I recently bought a (non-raid) Promise SATA 150 TX2 Plus controller card.

After a few days of fiddling, googling and reading forum threads I was able to create a custom 2.6.2 kernel that allowed me to cfdisk to the hard drive.

Now I'd like to be able to install slackware... somehow, with this custom kernel.

I have no clue where to begin, I've created syslinux bootdisks, hacked the bare.i image and swapped the System.map.gz, config & kernel (that gave me a udf-fs : no vrs found error) and tried a number of other "dirty" "I don't know anything about what I'm doing" tricks.

A) Can I pass parameters to a syslinux bootdisk to boot the cd?

B) I've read a number of threads where people "injected" kernel modules into the kernel; should I even bother trying with a 2.4.22 kernel?

C) Can I do anything else outside of buying a highpoint controller card? (I might as well buy myself a new motherboard for the price they cost) The kernel WORKS I don't want to give up now and blowtorch the poor thing.

What did you boot with? I mean from what/where were you able to run cfdisk? Are you wanting to install to a second HD?

*** ASUS P2B440BX ***
A) 20GIG WD, Plugged into the built in IDE of the asus.

/DEV/HDD1 : Slackware 9.1 - Running the re-compiled 2.62 kernel

B) 34GIG WD Raptor, plugged into the SATA 150TX2Plus
/DEV/SDA1 - Windows
/DEV/SDA2 - SWAP
/DEV/SDA3 - Reiserfs 3.6 (the drive I want to install slackware onto)

The kernel was compiled on the 20gig, and from that slackware 9.1 installation I have been able to cfdisk to /dev/sda and manipulate files on the reiserfs partiton. I haven't extensively tested the sata drive support, (because I want to get it running first) but the support looks alright.

I have run both a syslinux boot disk and lilo boot disk which work fine.

***
So to recap, I just want to do make either a bootdisk that will allow me to mount a root disk (and then do a CD install) or pass parameters to a syslinux boot disk made with my new kernel to load the CD install... (or any other suggestion really)

The slackware people must have a standardized procedure for making their installation boot disks but I can't find it anywhere (which doesn't help my cause one bit) This is what I really need, but any suggestions at this point would help.
***

Best,
techguy

i guess you can spare 20 MBs to make life simple hey?
ok read the instruction how to use the install.zip from the rootdisks directory in the ftp site

ok do it different.. make it an etx2 fylesystem and don't have the linux subdir...
move your kernel to that filesystem
now make a lilo with that kernel and partition and you'll have you're setup system... tada

can u follow that in any way? or am i being unclear again?... let me know, i'll help you further

The site for RUNT linux has an excellent HOWTO for making your own Slackware bootdisk. However if your kernel is too large you won't be able to fit it on a floppy. You'd have to do a new compile leaving out unneeded support for ither devices etc. What is the size of your kernel?
You can aso copy your system to a new partition.
There are instructions in ZipSlack FAQ, more or less
mkdir mnt proc (on the new partition) and then
cp -a /bin /mnt/newpartition
cp -a /etc /mnt/newpartition
and so on for all your existing directories, except mnt and proc.
Course this will just duplicate what you have now.
As for making a bootdisk the config file is optional. I recall something like:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/somedir/bootimg
mke2fs /somedir/bootimg
mount -o loop /somedir/bootimg /mnt/?
then copy the kernel and System.map (without .gz) to /mnt/? then
umount /mnt/?
then dd if=/somedir/bootimg of=/dev/fd0
This is assuming the kernel will fit.
Read the RUNT howto and it may be clearer. If you kernel will fit and has the support compiled in (not as a module) then you don't have to worry so much about the miniroot.gz.

Ok, so here it goes...

I built a 1.11meg 2.62 kernel that supports nothing except the promise controller, and other things that I wasn't sure I should get rid of. This was good enough for the RUNT install instructions.

Unfortunately I get a common error trying to mount the partition setup mentioned by nesware* wether I'm using the (runt) boot disk or lilo: a kernel panic that proclaims "no init found. try passing init= option to kernel".

* ext2 - contents of install.zip's \linux in root of partition.

I've had this error before and I assumed that I was doing something funny with the kernel, so I made a syslinux boot disk based on the bare.i kernel and I got the same error.

So I went hunting in linux-2.6.2\Documentation\kernel-parameters.txt and found this:

init= [KNL]
Format: <full_path>
Run specified binary instead of /sbin/init as init
process.

So I figured there was a problem with the install.zip, and I noticed that init referenced to ../bin/busybox so I figured I'd make a soft link to busybox but that didn't work either.

If worse comes to worse I'll just copy the partition but I was hoping for a more graceful solution.

Best,
techguy out of ideas again :-)

A 2.6.x Kernel won't run UMSDOS, so it won't work with Zipslack or Install.zip
If you have the space to install in, you can make small FAT partition(at least 16MB) for the install.zip and a larger ext2 partition where you want to install. The afterwards the FAT can be made into a swap partition or other. You#d have to boot with 2.4.x jernel to run the install, and then install the 2.6.x kernel during or after the installation.