I did not have chance to do this today, but your logic seems reasonable now that I've thought about it. You propose booting the slackware install, sdb, which is located on the external usb drive, by editing the menu.lst on the internal drive, sda. Ok! I will try it I am accustomed to editing sdb and avoiding editing sda because an edit of sda would leave me with a useless entry if sdb were not connected. Believe me, my sda, which boots four systems, has enough entries. However, like I said, I will try it before the week's end.

Veeall, Your scenario could work for me. I am just unaccustomed to doing it that way. My last three sentences to colorpurple21859, immediately above, explain why. As for the DVD not working, other than old iso files on new systems, this is the first time in my life that a new dvd iso has failed to boot an install. I am as mystified as you.

To the two of you: I'll report back before the week's end. Thanks again

Just to add, I have never been able to boot from the installers USB bootable stick... I carry around the install iso on a stick and use syslinux to boot the hugesmp.s image passing the root device on the command line.. pretty much the same as you would if you were booting system from DVD...

Hi

I am having similar problems booting an external usb hard drive. The boot process starts, and gives up when it cannot find the usb disk, despite loading the kernel from it. I have tried using mkinitrd, adding the ext4 and usb-storage modules, and got no further.

Booting from the DVD stops at the same place, as does booting from a USB pen drive. After using mkinitrd and modifying lilo, I at least got a boot prompt. None of the USB drives were being found.

Try this..

http://linuxconfig.dyndns.org/lazy/L...vable_USB_disk

/Magnus

U did say your slackware installation went fine. Ok how did you boot into your 2nd Hdd? From grub on you Primary Hdd which is sda. What OS are u running on sda? Can you boot into sda? What designation does your 2nd Hdd have in your bios when you boot your primary hdd?
You installed slackware on its own hdd but designated it a Slave Drive = sdb so you are trying to but an independent OS on a hdd that has a slave designation. Set your usb drive as a Secondary Master HDD u shld be able to use your install disc to boot at this point.
fdisk /dev/sdc
*Make sure root on sdc1 has an * designating the root partition as bootable.
In setup; You can keep current slackware partition scheme, change the target designation without formating your install should be gd i use slackware12.2 but you should be able to save changes..without reinstalling... i would pkgtool remove lilo and try to just ctrl alt delete ...boot from grub lst unless there is incompatibility with ext4? Hope not so u don't have to reinstall.

Slackware was my first linux experience and i never had an install fail and I used to dualboot win + slackware but never used grub or lilo. But it doesn't make sense that you wld have to install lilo onto slackware and grub on OS sda? Too complicated. Just make sure your kernel boot image is in root@sdc:/boot and call it from grub, thats what i did with loadlin, but i think grub has a lot more functions.
The simpler the less trouble.

I'd call it an idiosyncrasy with Slackware. My guess is that they are behind the times. I've booted micro operating systems & full operating systems on everything from usb to flashdrive to Virtualbox with nary a problem. Therefore, the only remaining culprit is the idiosyncratic Slackware and its bootloader, LILO, which is even more idiosyncratic.



My disk settings (master, boot flags, etc) are fine as eveidenced by the fact that Pclinux, Suse, Ubuntu, xubuntu, Slax & tinycore boot just fine, not that they're all currently installed, well some are.




Well, that makes one of us who has not done multiple installs to no avail. You did not read accurately. Grub had been previously installed on sda and it booted everything under the sun. Slackware gives no option but to install that the excessively complicated bootloader known as LILO. Had I the option of installing grub without having to boot Slackware from the accursed LILO bootloader, I'd naught a reason to post.

This has much merit. To test this, I did the following: I changed my boot order from its current setting to anything & then I changed it back to what it was before I made changes. This resulted in Slackware booting to the Slpashscreen. How to get Slackware to boot beyond the splashscreen, without going into either windows or other distros is beyond me. It is beyond me not because of my limited experience;it is beyond mr due to the extreme weirdness of Slackware. I thought that micros-operating syste (i.e., tinycore & Slax) were weird, but at least they function as advertised. Slackware seems capable of booting windows only. Bottom line: If the system is given time to recognize the usb, it will boot it. Unfortunately, the following is true: 1) No other distro has this problem, ONLY SLACKWARE. 2) Based upon my results, the page you referenced is outdated. The commands did not work. Are you sure that it is not waitusb=10? After all, command verbiage changes with time and Distro.

