I am trying to be liberated, and see what the wonderful world of Slackware has to offer. Just one obstacle :

Warning : unable to open an initial console.
Kernel panic : No init found. Try passing init = option to kernel.

This is the error that I get during boot.

I followed the steps to partition and format :

1. create boot partition (100Mb) and make bootable
2. create swap partition (1024Mb) and 'swapon' is done by setup
3. create root partition (rest of drive)

These devices are hdc1, hdc2, and hdc3 respectively.
Swap partition is type 82.
hdc1 and hdc 3 are tyoe 83.
I formated hdc1 and hdc3 with ext3 file system (swap was formated by setup).

Went through steps in setup program to install everything.
No errors.
Installed LILO (used automatic mode) in MBR of hda.
No errors.
But when I select Linux in LILO boot menu, the system starts to load and I get the above error message.

I have read the help in setup menu, and I have searched for an answer in the search engine for Slackware here at Linuxquestions, and I cannot find an answer.

Please help, so that I may take a deep breath of relief and explore my new world.

JC

hey
try reinstalling lilo in the root section intead of MBR, ive heard its possibly unsafe to install to MBR, that might work, try it

I'm not sure that would help. Reason being that LILO is working fine. I can choose Linux or Windows at boot, so I don't believe that there is anything wrong with LILo in the MBR. Then again, I could be wrong. I've been looking at my partitions by manually mounting them, and it looks like everything is where it is supposed to be. In the boot/ partition I see that there is a vmLinuz. So I'm wondering why LILO can't find the kernel.

I'm thinking that there is something that I am missing either with mounting the partitions or the config file for LILO needs tweaking.
But this sucks, because I've only been using Linux for about a month, and I'm stumbling around here.

Maybe there is something that the Redhat install, or Suse (whatever distro) does to complete the step that I am missing when it comes to partitioning.

Can someone post the steps to a successful install, so that I may follow them ? I've done this 5 times already.

JC

Alright, I can't be sure because I don't know enough about Linux, but after more examination of my partitions, I think that my problems are because I don't know how to set mount points manually(which Redhat/Suse/Mandrake etc. make so easy to do with their installs). Is this done in fdisk?

Somebody throw me a bone here.

fdisk toggles the "bootable" lable
lilo points to a root partition (partion that becomes "/")
/etc/fstab describes overall layout (partions, mount points, options)

Thanks guys. I appreciate the tips.
I've accomplished the mission. I started from the begining. However, I don't know if this made a difference, but I used ext2 instead of ext3 file system. I also narrowed down the possibilities by going with only two partitions (swap and root). I read e few posts where people were saying that you could get away with that ( I thought that the boot partition was a must-have, but it's definitely not).

I started up X and I have only seen a little, but from what I see KDE 3.1 looks great ! I thought that it was really cool to start the desktop and see something that is not influenced by the other distros ( Redhat, Suse, Mandrake ).

Yes, I think I like Slack.

Now on to some kernel compiling!

I just played Kolf for the first time. It rocks ! It's very simple, yet addictive. It's my favorite game now (at least as far as a game that comes with your OS).

NM