I installed slackware 9, and everything seemed to go fine. I rebooted, lilo came up like it should, then this prompt came up:

Welcome to Linux 2.4.20 (tty1)
(none) login:

anything i enter (root, guest, etc..) just causes the same prompt to reappear. These errors were also printed out above it

INIT: cannot execute "/etc/rc.d/rc.S"
INIT: Entering runlevel : 3
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/rc.d/rc/M"

also, somewhere further up in the messages is

VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.

I have no idea what any of it means, anyone know how to fix it?

Hi there,

A couple of things that concern me about your post:

A) '(none) login:' indicates you answered no to the question "Would you like to configure your network now?" when you should have answered yes to at least gain a host name (computer name) for your computer, even if you just chose default settings for the questions that followed that.

B) INIT: cannot execute "/etc/rc.d/rc.S"
INIT: Entering runlevel : 3
INIT: cannot execute "/etc/rc.d/rc/M"
indicates that you did not install the package that contains these files, thus, also preventing your login.

C) "VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly." you can ignore, unless you get a message asking you to login in a readonly mode. Then you're seriously going to need some help fixing it. But if that message pops up again, and then fsck follows to check your root, you're fine on that part, and you can ignore that.

Fix:
Reinstall, and when you get to the part of choosing what kind of install you would like to do, choose either Full, or Newbie. Either of these will install the necessary packages to you get you up and running, and fill in the blanks.

Good luck!

Well, I've reinstalled a few times now, and I've always gone through the network configuration (entered a host name, domain name, etc). I've also tried doing the full install and it still gives me the same error.

This is quite odd then. Are you using a custom install disc with added and/or removed packages, or a stock disc that either you bought or made from ISO?

Also, here's something you may want to try, start the bootup process with the CD or a boot disk, and at the prompt read the instructions on how to boot into your system, and proceed to do them, and let me know if you can log in that way, then we'll go from there.

I just recalled as I was writing this, this exact same thing happened to me a VERY long time ago, but this was because I was trying to go through the expert install, and installing packages on an individual basis, and didn't know exactly what I was doing at the time.

Let me know if you can log in via CD or boot disk bootup at all.