I decided to make reference to the security advisories in two locations; I put a section on Slackware mailing lists at the end of the basic configuration page: http://genek.net/LinuxAdventures/ins...ackconfig.html

And added a brief mention of it at the end of the section on updates on the package management page.

slackconfig.html is looking good. Some ideas:

• How about "they" instead of "he or she"?
• In the section on modifying inittab, it would be simpler to use the r command than the R command because there's no need for Esc to terminate the mode.
• When explaining :wq, more educational to say "write and quit" rather than "exit"?
• "get signed up for" -> "sign up for"?
• "for you Slackware system" -> "for your Slackware system"
• "for awhile" -> "for a while"

You're right about the r command (don't hate me because I'm stupid). I'll consider the rest.

Hi,

You should refer to Alien_ Bob or Eric not Bob for the packages that he creates. Look at Church of the SubGenius. I know it seems trivial but Eric would feel ecstatic and appreciate being elevated to a mystic. The correct identification should be used.
Eric Hameleers is not just a Slackware Contributor, take a look at his Blog. His multilib for Slack64 is beneficial to a everyone but continued interaction at LQ is appreciated. The teams interaction at the Slackware forum helps us all to contribute to Slackware. I for one appreciate your creation and work for the of this HOWTO/Tutorial. Hoping the end product helps all.

You might want to include links to rworkman's OpenOffice package at rworkman's Slackware® Packages packages and Eric's LibreOffice. LibreOffice is much better at this stage since OO & Libre forked. Libre is leading at the evolution of a mature office application. To many closed minds in the lead when it comes to OO.

Quote:

. This would also be a great time to start familiarizing yourself a little more with the Bash command-line shell.

Since you are introducing a user to the command line shell within System administration & Package management then adding a reference link to scripting Bash Beginners Guide which has a very good Bash and Bash scripts. You could then expand by referring to Bash Reference Manual which would be helpful to that user. By doing this you will expand facilities and understanding of bash and bash script line(s). At some point the user will need this if they expect to do any package management with SlackBuilds or even singular actions.

Continue assumptions will only create confusion. You are introducing bash commands so adding the scripting language along with admin would be the place.

At some time that newbie will have to start learning or just rely on others for their Slackware experience. Your continued contributions are fine but you need to expand thus allowing that student to excel thus independent.

Your style of presentation is leading the users to be encouraged to run '-current'. I know we discussed the development tree(-current) before but continued encouragement will eventually open more users to unwarranted frustrations. Plus bug reports should be reported with the 'general kernels' when using '-current' and newbies are not always knowledgeable when it comes to bug reports or kernel experience. There are ways to work with new hardware other than to jump to '-current'.

One other gotcha, is the continued use of the installer kernels by newbies. Sure it will work, hopefully. As PV and the team encourage the 'general kernels' should be used for normal operations. I personally communicate and participate with users who fail while using the 'huge kernels'. Sure to customize a kernel seems frightening but there are guides to aid a user to perform this operation;
Kernel-HOWTO is Intro & Compile
Compiling the Linux Kernel
Building a Linux Kernel from source is Eric Hameleers (Alien’s Wiki pages)
Linux Kernel Newbies is a community of people that improve or update their Kernels
More at Linux Kernel.
HTH!

I'll add more later but must stop at this time. Stock needs attending too and it's snowing.

edit:
I forgot to send, was interrupted. If you've made changes then I'll re-read.

Onebuck... I only recommend OO.o over Libreoffice because Libreoffice is beta; I don't even have OO.o on my computer anymore. Once we have an official Libreoffice release I'll probably change my recommendations (although I must say that the Koffice 2.3 Beta I'm running is very promising... only real prob is it still won't save to MS Office formats).

As for -current, I'm not sure I agree that trying to upgrade a kernel is a better choice for a beginner than running -current. In general I don't think I AM pushing people towards -current; how many times have I written that most people should only do it if hardware support is a problem? I doubt very many people will be affected by this; 13.1 isn't even a year old. I think -current only gets mentioned as much as it does because my main desktop box is -current and I feel compelled to make it clear what platform I'm running for the screenshots and stuff. It's my hope that most users will stick with 13.1, maybe cherry-picking Koffice and a handful of other things from the -current mirrors. But it's my feeling that upgrading a kernel can cause a lot of problems at this stage. And I maitain my position that -current is infinitely less likely to give you problems than Ubuntu... which is where most beginners go.


