Hi,

I generally leave it open until everything is set but I'm remote therefore no one will get my wireless without some effort. Once everything is setup then I enable security. Not open that long. I use both B/G with several wireless routers.

As for the wep key, there are a lot of key generators on the net;

google;

http://www.andrewscompanies.com/tools/wep.asp
http://www.csgnetwork.com/wepgeneratorcalc.html

Another good read for the paranoid;
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article111.php

To use the key(s), edit /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf file and add your key to the key= portion of the segment.

Plus don't forget to restart the network!

HTH!

Guys - I need really bad help with partitioning this notebook before I go postal. I have one drive in my laptop that is 80GB listed under /dev/hdb.

I do the following:

#fdisk /dev/hdb

Now I have no active partitions on this machine so I select "n" for a new partion and I guess I don't know what to do from here. I just want one huge 80GB partition and I know I need a swap partition for maybe 1GB since I have 512MB of DDR ram.

How would something like this go?

Carlwill,

After you hit the 'n' key - it will ask you whether you want a 'primary' partition, or a 'logical' partition. Since you are only going to have two partitions - press the 'p' key (for primary). Logical partitions are used when you need more than 4 partitions; since you only want two partitions (OS filespace, and swap), you will use primary.

It will then ask you which partition you want to designate -- enter '1' for the 1st partition.

After this it will ask you to set up the partition size - I like to use the 'M' modifier to specify megabytes -- because I can never figure out how to specify the starting and ending block numbers to get the correct size partition I want.

So, you want to leave 1GB for your swap partition, so make the first partition 79GBs. That would be '79000M'.

After you have entered the size of the partition it will prompt you for the type of partition -- and prompts you to enter 'l' (aka: ell or L) to list the types. Enter 'l' to view the different types of partitions and their numerical identifier; this number is what you will enter for the partition type. If memory serves '83' is the linux parition type, and '82' is the linux swap partition type. As you can see from the list, fdisk supports many other partition types. Enter '83' for this partition.

At this point, you might want to activate the primary partition as the 'boot' partition. This will enable the kernel to boot off of that partition if you choose that option when you install the OS. Enter 'a' to designate a boot partition - you will be prompted to enter a partition number - in this case you should enter '1' (since that is the partition number we assigned our big partition in the beginning).

For the swap partition - repeat the process (enter 'n', then enter 'p' for primary partition), enter '2' for the partition number, for the size the system will prompt you to either specify it or use the remainder -- press 'enter' to have it use the remainder (which should be 1 Gigabyte if we were correct in our original disk size calculations), and enter '82' for the swap partition type at the end when prompted.

After you are done enter 'p' to print out the partition table --- verify that the partitions are the sizes you expect (in blocks). You should see an astrix in the 'boot' field for partition number 1 - which indicates that it is bootable.

If all looks well enter 'w' to write the new partition table to the drive. WARNING! THIS WILL OVERWRITE ANY PARTITION INFORMATION YOU MAY CURRENTLY HAVE ON THE DRIVE!

Now enter 'q' - to quit fdisk. You are done repartitioning your hard drive. You are now ready to run 'setup' and start loading Slackware...

While this seems like alot of work - it is really easy once you get used to the interface.

Hi,

Just a quick note. You should reboot after creating/changing a partition before you run setup.

I also like to format my partitions before a setup. Just a habit for me!

Well, I haven't done so in any of my Slackware installations (And other distributions with automagic partitions doesn't reboot either), and they doesn't seem to suffer from anything.

Which advantages it has to reboot? I'm curious

I have a baseline Dell laptop and i want to dual boot. Not sure what distro i want though. Tried Kubuntu but didnt like it...any suggestions?

Hi,

Most distributions, especially Slackware recommend that you reboot after modification of the partition table. Do you read the messages from fdisk when you exit? Or the message(s) from cfdisk once you write?

Once you reboot, the partition table is affirmed that it is current or updated after the modification(s) that were made.

I am running slackware 10.1 on a DELL Inspiron 700m (855 chipset)- thin and light 12.1 inch notebook with IPW2200 wireless. install went perfect!
Have kernel 2.4.29 and 2.6.15. the 2.6 kernel has all the goodies included like adavanced power management and CPU throttling.

The only problem i had is with the audio - which is since resolved but straight out the box was not working..

There is also a package manager in slackware. It can be executed by using pkgtool command

Enjoy Slacking!

To verify the partition table, I simply run fdisk again after saving and exiting - to give it a once-over. I print the current partition info (p). If it displays what I expected, then it is okay - and I quit out of fdisk (q). If it is not what I expected, then the drive is suspect and I wouldn't bother loading the OS on it.

