Hi all,

I'm new slackware user. I just need some clarification on slack.

I'm up and running with Slackware 10.2.

Am I correct to assume that swaret is the only real proper and effective way to update my pc once I am loaded.

Question 1: In sware to do my updates do I just type :

"swaret --update", then type "swaret --upgrade -a", Then "swaret --dep"

and that's it or ....

Question 2: Or do i have to tell swaret to install things? Line by line? I'm a fresh install I fear I have to do one by one.......

Question 3: Will it automatically update my pc for me and recreate dependencies for me?

Questin 4: KPackage in slack as installed listed no updates or upgrades? Is that right? Or should I change some settings in Kpackage to list updates for me? Any ideas?

I have an aversion to telling swaret to "upgrade -a"

Why? Look in this forum for things like "Swaret updated foo, and now it doesn't work!"

Read the changelogs. Make your own decisions. AND NEVER UPDATE THE KERNEL OR ALSA.

swaret is by no means the only way to "upgrade"

But never do it automagically.

Also, why do you need to upgrade? Security? Or just need something to do?

If security, look at the changelogs and security bullitins. If needed, go ahead and upgrade.

If you need something to do, just update one component to 'current', then spend the next few days upgrading everything that depends on that, or it depends on.....

Upgrading is not as critical as in Windows.

Just watch what you are doing, and be careful. And take control, and don't use '-a'

LOL - the beta version screwed up my machine it's reinstalling slack right now! haha that's what i get for assuming slack was "designed by geniuses to be operated by idiots" LOL@me.com

Upgrade for security reasons, I know this distro been out a while and I wanna keep the "hax-orz" out!


You mean the ones at the slackware site right? I just wanna be sure.

I've never used swaret (never saw the point), but I'll have to agree with cwwilson - there are many threads here comlpaining the swaret broke something.

My quick & dirty method for keeping up with security updates is to make a directory specifically for them and simply do:

That retrieves the latest packages from the (official) Slackware ftp server and installs them (only if the "old" version is already installed).

Note: one minor disadvantage is it downloads /all/ the updates regardless of wether you need them or not. It's an advantage for me to keep a local repository of them for all the machines on my net to retrieve them from - ultimately saving bandwidth.

There is also a "security" mailing list you can subscribe to at the Slackware website.

Slackware's native package management is almost non-existant (not necessarily a bad thing) - the commands are installpkg, upgradepkg and removepkg (no prizes for guessing what each one does ). There's also pkgtool which is a little more friendly.

I'm really sorry to hear that, and hope that you won't seriously adopting that philosophy. Ask some questions here, you'll be able to get answers.

thanks gent's for the info really.

i'm gonna try odevans's tips here and read the sec bulletins at slack site.

this old pc just finished reloading and i need a break.

get me some pizza and a beer then hit it again.

Give us the wireless cards info, we may be able to help

I'm using a D-Link 650P1 w/linux-wlan-ng...Rocking along for months on this old laptop

Regarding wireless cards:

I can use either of the two following:

1. Hawking Technology
M/N : HWC546
Card is Revision T (very important according to their site)
This is a pcmcia card. I'd prefer to use this cuz it fits nicely into the laptop. But if i have to use the other that's listed below then no biggie.

I did some googling on this card and supposedly the chip is manufactured by one company and sold to many distributors and that this card can simulate a Linksys TNE1100 or something like that.

Before you plug the card in, open up a terminal (as root) and issue:

Now plug the card in. You should see some output similar to this (this is what happens when I plug in an ancient DLink DWL650 wireless card):

(timestamps / host deleted for brevity)

Then I can bring up the interface with:
What do you get when you do this and plug in the Hawking?

I was able to update by the way. But I do have just a few more questions regarding that, hence the reason that I wanted to be sure I backed up everything I did til' now.

I used the slapt-get tool to check my install vs. the official slackware FTP site; and simply downloaded the files and manaully installed each comparing to the change log at the slack site.

Now my question: Should I upgrade to them as well? Now the alsa probably not I believe cuz the sound is working, and if it ain't broke don't fix it. But the kernel? Hmm...will I have to recompile my existing b4 I do that.

You can use cd2's /linux-2.6.13 , or the /testing directory in 10.2 on Slackware. Just cd to that directory (or if you downloaded it, go to that directory)and run pkgtool.

Install everything but the kernel headers (I do believe). DON'T FORGET THE ALSA DRIVERS. After a reboot, run 'alsaconf' as root, then 'alsamixer', then 'alsactl store'. Then change /etc/initab back to init 4 (If you want GUI login.). You should be booting 2.6.13 now.

And regarding speed: I liked running the original 'Unreal' on this laptop in Windows. I installed it under wine, and....It's TOO fast...lol

Be sure that your hard drive is not SATA otherwise your kernel will not work.
Talking about package management I went with full install. Then it's much easier to keep Slackware current because of no broken dependencies. As I understand, slapt-get doesn't check for dependencies (IMHO, that's very good) and only downloads and updates only what you have on your hard drive (excluding alsa, kernel,kernel headers). However, swaret has a primitive dependency checking. The strange thing is that packages which will be upgraded are different when running swaret, slapt-get or slackpkg.

No the hard drive is simple IDE on this laptop. But I'm glad you pointed it out becuase I'm truly considering dumping the Mepis on my desktop and putting in the slackware. I tried Mepis as there were so many claims of it being noob friendly and by stupid luck the ATI works out of the box from the CD. But I'm finding some limitations/shortcoming on the Mepis that I am not too fond of. LOL another thread for that.

If you picked reiserfs as your filesystem during the original, read /boot/README.initrd before installing the 2.6.13 kernel from CD#2, and follow it's instruction after installing the kernel but _before_ rebooting.

You can get out of the "tail -f" command by hitting control & c.

Did a quick google on the the Hawking card (actually searched for "Texas Instruments ACX 111 linux") and some of the results said this card will work with ndiswrapper. Have you installed ndiswrapper--I see you got a "command not found"--it's not included with Slackware.

OTOH, several of the results reported that there was no way it would work. What happens when you plug in the USB one?

I installed the file system as ext2. I heard it was reliable and less load on the system for older pc's.

THAT is forward thinking...lol