I am trying to install slack 9.1 on an IBM x20 laptop. The problem is that it only has a cdrom and floppy drive that you can connect through usb. I can get up to the point when it asks what you want to install from. My question is how do you install from a hard drive partition? What do i need to install? I arleady have fedora on it so i have an ext 3 partition ready. I don't care about fedora so i am going install slack over it.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated sense i use to run redhat 9 on my main pc but switched to slack 9.1 and love it. It is dramatically faster and uses half as much memory as redhat did.

Thanks

just after you select what packages you want to install it asks where you want to install from tell it a hard disk partition.

what do i need to download to the partition the iso or something else. If something else then how do i get it?

thanks

Won't the X20's BIOS allow you to boot from
a USB CDROM?

Basically you'll need an iso image (or both, in
case of slack 9.1) on the hdd, and then define
them as a loop-back device.

http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq....installation#1


Cheers,
Tink

yes but the kernel in slack does not support it. I tried them all. RedHat does but i like slack better

I have been able to install from a partition when I pulled all the files off of the CD onto my hard drive and then mounted the partition before going in to install. I was doing everything I could to get a bad disc to work (that now is broken in two because I found my backup). I don't remember if I was able to get the kernel from the hard drive also though, sorry.

....I would go with tinksters way if I was you
*clicks on the link*

the kernel doesn't support what exactly?

usb support. it says no media found

so it starts to boot from the usb cdrom or it immediately says like a bios msg no media found.

What about the ISO method then? :)

I posted you the link to slack's FAQ ;)


Cheers,
Tink

With loopback of course! You can mount the ISO9660 image on the kernel loopback device from another filesystem.

For example, say you download the ISO9660 image under Windows. Boot the Slackware boot and root disks for your system. Assuming your Windows partition is /dev/hda1 and you downloaded the ISO9660 image to C:, issue these commands:

mkdir -p /dos
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /dos
cd /dos
mknod /dev/loop0 b 7 0
mkdir /INSTALL
mount -o loop /dos/install.iso /INSTALL

You can then tell the Slackware setup program to install from a premounted directory and pass it /INSTALL/slakware. This trick can also be used if you cannot make a valid CD with your burner.




ok so what do i need to change if it is under an ext3 partition labeled /slackware
on hda 3 and how do i mount both cds. also do i just use the slackware cd to choose the source directory still

your kinda making this way harder then it has to be ... if you can boot and get to the setup all you need to do is put the files from the slackware directories from both cds if you want gnome or kde and the kernel directory off the 1st cd if you want to use a prebuilt kernel. then in setup when it asks for the target, right after you make your partitions remember not to format the partition with the slackware tgz files in it, tell it the partition with the slackware directory on it.

Well this is what i can do. I can set up the partition table. I can format the partitions. I can choose packages to install. When it asks for the source of media to install from i choose auto search and it can not find anything. Most linux distros do no support booting from usb devices windows does not support it either.

your kinda making this way harder then it has to be ... if you can boot and get to the setup all you need to do is put the files from the slackware directories from both cds if you want gnome or kde and the kernel directory off the 1st cd if you want to use a prebuilt kernel. then in setup when it asks for the target, right after you make your partitions remember not to format the partition with the slackware tgz files in it, tell it the partition with the slackware directory on it.

no idea how to do that or if i can

as soon as the kernel boots i can not access the cdrom

all i have are the 2 iso files