Some Setup Questions
 

It's my understanding with Slack you have to get your hands dirty in which I have no problem. Upon my install of Slack 8.1 I ran the comand startx. which gave me xauth and xinit errors about libraries not found. But the lIbraries are in the /usr/X11R6/lib directory. So I am assuminf I need to set up a config file but whe I tried xconfig and Xconfig it could not run those programs either.

So I guess What I am asking for is Help geting my Xwindows up and running amd File Directory Layout of Slack and well for now that will be it.

I am sorry to sound Like I need to be hand held but I don't have a book on Slack and I have been Babied I guess with Red Hat.

TIA

find & install the packages containing the missing libraries. [ for f in /mnt/cdrom/...../x/*.tgz; do if tar -ztf $f | grep libfoo.so; then echo $f; fi; done ]

to configure X, run xf86config

But that is what I am saying. The Libraries are installed and nothing is working. I am just wanoder if there is A plain text file I need to edit or If I nned to remove the enitire package and re-instal it.

There is - /etc/X11/XF86Conifg
but why fiddling with it by hand, let the system do the job it can and then fiddle with it if it ain't work
run as root
xf86cfg
upon complition it will create XF86Config.new, just copy it over /etc/X11/XF86Config, but make sure you backed up /etc/X11/XF86Config file first.

I have found my config file and it was setup on the install of Slackware. My problem is when I type startx it gives me

xauth: something something: libraries not found 'library name'
xauth: " " " " " "
xauth: " " " " " "
xauth: " " " " " "

Now I have located these libraries and the are in the /usr/X11R6/lib directory. so I am thinking that they are in the wrong spot. But I don't know for sure and if they are I do not know where they go.

or maybe I am just totally wrong about the whole thing. I would just like to get that working first.

check you have an entry for /usr/X11/lib in the file /etc/ld.so.config. if not, add it and run ldconfig.
and of course, the original error message would have been more helpful.. what librairy does auth not find??

And I don't think this has been said 3 times yet, so here's my chance ;)
run xf86config and then tweak the file from there.

Cool

If the libraries are not found, do waht Treebeard said, edit /etc/ld.so.conf (in slack its not called ld.so.config but ld.so.conf, just so its no confusing..) and enter the path to the libraries, then exit, save and run ldconfig, then xf86config, tweak the file, run startx and voila. If you are having many library problems it could be a corrupted installation tho...
HTH
-NSKL

OK OK I can not run the xf86config but it does have a xfree86setup which I ran, again I can't not startx it keeps giving me the errors about not being able to find or open the libraries that are there. I Belive I may have a bad hard disk I am not sure. I have a 10gig hard disk and when I tried to copy the from part of the disk to another I get input/output errors. So I used fdisk wiped the 2 partitions and created one linux native then I tried to run mkfs. It in turn said Bad Blocks. so I ran badblocks. It ran for over 6 hours and was not finished. I stopped the program, something just didnot seem right. Now I am looking into disk larger than 8 gig. if any one a suggestion on that Iit would definitely be appreciated.

Check your ide cable, if you have a spare try using that and see if the errors go away.

I have found an article at LinuxPlanet.com about large disk how-to I will read through that and see what I can figure out. Just wish I had a little more knowledge on hardware.

ok I have Figured it out. I think it might explain everything, myhard drive has more bad blocks than Wisconsin has cheese. According to Linux's badblocks comand, I ran that command and 6 hours later it was still running spitting out bad blocks. OK maybe Linux does not like the ten gig hard drive even what I have read says it should be ok. What do I know I am not a hardware expert. So i decided to use the WD life guard tools that came with the hard drive, needless to say it wouldn't even test the disk I may have to have it on IDE0 though, will try later. I tried to install Redhat 5.2, 6.0, win95, win98 and Slackware 7.1 and none of them would install properly or at all, at times, on that drive. So in my final determination I need a new Hard Drive.

Thanks everyone who tried to help me with this.