3 questions from slack newb
 

Hi there, this is my first post.

A bit about how I got here:

<SKIP THIS TO GET TO MY QUESTIONS>
I bought a computer that came with a custom version of winxp home, made by the manufacturer of the computer. To make a long story short this "custom" version was a pile of crap, and I wasn't going to shell out $400 for a copy of winxp pro.

So I d/led the SUSE 10.0 isos (all 5 of them) and gave it a shot. This system was pretty slick but crashed like you wouldn't believe. It even crashed during the newtwork upgrade the first time I tried to install it! I had to start all over again.

Then I found out about slackware, and how it's really stable. So I gave it a try.

This is where my troubles really began.

See the SUSE disk had installed GRUB into my MBR. At the time I didn't know what an MBR was or... it was really horrible. I had to make a win 98 disk at my local library, do a fdisk /mbr. That was the easy part, since everything in between the GRUB errors and the library was absolute hell.

But once I got slack going things went pretty good.
</SKIP THIS TO GET TO MY QUESTIONS>

On to my questions. First, I have a SATA drive which was not installed during my first install since I went with the default kernel (I also have an older IDE drive). I have made a sata.i bootdisk and have tried it out, since I was thinking of installing slack 10.2 onto my sata drive.

Now the troubling part is that during the setup I was getting a lot of errors. The setup was going on as per usual but the console was showing a bunch of "crap" (for lack of a better word) in the background.

I am wondering if this is just a quirk of the sata.i bootdisk or if this is a sign of things to come (bad things). When I installed onto my IDE drive using the default bootdisk I didn't get any errors like that.

Second thing I'm wondering about is whether to enable scsi emulation in salckware 10.2. I know how to do it, I'm just wondering whether I should do it, since it hasn't been an issue so far.

Third thing is if I do a full 10.2 install, should I still run swaret to update things? Should I use the --upgrade -a ???


Thanks for reading and I look forward to your responses.

1. I think it looks like it is your bootdisk, you could try booting your cd with test26.s kernel ( just pass it as a parameter at the prompt)

2. If you want to use default 2.4.31 Kernel you should enable scsi-emulation if you want to burn cds or dvds, if you plan to use 2.6.x Kernel don't use it, it won't be necessary

3. Wether you use swaret or not depends on what you like. It always worked for me, though many people don't like as it can mess with your system.
To use it you just have to do "swaret --update" and then "swaret --upgrade"

Hope I could help

greetz Isis

I think, all things considered in your case, I would go ahead and do a custom compile of 2.6.x for your machine, which will take care of most of your problems in one shot.

You will get SATA support properly in the kernel, take care of the need for SCSI emulation, and should fix any boot errors you are having (which are generally due to modules failing to load, not being needed, etc).

As for swaret, any unofficial Slackware package manager is going to be questionable with some people. The official Slackware packages do not lend themselves to dependency checking, so there is always a risk when updating a package, as there is no telling what dependencies it may have without reading the changelog or the documentation for it.

Having said that, Slackware has always been very stable and well thought out, so keeping updated with official Slackware packages from -current isn't that great of a risk unless a mistake has been made somewhere.

if u can boot ur machine, and if u only want to give support to sata drive then compile a kernel with sata support also(instead of going for test2.6.s kernel)
a. can u boot to ur machine(and u cant detect sata)?
if not and u are starting a fresh installation, try test2.6 kernel.

for scsi part 2nd thread...

u can upgrade to slack-current if u want but first make a stable running sys
regards

Thank you for the replies. I did a # badblocks /dev/fd0 and it didn't show any errors. It wrote to 79 sectors, but I didn't preformat it for linux, so maybe the extra sector is what was making things go wonky...?

But I guess I don't really need the boot and root disks after all! My cdrom apparently can boot by itself (it's a new computer and I never thought to check).

So what I did was just run the slackware 10.2 disk 1 cd, and enter "sata.i" as one of the parameters. I am running the system right now and it seems pretty stable I guess.

You all seem to thing the 2.6.x kernel will help me... I'm a bit nervous about that... I am willing to try it out though. I'll tell you all how I make out in 40 minutes or so, wish me luck!

And thanks for the info on swaret.

EDIT: Hmmm on second thought it is going to take a LONG time to compile 2.6.x, my current config seems to be okay for me, I think I'll put off compiling for a while (until I'm a bit better with linux).

Kernel compiling shouldn't take that long (once you learn :)). You can also install the 2.6.13 packages from the disk, then recompile it, or just use the .config file of 2.6.13 with a newer kernel. You can then in the menuconfig leave out stuff that you don't need. just make sure that the new lilo.conf has an entry pointing at your current vmlinuz-2.x.x file. If anything goes wrong, you can always boot with the old kernel.

Wow
 

I just tried to make the kernel... thought it would be fairly easy. Well it isn't. I spent 3 hours trying to configure the settings. I was trying to cross-check the options with info on the internet so I could understand what I was doing...

I am really out of time though, I guess I'll probably have to devote an entire weekend to making this kernel. I guess then I can tweak it and save it to a cd, right? I know I am eventually going to have to build the kernel since my dvd player (mplayer) is going too slow based on my system specs.

It is a lot simpler than I expected though, just very time consuming.

Well, I'm off to get some iced cream, wish me luck ;)

Why don't you consider just sticking with the 2.4.31 kernel? Compiling is too difficult for new people and full of quirks. Way over most new user's heads and frustrating to no end.

To enable scsi emulation with the 2.4.x kernel, add the following boot option to your kernel boot command in GRUB or LILO:

hdc=ide-scsi

If your CD/DVD drive is the second device on your second IDE port then modify the above to:

hdd=ide-scsi

If the second device on the first IDE port then:

hdb=ide-scsi

As example, I use GRUB for my boot loader and my boot options look like this:

title Slackware 10.1 - 2.4.28 - KDE 3.3.2
kernel (hd0,12)/vmlinuz-ide-2.4.28 root=/dev/hda23 ro hdc=ide-scsi vga=3 ide2=noprobe quiet

Because I can't get DMA for my dvd-rw. I've already configured lilo to load the scsi emulation thing. If I could get DMA to work I might consider keeping this kernel, but from what I hear you need to compile a new kernel with support for your IDE interface.

SATA support and DMA (for an unusual IDE controller) are two things you want to have compiled into the kernel in the first place.

So if he already has to compile the kernel to get these features, there isn't much sense going with the 2.4 branch if he can make the jump to 2.6 and get the performance increase it offers. Plus it is better to use the real DVD/CD burner support added in 2.6 than the SCSI emulation from 2.4.

It's not like it is any harder to compile 2.6 than 2.4.

install 10.2 with sata.i kernel(2.4.31) which includes ide support too. You can check at slackware web page what test26s(2.6.13) includes support for if you want easy 2.6x kernel install.

hai save the .config file only.

One good way to do your first kernel compile is to start with a config you know works. Try downloading the 2.6 sources from slackware and starting with the standard Slack configuration. Then alter settings which are relevant to you.

Brian