Hey,
im very new to slackware and linux. i only installed zipslack yesterday and i have encountered a problem while trying to boot.
i have edited autoexec.bat to give me the option to boot linux or windows and the line in the file to boot linux is as follows:

LoadLIN C:\LINUX\VMLINUZ mem=32m ROOT=/dev/hda1 RW

i am unsure as to wether the mem=32m statement is neccesary but i thought id give it a try

the computer is a gateway 2000 solo with 32meg of ram (as stated above) and a 150mhz processor. i extracted the zip into the root of my C drive (fat16) as instructed on the slackware website and edited linux.bat (although i am using autoexec.bat). linux.bat executed from dos (external from windows) brings up the same error message:

Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel.

i searched google and this site for a number of hours for a solution to this problem (which many others seem to have had) but i have not found one that solves my problem.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Did i post this question in the wrong place??

sorry to keep moving this to the front, but i need some sort of help or reply to this....

It's the right place. Problem is, I don't know what's wrong. I have a hidden partition on a 686 and what Windows reports as C on that machine is actually /dev/hda2. If you had two drives, maybe it would be /dev/hdb1. 'No init found' means, basically, that command on C is loading loadlin on C which is loading the kernel on C which is looking for root on /hda1 and not finding it. So the only thing I can think of is either you have the wrong device given or your install was messed up somehow. For instance, you may have needed a 32-bit unzipper and used a 16. Can't remember is that's an issue or not. Or the download may simply have been corrupted.

Hm. Another possibility is you need a FAT32 or something. Zipslack has to do funky stuff with the names regardless, and is intended to also work under plain DOS, so I don't think that would be the issue, though.

One more thought - DOS isn't case sensitive and Linux is. Not sure if loadlin is case-sensitive or not, though. If it's receiving the command with the wrong case and passing it on, maybe that's screwing things up. For instance, in plain DOS everything defaults to uppercase internally, no matter what it looks like. Windows keeps *track* of case, unlike plain DOS, but ignores it. But in Linux, VMLINUZ and vmlinuz are different things. Things like that. *shrug*

Thanks for the suggestions digiot, but i checked on fdisk and theres no other partitions (thats the only way i know to check partitions) and hda2 doesnt get as far as hda1 does.

i tried a fat32 partition already but to no avail and i tried lower casing everything that was uppercased in the line in autoexec.bat

any other suggestions anyone?
or is it simply broken?

I will try to help as best I can, as I am slowly learning more and more about ZipSlack and Slackware itself.

Need to ask a few questions so that I can get a better understanding of the system:
1 How many hard drives do you have in the system?
2 What is the partition structure of each drive in the system?
3 Where did you extract the ZipSlack package to?
4 What OS(s) are you running on the system (DOS, Win 3x, Win9x)?


With this info I can help guide you a little better, and am quite sure we can get you up and running with little trouble!

Hang in there, part of the fun is figuring out how this awesome OS runs

Regards.
-SynnerST

thanks for helpin out

1. just the 1 hard drive
2. i am hoping the answer to this question would be fat16?? tell me if ive answered incorrectly i dont really know much :P from all indications this is hda1
3. i extracted to c:\ which then meant the root folder of linux was c:\linux
4. i am running win98SE

the system is a laptop if that in some way helps and the drive has been compressed using drivespace in windows...

thanks again if ya can help

To answer the 2nd question better, bring up an MSDOS box (start > run > then type in command and press enter) and in the MSDOS box type FDISK

This will run the Fdisk program. choose option 4 as this will display the partition format.

It will tell you how many partitions you have, and how big they are.

Also, the compression *might* cause an issue, I am not sure. but we will work it out regardless =)

-SynnerST

**edited to correct spelling**

i ran fdisk and it told me i have 1 partition which is a primary dos partition, fat 16, and 1024 meg (hows that for on the dot)

Great now I know what we are working with.

This is what I would recomend:

1) Using Win98, completely delete the c:\linux directory
2) Copy zipslack.zip to c:
3) Obtain 2 blank floppy disks

Doh! almost forgot to ask this question: Did you download the ISO of Slackware or only the zipslack.zip file. And if you downloaded the ISOs, which ones did you get (disk 1,2,3,4)?

-SynnerST

hehe, slight problem, its got no floppy drive, only cd-rom.

i only downloaded the zipslack.zip file (im on dialup) but if i need to i can download an iso (which takes around 40 hours)

The lack of a floppy drive is gonna complicate things a bit as I set mine up using a linux boot disk, but I think we should still be able to manage.

Use winzip to unzip the zipslack.zip file to c:\

please note if you encounter *any* errors during this process.
When unzipped, please post back with a copy of your config.sys and autoexec.bat files.

Since you don't have a floppy drive, you can press 'F8' while boooting, and choose to boot in DOS only, then use loadlin. I think Win98 also has the 'Reboot in DOS' option when your shutting down.

I only used the boot disk to get zipslack up and running, after that you dont need them to actually use zipslack.

I was running only DOS and I did not have access to winzip, that is why I needed the linux boot/rescue disks - for the unzipping proccess