why won't lilo install?
 

I'm still trying to install slackware, as I'm having difficulties with lilo. I'm installing it on my usb hdd so i need to set a wait time before booting. As far as I know the only way to do this right away is through expert lilo install. Every time I choose to do this the screen sits there at the "installing linux loader" screen for hours. This can't be normal, right? Is there any other way to install lilo to the mbr of my usb drive and then edit it from a live ubuntu cd or something?
I've tried with the slackware cd set and the dvd and i get the same problem when installing lilo.

It's odd that lilo is hanging like that - the problem is also that if this is in the initial install there are more parts to the install to run after lilo - these will be missed if you haver to kill the install.
One idea is to skip lilo and let the rest of the setup run to complete the other stuff in the setup.

In any case when you come to a stage you want to get lilo to install you could try booting with the install media and following the on screen instructions to boot to an existing Slackware system. You should apply the "rootdelay=10" part on the command line here. So if your external USB disk is seen as sdc on boot and you have Slackware installed to sdc2 you can enter this :
- (possibly hugesmp.s for 32bit systems), and the system should boot and load all your mounts. You can then look and and edit /etc/lilo.conf and run lilo from the new install to fix.

This should work but it still doesn't solve why lilo wasn't working from the setup which is odd and possibly indicates some other error.

One thing to watch out for is the USB drive may change it's device name through boots - say you have something else plugged in - and this will mess up your fstab and lilo settings. To get round this look at using a LABEL or UUID in lilo.conf and fstab. I would first just try and get it booting.

INSTALL lilo :
bash# lilo -C /etc/lilo.conf -b /dev/USB_DEVICE

The content of lilo.conf could like this :

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
label = default
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-huge-smp-2.6.29.6-smp
initrd = /boot/initrd-huge-smp-2.6.29.6-smp.gz
label = vmlinuz-smp
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

you install slackware to your usb hdd, so you must make a initrd image.

see this :
http://linuxconfig.dyndns.org/lazy/L...vable_USB_disk

Skip lilo, but create the USB boot disk? I'd try that.

I'm not familiar with USB hard drives so my advice may be worthless, but my first slackware install was a dualboot setup with grub already installed and since I was scared of slackware, I just skipped lilo and used the usb stick until I figured out how to handle the situation.

No - this is incorrect advice. Slackware will boot just fine with the huge kernel (the default) from a USB drive using the rootdelay= parameter. If you install the generic kernel, (which you should once it all works), then you will need to add devices for usb-storage and usb device recognition as well as a wait parameter to the initial ram disk. There are actually quite a few tunings to get the initrd working with an external USB drive bit this is not the case here.

I'll try this as soon as i can... i don't have the dvd with me ATM. Thanks for the advice everyone- I'll let you know if it works

Curious to know if this is working for you?
I recently tried a spin-off of slackware called salix and could not get lilo installed and I gave up. I am wondering if it's a problem in slackware because I was going to try out slackware next.

No, I never got it figured out. I switched to freebsd and so far it hasn't given me TOO many problems... just my inability to get used to the diffferences between linux and bsd. I hope you have better luck with slackware than i did

I found a solution that might work for you. I have tried freebsd (and many, many other distros, and it's amazing how many there are) but really the linux kernel has the most momentum. The number of changes going into the kernel is considered daunting and a liability by some. Depends on how you look at it.

Anyway if you are interested in trying again maybe my work-around will help:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...to-mbr-804669/

I am running from a CF card. BTW to minimize writes to the CF card I have disabled swap and have mounted it using noatime.