Anybody? Somebody please followup

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You don't give much details about your setup. The least, post the grub entry you used when trying to boot slackware.

If you boot from grub installed in sda along with another distro you don't have to deal with salckwares lilo at all.

How you managed to install your slackware, if dvd doesn't work? If you, still, were using slack dvd, then why it won't boot your box? Where it stumbles? Did you do everything by instructions displayed when installer starts?

I don't have an usb hdd, maybe really there lies the problem too, but after reading your post multiple times, i for one don't have a clue what your expectations were after plugging in usb disk and booting your computer - were you hopeing to boot from an boot entry on your /dev/sda grub without the need to modify it, or expected to be greeted with slackware lilo screen instead? For latter i think you should adjust your bios. Some bioses let you manually choose the boot device by hitting F11 for example, then it should load boot manager installed in chosen device be it lilo or grub.

Well, that page was written when 12.x was hot..

I did update it for 13.0 though:

Here is an updated page for 13.0 (This is a customized initrd. Do try with the stock initrd first, it will probably work!):

http://linuxconfig.dyndns.org/lazy/L...L/UUID_support

Using this initrd you can boot your system by label or uuid with something like this in lilo.conf:

------

It is easy to get confused about the lilo boot parameters. This is how it works:

rootdelay=10 is a kernel parameter and works without an initrd.
It will cause the kernel to pause the given amount of seconds before trying to mount the root paritition.
For example using the installation DVD: hugesmp.s rootdelay=10 root=/dev/sda1

waitforroot=15 is a initrd parameter, it does the same thing but from within the initrd.
For example using the installation DVD: hugesmp.s waitforroot=15 root=/dev/sda1

HTH

/Magnus

did you try copying the huge kernel to your internal hardrive and booting it, what kind of errors did you get.

First, I'd like to say thanks to all the people who have made an effort to help me resolve this issue.
My reason for installing Slackware was that I wanted to use a Distro that was more technically efficient and challenging than the most popular distros.
After my negative experiences with Slackare, I now know why Grub is the default bootloder for most Distros while LILO is relegated to being an option. LILO is too old and too inflexible to boot modern usb disk. As such, it should be an option for slackware not the default. I am not a Linux Guru by any stretch of the imagination; However, I am not a newbie either. I'd like to give an example.
I refused to burn the 10mb Tinycore ISO to a 700mb cd as this seemed to be a monumental waste of a cd. Therefore, I did the mount -o loop of the image. Next, cp -p the iso image to a sdb4. I edited the menu.lst of sda, and viola, it booted sdb4 as though it were an install cd. From sdb4, I was able to install tinycore to sdb1 (root) sdb2 (backup), sdb5(swap) & sdb6 (/tmp). This is an example of problem free booting from a USB drive, which is typical of Grub, but not typical of LILO & Slackware.

Look at this thread and compare it to the foregoing example and it becomes obvious that Slackware is dedicated to keeping the outdated bootloader LILO as its default bootloader. I'd bet all I'd have to do is add "wait for usb" or "rootdelay=12" to the kernel line," but I shall not. As I said, when I change my bootloader from its current setting to anything and then back to current setting, Slackware will boot. Actually, at this point, Slackware will boot windows, but not itself. This is a first for me. Although I laud the efforts of others to help me, In the beginning of my post, I listed my goals, methods, problems and troubleshooting method. Experience indicates that this effective, yet still I am asked questions that indicate this first post was read. I am tired of questions that make ask myself, why am I being asked this? Since I've wasted enough time, unrecoverable time, I will be moving on to a distribution that is possessed of technical efficiency and a real bootloader. Apparently, this means nothing slackware based. The truth is that unless someone has a computer setup from circa 1989-1994, one can expect problems with booting Slackware. It would seem that one would have to be willing to install LILO to the MBR of SDA to guarantee a boot of everything. This is garbage for two reasons: 1)The Windows "Malicious software removal tool" will delete an installation of LILO on the MBR of SDA (aka hda or hd0,0 for some), leaving one with an unbootable system. 2) Have you ever tried to get LILO to boot a recently installed OS? I have and it was not fun nor successful. The fact that the Slackware boot flashdrive (created with the Slackware boot DVD) does not boot Slackware is a damning indictment of Slackware and its boot process; the fact that the install DVD does not boot the installation is a damning indictment of Slackware and its boot process.

