Hello, this is probably a noobish question as it's been over 15 years since I've run Slackware, but here goes.

I want to install Slackware64 13.37 but I don't have a DVD burner and the slackware store is out of DVDs. What are my options? I would prefer to be able to put it on CDs.

Thanks.

You could put the ISO on a flash drive using UNetBootin or dd. Or buy a USB DVD drive.

Alex Brinister

I was afraid of that. So there is no way to split it up for cds?

Well they do have have 4 installation CDs if you want to try those. I was assuming that you are running a netbook and don't have a CD drive at all. That's why recommended using a flash drive. But if you just have a plain old CD drive, then you could just use the 4 CD method. I would prefer just burning the DVD ISO to a flash drive though...

Alex Brinister

Where can I find the 4 installation cds? I can only find dvds for slack64.

If you have another system and the target system supports PXE boot, simply set up a PXE server and install from there.

It is mostly very easy and Eric's PXE docs in the DVD tree will get you going.

Oh, you wanted x86_64... It appears they only have a DVD for that. I guess, then, you have 2 choices: PXE boot or a flash drive. Or you could use another computer to burn the DVD ISO onto a DVD.

Alex Brinister

Ok, my other system is running IRIX 6.5.28. This is becoming way more complicated than I expected.

Right. I was looking for a way to break it up for cd installation. I guess that isn't a possibility.

You can download a mini ISO image and burn that to a CDROM if you have a CD burner: http://slackware.com/~alien/slackboot/mini/13.37/

You can then start a network installation, using an Internet HTTP or FTP mirror. Or you create a local Slackware mirror copy first so that you can keep your network installation traffic within your local network. A script for creating a local mirror (not just for Slackware-current as the article focuses on, but 13.37 just as well) is described here: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/local-slackware-mirror/

Eric

This looks promising, I'll give it a try. Thanks.

...and in addition, if you've got enough space on a partition that you're not planning to format, such as your /home directory (or a USB drive), the installer provides an option for searching for files locally (so, without a network).

If you're already running Linux, it's pretty easy to set up your current boot manager to boot the installer, so you wouldn't need to create any installation CDs or USBs. Point your boot manager to a kernel (e.g. /slackware64-current/kernels/huge.s/bzImage) and the installer initrd.img (e.g., /slackware64-current/isolinux/initrd.img), and just be careful not to format that partition during the install![1] Incidentally, I've used these two methods (local network and local drive) numerous times in the past several years because I got tired of burning CDs that I will only use once; it's worked very well for me.

[1] I'm presuming here that you'd be using a separate partition for your /home directory, which is maybe not a safe presumption, but since my /home is persistent, it makes sense for me.

Using AlienBOB's script, I keep a local copy of my own mirror. Look at my sig. When my server runs it, it creates all possible image files. There are 2 cd images in the iso folder.

Wow, uh, I think I found what you are talking about.

Is this it? http://tomjones.doesntexist.com/slac...e64-13.37-iso/

It looks like it's missing 3 or 4 gigs. So, what is this?

Eric's advice is sound here. Some time ago I had to install Slackware64 13.37 on a server that only had a CD-Rom drive and no DVD. Using the minimal ISO and downloading everything from the Internet worked fine. As a side note, I've taken the habit of mirroring the Slackware DVDs on a local web server, since my Internet connection is not very fast.