I mostly mean if you upgraded the packages from the a directory. You know... the coreutils, aaa_base, aaa_elflibs ... etc.

I installed m4 a couple days ago, didnt give me any trouble though.

then, you can try upgrading your a directory... download the whole a directory from a slackware-current mirror, then telinit 1 , upgradepkg /root/a/*.tgz (assuming you have all the packages in dir 'a' and dir 'a' is in '/root').

This is interesting. I agree that the solution requires a reinstall or upgrade.

But before you do that, could you try using gdb to find out the segfaults' cause? e.g. for chown you can say

gdb chown [whatever parameters]

and then, inside gdb, say

run

and when you get segfault say

bt

to see backtrace. I'm just curious. Don't bother with that if you don't have the time, though.

I looked on the linux download here, but I dont see any otion to just download a directory, where can I get it?

Jesus christ, this thing is messed up, doing gdb chown just says /usr/bin/gdb no such file or directory, I think I just need to reinstall. I am downloading 10.2 as we speak, maybe upgrading will do the trick, if this /a/ folder thing doesnt work.

heh, it doesnt look like I even have a /root/a directory, lol

Isnt cd3 or 4 supposed to be a repair disk?

just an update, I tried doing netconfig to see if that would help the connection troubles, netconfig comes up, but wont accept anything, I put in the hostname and hit ok, it just clears and is still on the hostname input screen.

no, you got me wrong. slackware's packages are divided onto several directories depending on what they mean, and do on your system. the programs in directory a located on your slackware cd or on any mirror, the only difference is that on the mirrors, in slackware-current directories are new versions. For example I use ftp://ftp.lug.ro/slackware/slackware-current/slackware as a mirror, because it's from my home country and connection is better, but you can find one from your country and maybe download alot faster then you would from the one I posted above, if you don't know or don't have time, or whatever reason just try the one I posted. These are the steps you can follow (and they work using Konqueror web browser or IE from Window$ web browser.
1. Open the link above with Konqueror or Internet Explorer.
2. Right click on the a directory you see there, and you will be presented with a menu, then do as follows:
2.1 For Konqueror go to Copy To -> Home Folder -> Copy Here. (the whole directory will be saved to /home/yourusername/a - where username is the user you are currently logged on, and it should be a normal user, not root)
2.2 For Internet Explorer (I explain this from what I remember, as I am currently booted into Linux, but should give you a starting point at least if I won't remember it exactly) after you opened the website, right click the a directory then Copy to folder -> Choose where to save it -> OK.
3. Now upgrade your packages... we have 2 different situations here, too, depending on if you wore on Linux or Window$ when you've downloaded the directory:
3.1 If you downloaded from Linux, do the following from a terminal while logged in as root issue: telinit 1 . This will take your computer to maintainace runlevel, then login as root again while in runlevel 1, and issue the command: upgradepkg --install-new /root/a/*.tgz ! After the upgrade is done, issue: telinit 3 , login as root if you're asked for password, reboot the system, and try those commands that give you seg fault.
3.2 If you downloaded from Window$, be sure to have the Window$ parition mounted where the a directory is then issue the following command: cp -R /mnt/win_d/a /root (this was only an example, with my partition scheme, basicly I copied directory a from the top of my window$ D:\ partition in /root , you can just replace /mnt/win_d/a with the full path to your window$ partition where the a directory resides) after you copy the whole dir to /root you can use the instructions above, starting from the: telinit 1 command.

You could also try downloading the l directory where glibc is and other libraries and do exactly the same like you did with a only change a to l in the commands. If this will not work, then under my opinion you must clearly do a fresh reinstall (not installing it over the system you already have, but actually formating it and installing it from scratch). Good luck, keep trying, keep asking and let us know.

oh, and everything I've said before about upgrading those packages, is presuming that installpkg/upgradepkg/pkgtool tools still work and things like: rm and whatever these tools need for the upgrade. Anyway, it's worth giving it a shot.

Well, nothing seems to be working. Thanks for the help. One last question, how do I burn a cd from the console, I gotta back up some stuff before I wipe and reinstall, going to install 10.2 this time and see how it goes.

To be true, I've never used a consoled based cd burner, only GUI like NeroLinux, which I'm best used to from Window$. But assuming you have cdrecord installed, try cdrecord -h or man cdrecord and see what options you have. But don't you have more than 1 partitions ? Do a fdisk -l and cat /etc/fstab and post here the output you get. Maybe we can do it other way, than burning a CD.

cdrecord and fstab both seg fault, lol...what a mess I have made. fdisk -l shows only one partition, the dev/hda1.

Well, I really can't think of some other way than just adding a new hard drive, usb drive, or any other kind of storage like that which has the capacity of storing what you want to save, then boot from slack cd 1, mount both your / partition and the partition from the new storage device, copy all you want to keep from your / (slackware partition) to the new device's partition. Reinstall slackware, make sure you repartition your main hdd, at least 1 partition for / and another one for /home which should be bigger in size than / , if you have a big drive make the first partition 10Gb and the rest assign to the second partition to mount /home on it. after reinstalling your system with these 2 partitions at least, copy the backups you made at their places and ... you know what to do with the other storage device... if you can find a better way point it out, cause i'm pretty tired this moments and couldn't get one for now...

Well, I'd do what I can, I am pretty aggravated and tired myself. I may just say screw it and lose all my stuff. Thanks for all your help.