I've attempted to install Slackware 10.1 over the weekend. After the install process, I get a Kernel Panic on the first boot. It says it cannot find the initrd. Sure enough, there is no initrd file in my /boot partition. I believe it's supposed to be called initrd.img. But I didn't see anything resembling initrd.

I'm a little confused because I thought that Slack didn't make use of the initrd by default. I tried using a different hard drive (thinking that my first one was bad) but that didn't change anything.

I did a little research and discovered that bare.i has support for the ext2 filesystem. I had made my /boot partition ext3. So I redid the install, but formatted /boot using ext2 instead. Same result.

The hard drive is a 40GB IDE drive. It's the primary master (with no slave). There is a CD-ROM drive attached to the secondary master IDE port. My drive is partitioned like this:

/dev/hda1 64MB /boot ext2 active
/dev/hda2 512MB swap swap
/dev/hda3 37GB / ext3

I'm not exactly sure what's going on. I've done many slackware installs (including 10.0) and this is the first time I've run into this problem.

Thanks,

Try just having /boot under / it allways works for me

Hi.

I've run into exactly the same problem a few months ago.
It's very easy to fix.
Boot the Slackware Installation CD, don't proceed to the setup, but instead mount your / partition on the /mnt of your "live-cd" slackware.
# mount /dev/hd3 /mnt
Chroot to /mnt.
# chroot /mnt
Edit your /etc/lilo.conf.
# vi /etc/lilo.conf

You'll notice that *root* is set to your /boot partition. Of course that inidrc is not found there... Change it to your / partition, save it.

Find this line:
root = /dev/hd1
Change it to this:
root = /dev/hd3
Save and quit
:wq
Run lilo
# lilo
exit chroot
# exit
reboot
# reboot

Have fun with your new slackware system. ;-)
Eh, if it wasn't for your post I'd still be a unregistered user. :-P

BTW: Yes, it's nice to have /boot in a partition of its own. I do it in systems I want extra secure. I compile a hardered kernel without module support, and mount /boot as read-only. That way no one will mess with your kernel, I think.

Edited: Just to add the last "I think"...

Well, I hadn't seen rtra's post before trying KaYoS' suggestion. And it worked. But I was a little confused as to why it worked. rtra's post cleared that up

Also now that I've got it working, I've remembered that I've never been able to get a separate /boot partition on Slack to work properly. I used to use it when I ran RedHat (way back with RH8).

And if it wasn't for this problem, I would still be an unregistered user as well

Thanks to you both.