So when i was installing Slack I was having problems with getting Lilo installed. It would just freeze on the "Installing Linux Loader" screen. It turns out that Lilo was actually trying to install to my "first" hard drive that happened to be NTFS instead of actually installing to the hard drive that I was installing Slack too. Anyways it installed fine after I unplugged both my spare hard drives. The problem is that now I can't keep my two spare hard drives plugged in without getting a kernel panic right before Slack boots all the way. They work fine if i plug them in when Slack's booted up all the way however. So do I just have to add them to some config file somewhere or something? I formatted both of them because I wasn't sure which one it tried to install Lilo too and thought that was messing everything up, but since they're both now formatted I still have the same problem so.....
Here's the kernel panic http://i.imgur.com/BiJZrqY.jpg

Edit:Duplicate question.


It sounds like the order of your devices (/dev/sda, dev/sdb, etc) changes when you connect the spare drives.

Are you using a 'huge' kernel, or a 'generic' + initrd ?

In /etc/fstab, you can adjust the /dev/sda2 (or wherever your /boot or / are) to use the unique ID (UUID) instead;
You can find the UUID's with a command like "blkid".

If you're using an encrypted root, you can use a similar method (/dev/disk/by-uuid/...) when making the initrd with the mkinitrd command.

I also have just replied you on that in the other almost "twin" thread you posted here...

Sorry about that. I didn't think the mods would approve it and thought this was a more appropriate forum maybe. I'll try to be more patient with my posts being approved next time

Isn't Slack's default kernel the "huge" one? Also I think i found out why it kernel panics. In the fstab file my swap/root/boot partitions are labeled as /dev/sdaX. However my actual drive's /dev/sdbX, at least when the other drives are plugged in. So do i just change them to /dev/sdbX?

If you are ever going to plug them in again, you should use the UUID as @Hangaber suggested.

Yep will do. I changed the fstab entries without thinking and had to chroot into my install on the installation cd to fix it.

Can I just take out the whole line and replace it with just the UUID? What do the 1s and 0s signify?

Edit: Okay I gotta stop being so stupid. Yes I just replace the first part. Duh.

Actually what's the PARTUUID do?

Okay but now it still kernel panics. I assume I need the UUIDs for the other drives too, but what do I do about the other flags? I don't know what to label just a regular storage drive as

Yeah, you gotta change /etc/lilo.conf to use the block id as well.

If you are using an initrd, then that also has to use it.

So my other drives don't need to be added then?

Here's my lilo.conf: # LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
# Append any additional kernel parameters:
append=" "
boot = UUID="9878-F2F4"

#compact # faster, but won't work on all systems.

# Boot BMP Image.
# Bitmap in BMP format: 640x480x8
bitmap = /boot/slack.bmp
# Menu colors (foreground, background, shadow, highlighted
# foreground, highlighted background, highlighted shadow):
bmp-colors = 255,0,255,0,255,0
# Location of the option table: location x, location y, number of
# columns, lines per column (max 15), "spill" (this is how many
# entries must be in the first column before the next begins to
# be used. We don't specify it here, as there's just one column.
bmp-table = 60,6,1,16
# Timer location x, timer location y, foreground color,
# background color, shadow color.
bmp-timer = 65,27,0,255

# Standard menu.
# Or, you can comment out the bitmap menu above and
# use a boot message with the standard menu:
#message = /boot/boot_message.txt

# Wait until the timeout to boot (if commented out, boot the
# first entry immediately):
prompt
# Timeout before the first entry boots.
# This is given in tenths of a second, so 600 for every minute:
timeout = 1200
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
# Normal VGA console
vga = normal
# Ask for video mode at boot (time out to normal in 30s)
#vga = ask
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
#vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
#vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
#vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
#vga=788
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
#vga=787
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
#vga=771
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
#vga=785
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
#vga=784
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
#vga=769
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = UUID="20ea75bd-2a4a-4632-acad-52e5257856c3"
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends


Here's my fstab:
UUID="79a98cab-01d1-45af-823e-53bc49bab151" swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID="20ea75bd-2a4a-4632-acad-52e5257856c3" / ext4 defaults 1 1
UUID="9878-F2F4" /boot/efi vfat defaults 1 0
#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,owner,ro,comment=x-gvfs-show 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0


Does everything look good?

So I guess I have a initrd. Problem is I don't know what I'd even have to change. I honestly don't know. I have both the Generic and Huge kernel sitting in my boot folder. It's really confusing honestly.

If in your stable hardware configuration, you will boot *always* with the spare devices attached, the procedure I suggested in the other thread should fix the problem without using UUID in your configuration files...

If, on the other hand, you need to boot with or without spare devices plugged in there are two options: using UUID as suggested above or defining your custom name for the device containing slackware root (using eudev persistent rules).

According to my experience in cases like that (as far as I understood you made a fresh installation of slackware without special configurations), the only configuration files you need to modify are /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf (and don't forget to run lilo after having changed the lilo.conf otherwise your changes will be not installed - anyway be careful in doing that!).

Finally, it seems to me you use UEFI mode to boot your system. As far as I know LILO doesn't work in pure UEFI mode (it works only in Legacy Boot mode). So I suppose you should use ELILO... Anyway I cannot help too much on that because the first thing I did on my system was to switch to Legancy Boot mode in the BIOS (as in my case I don't have Windows or other OS requiring UEFI).

My bios are set to UEFI/Legacy. Yep I just made a normal install without any special parameters. I tried to run lilo as you suggested after updating lilo.conf and it gives me this error:

Syntax error at or above line 7 in file '/etc/lilo.conf'

That line's where i defined a UUID for /boot. Hmmm

That line seems strange also to me...

I suppose you should put there the device on which the slackware partition is installed (not the partition but the whole device!). In that way you will install lilo on the MBR of the disk (potentially dangerous if you have other OS running on your system)...

So try to change that line in:

where ID_SLACK_DEVICE is the symbolic link (in the directory /dev/disk/by-id) pointing to /dev/sdb (assuming your Slackware root partition is installed in /dev/sdbX).

Probably also the line

should be changed in:

Finally as far as I know when using UUID's, initrd needs to be used.