@ Ahmed and damgar:

Thanks for the tips! I'm slowly getting used to Slackware's package system and, while I haven't been much successful with makepkg yet, but checkinstall is quite handy for the moment.

A generic question:
So, everytime I boot, when I log in, I get a message. Not an error message or a warning, just some random message. Something like a joke, or a saying or something. For instance, today I got:

"when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout".

This happens regardless if I log in as root or as user. I don't mind it, but I'm curious. Is this some Slackware feature, or a package I installed without noticing?

It's called fortune, and it's run from a script: /etc/profile.d/bsd-games-login-fortune.sh.
Have a look at man fortune.

The fortunes are silly and can even be a little disconcerting on occasion (the fake error messages being a good example!) but I'd miss them if they weren't there.

It's been answered, but this is a resource you should know about:

http://l0k1.free.fr/aolsfaq.html#XX103

I have been using Slackware since 1996 and it has been because I can select which packages to install. The answer of "Install it all" really denies having a package manager or a choice. I do not care for the idea of re-molding the user to fit the Slackware release, so we don't have to think about how to make the Slackware release fit the users need.
I know I have one system to install where it will not fit (and no I cannot just go by a bigger disk, it is not my machine).

I currently have a bad Slackware 13.1 install, and have installed every package that remotely looked like it could be involved and still have problems.

I have found a path problem created from installing the extra/kde3 package (that I think makes KDE get QT from KDE3 instead of KDE4).

The people who need (or want) to custom package install are having problems with the lack of package interaction information.
The package descriptions that I remember from earlier Slackware, used to be better, had some REQUIRE, OPTIONAL, suggested, had some you-want-this-if-you-are-going-to-do-this information.

You should try src2pkg too.

sbopkg and src2pkg may very well be all that you need for building packages for slackware.

If you ran out of disk space during an install, you really have no idea if a package installed correctly or not. Or if you have memory faults while installing. (Been there, done that)

Did you e-mail Pat with a bug report?

That isn't new. It also isn't that hard to figure out, if you use the MANIFEST file to find what package owns the missing libraries.

Look in each "disk set" directory for a file named "tagfile". Each package is tagged with OPT, REC, or ADD.

You can make your own tagfile to simplify multiple installations.

On the "install it all" point and to clarify the post I made earlier in this thread: if you've got plenty of disk space but are short of time (definitely the case with me) then the "install it all" option is the most efficient way forward. In some senses I see it as getting Pat & co to remotely install slackware for me

In the past when I had more time on my hands and wanted to install slackware on a 1 Gb SSD I spent many enjoyable hours starting out with just the A series and then adding in bits from AP then L then N then X until I had a setup that met my needs.

Another distro that works on precisely this approach is tiny core, but it also took me some time to get it the way I wanted.

Hope you get your slackware 13.1 install sorted.

Few thoughts:

"Install it all":
When installing a Slackware system, you get the option to choose which packages to install and which to ignore. Now, at this stage the installer assumes you know what you are doing, because
contrary to other systems, the installer will do *exactly* as you told it to, possibly creating a completely broken system. That's a feature, bot a bug
The "usual" way to go about it is to install everything if you are unsure, making your first steps on Slackware/Linux, have time issues, etc. Later on you can remove stuff easily from the system.
You get experience with inter-package dependencies over time and soon before long, you will just know what you need for what.
The time issue can be solved by creating "tagfiles", a precreated list of the packages you want to install or ignore. Sample files are available inside the categories (a,ap) on the Slackware cd/dvd.
I for myself used to deselect some packages for installs in the past, but nowadays I don't really care anymore. Full install is just way more convenient. Yeah, I know, "Slacker"...

"Dependency Management":
Seeing you being used to Debian I can understand why this is a big topic. There are ways of getting dependency management working on Slackware, BUT it's considered to "void your warranty".
Ie. it might be more or less hard to get help when something goes wrong. Again, it's perfectly doable if you know what you are doing, but by the time you know that you probably don't care anymore anyway

"Additional Software":
There are various resources on the web for addons, some more and some less reliable. Most Slackware users don't like to install someone else's binary packages because of a lack of documented dependencies. So they end up installing software from source. This can be done the plain way (configure, make, make install), by using checkinstall or by using SlackBuilds. Each is fine, but the most clean is probably via SlackBuilds (the SlackBuild tarball you get on eg. SlackBuilds.org is similar to the "debian" folder in source packages. It contains rules and scripts to make native packages).
I'm not going to recommend either of them, it's your job as a system administrator to find whatever suits you best. The main point here is: Whatever you choose, Slackware won't get in your way

When I try to be brief it leads to getting sidetracked.
* Have not started yet on machine with with small disk, am working on machine without internet, and that one has bad install of Slackware 13.1.
* Am not getting any missing library messages, that would be easy.
* Programs just die, silently.
* The problem machine is currently running Slackware 10.2, Linux 2.4.31, in the primary 64G partition. The install is into the second 64G partition which was copied from the primary and stripped down to just old config files (so the install would notice them).

Sending bug report on KDE3 extra package:
I have been around and around on the Slackware site. Have not found any bug report email, just info@slackware.com for asking general slackware questions. The site points people to this forum.


I always seem to install more packages than needed, and many I never
look at.
It ought to be possible to skip installing things that are obviously not important to the user, like some special hardware support and similar packages, as I do not own those things.
When things go bad, like I am currently experiencing, it is one of the obvious things to question. The other is trying to find all the config files that might be screwed up.

It would help if the slackware install would report to the root user about any old config file that it left in place with a copy of the new config file renamed. All the install scripts would have to do is append a message to a file

echo "INSTALL: new config file /etc/config1.new"
+> /root/install-configs-new"

(the above line is being wrapped by this forum, and I do not remember
exactly what the append syntax is)
I have not had any luck in getting Slackware to incorporate any changes I have suggested over the years, so I am not going to rush off to send them any messages again.

My next steps are:
1. Remove KDE3 extra package
2. One more search for new config files that did not get installed because there was an existing one.
3. Or, Erase entire partition and re-install. Then try to fix
config files from old config files the hard way. (I got stuff in config that has got to be saved and brought over).

volkerdi [AT] slackware [DOT] com normally works.

Or you can just run the find command yourself:

(Although if you look in the packages, you'll see that the config files are packaged with the .new extension. /etc/FOO.conf.new is renamed to /etc/FOO.conf only if /etc/FOO.conf does not already exist. If /etc/FOO.conf does exist and contains exactly the same content as /etc/FOO.conf.new, then /etc/FOO.conf.new is quietly deleted.)

This script will generate all the diffs between the incoming .new config files and whatever is already there and append the diffs to the file /tmp/thediffs.txt:

RE Post #26 - Richard Cranium - please do not post people's email addresses as real mailto: links. Kindly edit that post and mangle Pat's address, to maybe save him from a little bit of spam at least. "volkerdi at slackware dot com" would be fine.

Thanks,
Sasha

Sorted.

Cheers,
Me

Well, since he's using that as a business e-mail (there's no other way known to send him a bug report), it's counter-productive to him to remove references to it. Which is why you'll see that address at places like, oh, http://www.slackware.com/announce/13.1.php.

I see the moderators have already changed it; whatever makes ya'll happy.