I have slack 3.5 on an older box. When I initially start the system, it has trouble running gpm (not even sure what that is! still a newb) the output is as follows:

Running gpm
Killing gpm
gpm: fatal error (shouldn't happen)
Running gpm
gpm-Linux is already running as pid 91
Killing gpm
Running gpm
Killing gpm
gpm: kill(): no such process
Running gpm
gpm is already running as pid 96
killing gpm
running gpm

It seems to work ok when it finally boots, but it's been bothering me, cause I think I messed something up. It is so far using only the defaults that came with it, as I just installed it the other day. the only thing that's not default is the kernel, I recompiled it with support for my network card, I am not sure if that's the problem though, it's been doing this since before I recompiled.

It's not really urgent or anything, I'm just playing around with my old box cause I wanted some experience networking, I have it connected to my Red Hat 8.0 box, I haven't really done much in the way of networking them yet though.

Slack 3.5 distro is so old that I am not sure that anything in recent histroy would even apply. But as for the gpm program it has to do with using a mouse in console mode, select text and then copy/past into different consoles. I have never used it, and it usually caused more problems for me when I attempted to run it. All of my console only servers do not even have a mouse and wouldn't want one. If the box is running X then it is a workstation and X provides excellent mouse support.

Your old box you are using may not even have a mouse, if that is the case then just kill program startup script. Look in the /etc/rc.d directory. See if you have rc.gpm file, if present then remove the execute bits or just delete the file. If rc.gpm is not present, then use the grep command to locate the file. (grep gpm /etc/rc.d/* )

If you have a PS/2 mouse and you want it to work, then the program may only support serial mouse seeing the age of it. I am not sure when PS/2 mice were supported in Linux. Slack 3.5 goes back about 5 or 6 years. For more info you might try using the man command (man gpm).

I only have one Slack 3.6 server still running and it has been butchered so much over the years that I wouldn't trust much of anything for a comparison.

But if you require more assistance then please post back some info.

Good luck.

you can go in the /etc/rc.d directory, and
remove all references to gpm

grep gpm *

then remove the lines in the files that show up,
or just comment them out.

ok, cool, I'll try that. like I said, this is just a pet project of mine, I do have a ps2 mouse, and X does support it, so I'll go ahead and try removing the gpm references.

Thanks, sorry to bring up legacy software.

yeah, that fixed it. of course, I can't use the mouse in the console anymore, but I never did anyway. Thanks ya'll