Which brings up the next point, it is not necessary to format your partitions before running setup -- that is part of the setup utility already. You can skip the actual format - so you don't lose anything either way...just something extra you have to remember when going through the setup menus.

I have never run into problems with this methodology in 13 years of loading linux, and other unix and unix-like OSs (hpux, solaris, sco unix (system V), unixware, bsd etc...) Life is too short and I have too many projects!

Of course I am not naive enough to think that I am the same as everyone else. For example, I've never blown up any equipment (either through the misapplication of power, or static electricity). But I have a friend who has some magical power - no matter what piece of equipment he touches, he manages to blow it up - even if he is wearing an grounding strap! Watching him, I don't see him do anything different than I would. As unscientific as it sounds, I believe some folks just aren't cut out to work on hardware - of no specific fault of their technique (maybe they have some sort of high output electromagnetic field that surrounds their body - more so than a 'normal' person -- I don't know. I've ceased trying to explain it. Now I just feel sorry for them when they manage to blow up their new $300 video card...)

I guess what I am saying is understand how the hardware 'should' work and act accordingly; modify your actions if experience tells you otherwise.

Real Men use Slackware. Get Slack. End of story.

Seriously though -- I've found that distro preferences are as varied as the people in the world.

Some reasons I like Slackware:

1. More 'unix-like'. Slackware is unadorned with all the specialized files and applications that many other distros come with. It follows the LFS (Linux Filesystem Standard) - and the file locations are pretty much what you would find if you built the whole system by hand from sources. No surprises (I HATE Solaris because of its proprietary filesystems and library locations -- and to a lesser extent many Linux distros modify filenames and locations, making standard troubleshooting a vendor/distro specific problem).

2. The package system is based on 'tar'. 'tar' is available right out of the box; nothing special I have to keep track of. I can also view the contents of packages using a very familiar command (tar) without fanfare. Tools are available right out of the box to easily build my own Slackware packages.

3. The Debian distro has 'apt' package manager which is cool. Now you can use a similar network based app for Slackware called 'slapt' - allowing me to automate my package management across the network. That is the only reason I would choose Debian...now I don't have to.

4. Seems to be more up-to-date than other distros. While being conservative may serve a purpose of providing stability - it has the drawback of limiting the usefulness of the distro for the latest applications. Slackware walks that tightrope nicely.

5. As a result of 1 (above) application source code that is outside of the standard Slackware distro usually builds right the first time around - without me having to pull out my hair. This has been borne out with experiences with many other distros over the past 13 years.

6. Slackware is imminently hackable. I have Slackware 10.2 running on an old 486 laptop - using a modified install process, and on a high-end AMD 2GHZ machine - most distros are not designed to work on any architecture below a Pentium (and clones).

7. Slackware was my first distribution. While at first this might seem more sentimental than scientific, I think the choice is 'right' because I keep ending up back on Slackware - after running into a brick wall on other distros, then finding that I can solve the problem easily in Slackware.

8. Finally, Slackware has the Zen nature due to all of the above, and more. It is both full and empty at the same time. Slack says it all.

YMMV

well, those 8 reasons a pretty much the same ones for me and my outright love for Slackware (even the last one! lol )

I don't know much about Debian, but I have interacted a lot with Mandrake (Mandriva now), the good-old-and-now-dissappeared SCO linux server, some flavours of RedHat and the lost Caldera linux. I found nothing really exciting about them all, I'm still wondering why the enterprise environment loves RedHat (and SuSE) so much

now ... back to my regular Slackwareish programming ...

Hi,

If your method works for you then by all means continue. I find that my method works for me. I've been in this field to long to argue about methodology.

It's just that the partition table is indeed written to the disk from either fdisk or cfdisk when a write is performed. I've noted that fdisk at times will work when cfdisk will not unless you do a reboot. This has occurred on several HD for me.

As for the drive maintenance or diagnosis, I rely on spinrite or something along this line. Manufacture tools can be useful but not always reliable. I've found Ranish to be a good tool.

As for the magic of a person. Look at my sig! But yes, there are some people who shouldn't hold a screwdriver let alone work on a system.

Yes, to your last sentence. A lot of people cannot diagnose a problem let alone identify it. Most say its' broke or there is just a problem and give up on it. Well said! Might I add that an action does produce a re-action, be it hardware or software!

ehem... and Women!

even chicks :P

Women are too smart not to use slackware - that was a given!

I was directing my comments to the brutish males of the species - who need their honor (manhood will do) challenged before they can be moved from their endless pawing in the dirt and refuse around the communual fire pit. Subtle messages, be they verbal or physical - rarely, if ever, get through the thick skull commonly found in these mammals (as you ladies are well aware).

Sorry if my Neanderthalian communication techniques confused the issue for you - but then again, I am a man...