>>>>>
From my usb drive (sdb) I have problem free installed and then booted half of the top 10 distros listed at Distrowatch.com without incident. It is only the Slackware based distros that have weird or inferior boot requirements.
>>>>>
Kernel panic errors when booting from the install DVD. How retarded is that?
>>>>>
Thanks for the efforts to help me, everybody. It takes a character to spend time attempting to help another, so thanks. However, if I chance to help someone in the future, before responding, I will always read the first words of their thread, especially if it is organised into problems, problem origin, goals and troubleshooting completed thus far.
>>>>>
I am deleting my Slackware install now
>>>>>

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Since I am not a forum aficionado, I've no way of knowing if it's possible to mark this thread as solved. technically, only a work around has been found. Here it is.
>
My experiences & what not to do
Unlike Grub, LILO can't seem to function if it's placed in a boot partition. The purpose of a boot partition is simple: Install mutiple Linux installations on LVM, and this is important if one wants to boot Multiple installations of windows or or one installation of windows & one installation of BSD. If LILO is to be one's bootloader, keep the boot folder in root, not in a boot partition. LILO seems to function best if installed to root (assuming root is on a primary partition) or an MBR. Unlike Grub, LILO fails to function if it is installed to the root of a drive if said drive is a logical volume. Unlike Grub or BSD, LILO fails to function if installed on a USB drive, even if it's installed by itself. I know nothing of pendrive Linux and slackware. Unlike Grub, I could not install LILO to a USB floppy
My experiences & what I did:
1)During install, I put root on a primary partition, sda4, with the boot flag enabled.
2)After install, I placed the boot flag on the original boot partition, sda2.
3)Since that whole bit about putting vmlinuz in the kernel line never works, I chainloaded as shown below.
Slackware
title Slackware 13.0
root (hd0,3)
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1

Note: Change partitions according to your setup. I used (hd0,3) because Slackware is on /dev/sda4, which is (hd0,3) in grub. Remember, Grub counts using whole numbers not counting numbers

January 13, 2019: I am editing & deleting from this post to correct an inaccuracy in my post. I am so accustomed to marking a partition as active that I did so in Grub, resulting in my boot flag moving. I incorrectly blamed LILO. The above example will work because Grub, unlike LILO, will boot anything, USB or not.

To mark a thread as solved, use the "Thread Tools" drop-down menu near the top of the page, just above the first post.

Sorry you have had such a hard time getting the bootloader to work the way you want! I haven't read this whole thread, but am glad you have at least got a work-around for the time being

Sasha

Thanks for the pointers concerning Slackware config'n files & marking post.

I've been trying to make slackware run off USB but to no avail. I've tried following the instructions on that site linked to above there but it has a few typos?





From http://linuxconfig.dyndns.org/lazy/L...L/UUID_support :

What does the line "te init&" mean? That line dosen't work for me; I could not find any "te" command at all.

Secondly what about "root@localhost:/boot/initrd-tree# cp /lib/libpthread.so.0 lin" ? - should "lin" be lib/? . Also what about the same library being copied twice (libpthread.so.0) . Is there an extra library to copy?

Also how much else do I need? After the above commands there's a section "Slackware 12.1 and 12.2" . Do I need that part or all of it or ?

When I tried the above instructions my initrd came out to be around 1.2MB but the one from the website is roughly twice this. Something's missing x.x .

ljones

"te" is an alias for my favorite texteditor. You don't need that line..

Yep, the first copy is a typo, just ignore it.

You only need to read and understand the procedure for 12.1/12.2.. I was to lazy to rewrite everything for 13.0.

Did you install the dev files?

I might also have copied some extra modules, don't remember..

/Magnus