Here goes:

I'm running Slackware 9.1 and have compiled my own 2.6 kernel. However, for some reason, I've started getting a lot of errors on my hard drive (I think they're related to my kernel, but I'm not sure). The errors have messed up a lot of packages on my system - real basic ones like uname, whereis.... and they seem to be random ones.

So I loaded up knoppix and the slack cd and used that to copy over the un-corrupted files so I can boot up normally again. This has worked so far, except that when I try to login (I'm not booting into X) it does the following:

Enter username:

[pause 5 secs]

Enter username:

[pause 5 secs]

and so on. I never get to say what my password is, and so I can't log in. Is there a package that's still corrupt? If so, which one? I'm going to back up all my stuff and reinstall once I can log in, or else use Knoppix as the last resort to bakup with, but it would be nice if I could do without knoppix.

Thanks in advance.

No one can help you if you don't post your errors, I did an error in the past which breaked glibc package so I hadn't able to open tty, I copied libc-xx.so from /lib in CD to /lib in HD and /sbin/agetty from CD to HD, it worked by luck.

Well right now my most prominent error is that I can't log in... can't do much if I can't log in. Therefore I was wondering if there is/are package(s) relating to the login.

The packages are :
util-linux
shadow

and if it will fail, install the package :
glibc

Thanks, I'll try those and see how it goes.

Didn't manage to get it working, so I backed up, reformatted etc. Thanks anyways.

Probably would be best not to try to make changes to a Slackware installation with Knoppix in the future. Sometimes it is okay for a config file like X but not actual apps. Knoppix is a debian clone not Slackware.

Well slackware packages are just zipped files with directions for where to put em - so I boot up knoppix, load the slack cd, and copy in the missing, individual files from packages. i suppose being able to run pkgtool would be nice, but I couldn't do that. I originally tried booting from slack cd #2 but getting it to read the 2nd cdrom wasn't working.

If you have a better idea, I'm up for it!

Don't see why not... couldn't you boot Knoppix, mount the Slack root partition, use the chroot command to switch to the Slack filetree, and then run pkgtool?

well I guess I could then. Didn't know about chroot. Learn every day