Will think about the rest and get back... like you, I'm trying to get some other stuff done.

Again, nice work - even as a Slack/GNU/Linux user from 2006 - I still have difficulties configuring Slackware (battling with NFS setup - got it reading fast eventually and there is a lot of info that is missing from Slackbook and /usr/doc/ FAQs & Linux-Howtos to get a realistically working NFS - eventually found Robbie Workmans NFS/Firewalling guide after a google marathon, also writing is incredibly slow - simple text files are instant - but a ~500MB file currently 58% complete copying to from client to server after ~1hour 30mins - why didn't the man page tell me about that?? - cos it's not a guide - right? useful for reference only!) - I am familiar with using man pages and much of slackware - but the journey (ongoing) has been a sodding nightmare at times - as is now with NFS.

Your guides are great - 'onion layered', 'cookbook style' - whatever they may be labelled, I don't bloody care.

What I don't want to have to do is to have to read man pages and guides that have phrases like mapping, syncing, no_root_squash, no_subtree_check - this is not keeping it simple, stupid - I understand these terms but it is definitely not KISS - and when at best following this just about gets it to work. I don't want something to just about work - I want it to work bloody brilliantly - and your guides do this. Man pages are great for reference but are certainly not a usable guide for a newbie wanting to setup up anything intermediary/advanced like NFS.
Man Pages. Reference? - yes. Guide? - not a chance in a million.

Your guides are invaluable!! I will certainly help where I can and hopefully post you more guides to publish under the CCL license.

But in the mean time - I hope you beat me to the NFS guide, 2handband!! ;-)

Thanks! As for NFS, I do have some networking tutorials planned; I just don't know when I'm going to get to them. Right now I'm mostly trying to polish up the existing work (I'm working on some minor re-writes in the Desktop Setup section as we speak), after which I'm going to do some stuff on system administration and the Bash shell. After that I'll get into network services.

If you do want to contribute, e-mail me via the links at the bottom of the web pages.

One post-installation step you've missed out (Gary (onebuck) mentioned it), is changing from the "huge" to the "generic" kernel. Running the generic kernel needs an initrd, and you can get the command to create a suitable initrd by running, as root:
Run the command it gives you, then add an entry to /etc/lilo.conf. This is mine (64-bit, the 32-bit kernel is named slightly differently (vmlinuz-generic-smp-2.6.33.4-smp)):
Change /dev/sda2 to suit, of course.
Then run:
And reboot.

What are the advantages and dis-advantages - for and against, huge Vs. generic?

README.initrd
I have made mkinitrd and I am using generic kernel - but my desktop was working with huge - so what really is the real-world difference? - is it just preloading modules into the kernel, like for using Raid (which a doubt a new user using Slackware just as a desktop computer as apposed to a slackware specialised-server) - if so does anyone have a real world example that would illustrate why a new user should (must?) mkinitrd rather than use huge kernel if huge kernel is working and they are having no problems?

I gather the main advantage for shipping slackware with huge is so as many machines can boot and install without problem.

Generic therefore should be used to add additional usability as required - is that a fair assumption? Therefore if a new user does not require is it worth using mkinitrd???

It's only recommended, but not absolutely necessary, to switch to the generic kernel. From the CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT:

Brian, I have to confess that there's a thing or three I don't understand about mkinitrd. Will the above command work if you're using LVM?

I have to confess I don't know anything about LVM.
It detects "normal" partitions OK, so maybe it will detect LVM.

An initrd's purpose is to perform all the activities required to give the init process access to the root partition (like assembling a RAID, opening an encrypted container, mapping a logical volume, ...).

And therefore the mkinitrd_command_generator.sh has been written to detect whether your root partition is on a LVM logical volume, a LUKS encrypted container, a RAID array as well as several combinations of those.

Eric

So Brian's command will create a correct initrd and no hanky-panky?

My root partition actually is not on an LVM... but most of the rest of them are.