Hi,

Gene,
Side note: How about updating the original post #1 of your thread to note the change in URL for the tutorial.

Alright, I've installed Slackware. I'm following 2bandhand's guide and am at the point where I should select a different kernel. I use the command "/usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh" and just as when I tried it in the virtual machine I get "No such file or directory".

But that's not all. I can't even get into Slackware anymore. I have no idea why, I didn't mess with anything that would cause such an error. The only things I can think of that might have something to do with it is changing the default run level from 3 to 4 and, through KDE, setting it to automatically log me in. When I rebooted it got past the boot script but after that the screen went black and the only thing I could see was a frozen cursor in the top left corner. It's done this every time I try to boot into it.

Have you tried running 'startx' from run level 3 before you did this change just to see if everything works correctly?

Anyways... CTRL + ALT + 6 and you'll be in a console again in no time ( telinit 3 .. find the problem, fix it.. try 'startx' beforehand )

About the mkinitrd command.. It should work... Have you actually checked if the file exists? (it should exist)

/usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh is not executable by default. [edit]Hm, looks like it is...I'm either imagining things or it wasn't in 13.0...[/edit] You can either make it so using chmod or just run the following:
That should give you the proper mkinitrd command to run to generate an appropriate initrd for you system. Note that you then have to modify /etc/lilo.conf to actually get it to boot the generic(-smp) kernel with the initrd.

Never tried startx because I never imagined that selecting an option to automatically boot in from a KDE customization menu would cause such a problem. Never had any problems when I chose that option in Gnome in Ubuntu and Debian.

Tried that command and no, I'm not taken to a console, I'm still stuck on that screen. I don't even think the system is getting a chance to boot up because as soon boot script (at least, I think that's what it's called when you turn your system on and watch a bunch of information scroll by before you get the the desktop is called)it goes black and freezes.

I wonder if I could fix this from an Ubuntu Live CD.... Anyone who has any ideas on what file may need modifying, throw me some suggestions.

Hmm... weird that switching to a console doesn't work... Anyway... if you have a live CD onhand.. just mount the slackware partition and modify slackware's /etc/inittab. You should replace the line
with .

This will make slackware boot in console mode. After that, delete the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf (if it exists) and you may or may not need to install 3rd party video drivers. Slackware doesn't come with all of them (nVidia comes to mind). You can download them using lynks (or you can download them while on the live Ubuntu and put them somewhere like /root/). Of course this depends on what your sistem is made of and on your needs.

P.S. After deleting /etc/X11/xorg.conf you can try running "startx". If the system hangs just press CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE to close the X system and delete that file again before continuing. Don't switch back to runlevel 4 until startx actually starts.

Well that worked, so one of my problems have been solved. I've gotten other smaller weird ones. Like:

- Something is off with the terminal. When using it, my cursor blinker looks like it's farther away than it is. For instance, if I type slackpkg-upgrade-all instead of the cursor residing one space to the right of the last character it looks like I hit tab, even though I didn't.
- When I reboot, none of my desktop effects take effect until I go into the menu and click apply again.
- Every time I start sbopkg now after a reboot I have to let it re-create the directories that it does upon the first time you run it.
- sbopkg looks messed up. Text isn't aligned right and the category names on the left aren't fully shown.

Those only started happening after I got back into Slackware today after changing default run levels and deleting xorg.conf. I do have have proprietary video drivers installed by the way, I installed them last night.

This problem I have had ever since first installing Slackware:

- I can't seem to do much with Firefox or Chromium. I can't delete the default Firefox bookmarks and I can't add any extensions. I can't make Chromium my default browser, I haven't tried adding extensions to it yet. They and their menus also look like something from Windows 98. I read that that was because they utilized GTK themes. I installed qtcurve and a GTK application (can't remember the name, I'll update this post with it later). I think I'm supposed to select qtcurve in the appearance tab of system settings. I tried that and nothing changed, but maybe I didn't do something I was supposed to.

I want to thank you all for the help you've given me so far. Slackware seems interesting, and I think it will be great after I get past all of these strange issues.

What and how did you install your video drivers, just out of curiosity?

I went to ATI's site and got them from there. Then I ran the sh [name of file here] command to install it. Again, everything worked fine last night. Stuff only started messing up after I got locked out.

ARRRRRGH! Ati!

Man! You've got some strange issues. If it were me, I'd suspect a corrupted installation. I'd plow it under and start re-install. That's just me, though. The BIG Hammer approach sometimes saves time. If you're a nit-pick troubleshooter type, you might prefer attempting to correct your current installation's problems.

KEEP NOTES of what you do when you install. You can backtrack to see where problems begin better that way.

Luck with it.

~Eric

Yeah I've heard people complain about ATI before, but this is the first time I've ever had any problems. I had thought about re-installing it, but I'll wait a bit, see if anyone else have some ideas. If no one does by the time I hit the hay, I'll re-install it tomorrow.

It's not that Ati - Radeon is bad hardware. It's just that the company has lousy support for Linux. Whereas, Nvidia is very, very Linux friendly. I had high hopes when AMD (my cpu of choice) bought Ati. I really thought there would be some revolutionary graphics stuff going on there after that takeover, but nope... nothing revolutionary came of it.

Back on topic...

If you can, Riff, stick with Slack. You won't be sorry. I've run them all, buddy. Slack is still the best, as far as I'm concerned.

Later...

~Eric

It certainly seems interesting and I can't denounce it because of the problems I'm having. Strange things happen when I use things, things that never happen to anyone else so I'm just assuming that this is not normal with Slackware.

I've installed versions of Slack going back to 9.0 on numerous different hardware configurations with nary a hiccup. It's the steadiest, most rock-solid Linux I've used (Debian and Arch close seconds, though ).

Agreed. Slackware is #1 in my book as well. Both Debian and Arch are very nice indeed, but, once you Slack, you never go back.