Something wacky with Slackware 13.1.

I've had something go wacky with a 13.1 installation. It ran fine until a week ago. Without getting into it, I tried fixing things. Nothing works right. Tried doing a fresh install into my swap partition just to prove out the hardware...couldn't get an install to work off of my dvd. Made another DVD (slackware.mirrors.tds.net) and it has a different md5sum. So I downloaded the 13.1 dvd again, couldn't get that to load...kde modules were corrupt...yet the md5sum matched the published one.

Now I'm downloading slackware-current, I will access it locally from a discserver via NFS, and see if I can install that in the swap partition (16gb).

Anyone else have anything similar? I tried to verify the operation of my DVD reader, and it seems to be OK. I tried a different DVD reader on another system, without a full install. So then I tried repeated installs from a NFS partition, and that is where I consistently got the corrupt .tgz files for kde.

In an hour or two I should have a complete -current download, and can try that.

slow the write speed down on your dvd burner to like 4x or something, it has happened to me before when going at higher speeds.

I downloaded the slackware-current from slackware.mirrors.tds.net, and put it onto a NFS harddrive. Setup the install to use a NFS source. Boy, it sure does install fast with a NFS source...

It hung up at the same point, with kdebase being corrupt. So I'm really scratching my head right now...

Did you use rsync?

Check the md5sum of the iso to the one on the server.
After burning at low speed, use 'cmp' to compare the iso to the DVD device, it should say EOF on the iso.

Well, I finally was able to do a good install. I got slackware-current, put it on a NFS drive, and _reformatted_ the target directory, and was able to install. At this point it appears that the reformatting of the target was the key event which got things working.

It is also possible that I have a DVD drive which is getting flakey. After I get things up and running, I do some other tests. Fortunately, I have several to use, so I can work around that.

I did not use rsync.

I avoided burning new media, by using a NFS drive on another server. Oh, and I did check md5sums against the one on the mirror. It matched in the burner host. I don't think it did in the target (but was consistently different. Hence my suspicion of a bad DVD drive on the target.

Finally, I am impressed with load speeds off a local server disc, in lieu of using a DVD. Sure is fast.

Last, but not least, thanks for the helpful suggestions, and taking the time to consider the issue. When an installation fails, and in doubt, reformat the target, and try again.