I've tried to google about this, as I am sure it has been addressed many times, but I fail to come up with the right keywords

However, all I am wondering is how, if possible, I can install Slack on my second drive without having to boot and still be inside my current Linux installation (Debian).

I don't mean to run Slack inside linux, UML style, only performing the installation so I can google around and stuff while doing it. I am currently stuck with only one box. From how I perceive the installer to work, it seems like it would be possible, but I don't know where to find the setup binary and/or if there are any things to worry about.

You can install ZipSlack on a fat32 partition. I never did that, but it seems pretty simple. Take a look at the Slackware site. The documentation is good.
There's probably other ways to do that...

If I understand your correctly (I am still confused about the part "I can install Slack on my second drive without having to boot" thing), you want to install Slackware on a second HD without touching the first where you already have Debian! Shouldn't be a problem. Just remember to tell Slackware the right harddrive (may want to double check on that before you hit the enter key) when you get to that part. However, don't install any bootloader. Instead, create a bootable floppy disk so you can boot your Slackware later. And if you want, you can add an entry for Slackware either in /etc/grub/menu.lst (for GRUB) or /etc/lilo.conf (for LILO) from Debian...

y2k

ZipSlack is (probably) not what I want. The reason I want to do this is because I will do some "practice installs", to get the leanest installation for a server I will setup shortly. I know this will take a couple of tries, but I hate being cut off from the world in the meantime (since this is my only available computer).

It would be so nice if I just could run the setup program in my little shell window here . As the setup program lets me select both source and target I don't see any fundamental problem in doing it that way, but I'm not sure about how to go about it.

No, that wasn't the problem. I have already install Slack a few times on it. It just gets tiresom to have to boot and don't have Internet access during the install. I hope my second post explained it better. As everything the installer does is copying files onto a target drive (somewhat simplified), I don't see why I must boot the computer first.

The 'installer' is a mini-linux which must be booted. When installation is finished the machine must reboot to run the new install.
YOu can't be online browsing docs under one OS and installing the other. Or maybe you could, by breaking the 'setup' scripts out of the Slackware install initrd, put them in your current running Linux. Then you could do the installation from whatever linux you are running. Might have to alter the scripts a bit....
Better: reboot your machine with the install CD and try an installation. If you run into problems, you can always abort the installation with CTRL+C, then go online and consult about what happened.

Message deleted

You will probably spend more time with your approach of installing while running/surfing with your existing distro that just doing a straight install. Especially if you limit the install to the 'A series' and add additional packages after reboot.
That said, it just might be possible.
Download pkgtool-version specific-.tgz from a Slackware mirror.
Create a temporary directory on existing distro and untar pkgtool.
Read the man page (somehow- text only?) for pkgtool and installpkg. Both have references to target directories but the option/variable name is different.
Fdisk you new/second drive and create partitions
Create file systems (ext2/3.....) on each new partition.
Mount each partition to your existing system. Probably /mnt/hd newroot ; /mnt/hd/boot newboot ......
Mount your source (cd ? ; downloaded .iso? ; your own rsync mirror?)
Fiddle with installpkg -root /mnt/hd packagename.tgz untill you give up and do a straight install.

You wil see reference to tagfiles as you man pkgtool. These were great for the specialized recurring install like you seem to be trying; but at one point they were broken. In the standard install, prior to running setup you would mount a floppy holding your tagfiles then specify this mount point during setup. Don't know if its now working.

Corrections to above from others more knowledgable are appreciated.

ppd

Thank you all for the replies.

It seems there is no standard method of doing this. I just thought I would ask, since I know some other distros support this (eg. Debian), where one can install the distro inside your current. A bit in the same vein as one can compile something to be running on another box.

I might look into PDock's suggestions, though, they look interesting.

IS it that you want to install slackware, on a seperate partition, while still being in linux a different partition? Couldn't you just use Vm-Ware to do this? Check that program out.

Unless you are refering another program than the one I think of, I think it is a bit too expensive for this adventure .

Just use pkgtool and specify the root installation mount point. Be sure to install the 2 aaa* pkgs first.

Actually, from one of the main User-Mode-Linux sites,
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/, this might be something to try on one or two non-production mid to high-end .deb and/or .rpm-based test systems. UML does require some extra resources!
Reviewed http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.n...k_readme.html, and can see that its tested Slack version is still at 7.0
IMHO as well, .deb and .rpm generally seem to handle dependencies natively better than Slack's std .tgz-compilations.

If you like what you already have set up (you probably don't and want something different, but if you do) just copy what you have to the other drive.

I've done this twice in moving Slack to different partitions or drives. It works really well. Check out the Hard Drive Copy Howto (or whatever it is named).

I recommend using

cp -ar

with the appropriate directory names.