Mandarin, it wouldn't be helpful at that stage in your learning. That's what I was referring to with me and Linux. Much with Slackware is more like a Linux erector set, where you build what you want from a kit, rather than an out-of-the-box working solution. Unless you have some basic knowledge of what the pieces do and how they go together, you can't get very far. Plus the documentation is not designed for novices, you need a solid knowledge base to understand it. Getting into Slackware can be a lot more overwhelming than starting with one of the Distros that are more user-friendly. It's not a good fit for most newbies.

fixer1234 I'm no coder or anything like that, just read and make a bunch of partitions on a hd and start installing different distros, running off usb/cd's etc, read the configs and break it down.
Slackware is easy because it is an erector set, letting you see "how" it works and not hiding it all or making it complicated.

It does take a while to learn the in's and out's, especially being like me an ignorant layman. lol

The alternative to Slackware vanilla is Salix, dependency resolution, etc makes it easier
When I first started using Linux I installed Arch, Slackware, Ubuntu, and Debian, learned each and went from there, got into some source-based distros like Lunar, Sorcery, and played with lots of "frugal" Linux like DSL, Puppy, Slax, etc that had persistent usb booted off a squashfs compressed filesystem.

For me, LFS and source based are too time involved, while Ubuntu is too much like windows
I love Slackware!

That's why I gave you the link to the tool that would do all of this for you. You don't have to know hardly anything about Linux to press a button and watch the computer do all the work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckXiq-qTA8o

To delete the filesystem of the flash drive, go into either GParted or the GNOME Disk Utility. Then select the flash drive, select the partition, and click the "Delete Filesystem" button. Then make a new ext4 partition on it that takes up the whole disk.

After that it's easy. Just like in the video, only you're using it in Linux.

What version of Slax are you using? the forum post you link to in your initial post is to the old.slax.org site. The latest version of Slax installs and runs fine on every test I have performed.

Slax is not unmaintained. It is slow to update, but it is still being developed and it works quite well (except when it doesn't, which apparently is the case here).

Can you confirm what version you are using?

Also what instructions are you following? I'd like to test all of this myself.

Cheers.