unhappy with slack
 

I just installed slack 14. It was the first time I've tried slack. Installation went smoothly, no problems or error messages. After installing, I told it to install lilo, and added windows and ubuntu partitions to the lilo.conf, following the instructions. Reboot, I get the nice slack login screen, choose slack:

[7.396294] usb 3-4: serial number MU418ASA

Seven seconds into boot is as far as it goes! I tried to boot Ubuntu, also stops. Windows will boot, but who wants windows?? Everything worked fine using grub and Ubuntu or Fedora, so I rule out mechanical failure.

Not very impressed with Slackware!!

Didn't have a Ubu disc, so had to reinstall Fedora to get grub back, so that I could complain here!! Why didn't slack boot?? Anyone else had this trouble?

Why install lilo if you already have a bootloader ? Why not just add Slackware to that bootloader ? Why re-install Fedora when you could have re-installed GRUB.

Where did you install lilo ? Did you configure it properly ?

Sure, go ahead blame Slackware, it is obviously at fault.

Well I just followed the instructions, I am not a guru like you, just a peasant! It wanted to install a bootloader. I thought LILO woould work as well as Grub. I put it in the MBR, following the instructions. After that, I could not boot into Linux, so it was a bit hard to reinstall grub, even if I knew how to do that!

So now everything boots properly ?

I don't know why it would hang at that line. Did you try to boot multiple times and it always hangs at the same line on boot ?

Make sure the Slackware DVD or CD you are using was burned properly.

If it hangs at that line the first thing to do is to remove all unnecessary USB devices and see if it works after that.

I agree with tex, you did not need to install yet another bootloader. If you'd have installed Slackware, skipped the lilo install and then just re-run grub2 on one of your existing distros it would have picked it up...

In all honesty as you have not posted up the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf and details of your partitioning schema, this thread seems rather pointless.

I suppose I just wanted to moan! Sorry about that.

No usb devices were plugged in, just my little loud speakers, but they just get their juice from the usb port.

Actually, it also said, I wrote it down:

[7.396294] usb 3-4: serial number MU418ASA
Enter runlevel:

So I entered 6, to which the machine answered:

Init: entering runlevel: 6
Init : no more processes left

That was all! I tried 4 times to boot slack, then gave it up! Couldn't enter runlevel 3 either!

Do not use runlevel 0 or 6.

Slackware isn't really the kind of distro you install on a whim. It will not hold your hand. There was no need for you to install LILO when you already had GRUB set up.

Maybe start here, next time.

Although I am no expert, I have installed other distros, and they work. One presumes LILO functions, as the boot process started. The dvd was fine, I checked it, and as I said, the install did not complain at all.

What got me worried was when Ubuntu also failed to start. Then I said some words about slack which one should not utter in polite company!

Hahahaha, complaining in a slackware forum about slackware is about as sensible as going into a barrio and complaining about the tacos el cabron at a cholos mothers house. At least no bodily harm ensues at a forum.

I guess since like was mentioned. No lilo conf. No answer to "Why didn't slack boot".

Same Same with "Anyone else had this trouble".

Hopefully you learned to include documentation in code tags next time (like lilo conf).

Happy trails, Rok.

Don't be too sure. There may be a Slack Death Squad on their way to his house now. :eek:

I think slackware uses runlevel 4 for graphical desktop and 3 for console. Runlevel 6 is 'reboot', I believe.

You should post the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf, as mentioned earlier.

Yeah, well 3 didn't work either, so I gave up. Later I had great trouble reinstalling Ubuntu. It installed fine, but then kept saying it cannot find init, and stopped during boot, just like slack. I have no idea what was wrong. I ran 'recovery mode' which threw up the same error as Slack, mentioned above. But as I did not format sda3, the older kernels were still there. I finally got a 3.2 kernel to boot. The touchpad would not work, the sound would not work, but I could run an update. That installed kernel 3.5.something. A reboot using this kernel worked and Ubuntu now works, everything fine. But something weird was happening. I got no errors during install.

I have installed Fedora 18 3 times these last few days, no problem, which kind of negates my theory that my laptop is somehow broken.

Some other time I'll try Slack again!!

A couple of thoughts come to mind about the initial post:

If Grub was installed to the master boot record, attempting to install Lilo to the MBR may not work unless the MBR is first reformatted.

Also, I have never had Slackware's so-called "install Lilo automatically" option work, and I've never had the "expert" Lilo install fail, as long as I did not skip a step (which is admitted easy to do the first time)--except when Grub was previously installed to the MBR. In that case, see above.

In order to figure out what exactly went wrong, we need to know exactly what steps were followed, step by step, to install Lilo.

Without that information, we are just whistling in the dark.

Thanks for that: I really don't know, but I think LILO installed ok, beccause, on boot I had the screen with the Slackware logo and the choice of os. I nearly went and bought a new laptop, although this one is only a year old, but now I have Fedora and Ubuntu and Windows running ok, I don't think there is an mechanical/electronic failure.

A mystery! Next time I try, I will say no to LILO, and just run grub-update after installation!!

This is just a wild guess, but it sounds like you might have been using an "initrd" file when it was not required. Probably the "initrd" file was not up to date, or not correct. The huge Slackware kernel usually doesn't require an "initrd".

It's also a common problem to have the root device name wrong. That can cause the wrong "init" task to be run (the one from some other OS).

If I was going to impress someone with Slackware, I probably wouldn't point out the installer as the strong point. It's designed to be simple rather than completely automatic. In many cases that is an advantage, but it can also choose defaults that won't work for a particular configuration. It is important to understand something about disk partitioning and installing boot loaders.

So far when I've provided constructive criticism to the Slackware team, they've always given my suggestions careful consideration. It does help to provide plenty of details about the configuration and the exact circumstances where there is a problem.

In order for lilo to work, you need a proper /boot/initrd. Did you invoke mkinitrd after installing the kernel? /boot/README.initrd

I have GRUB on another drive. I never have to change it, except for the slackware version in the menu entry, that's because I installed the initrd on the slackware-current partition, not the MBR of the drive. Only install lilo on the mbr of the system boot disk, then you can add menu entries for everything else. Too much work for me, I'd rather just sed grub.conf.

This /etc/lilo.conf works for me, with vmlinuz and initrd soft links to the real files (handy for installing new kernels). Your mileage may vary. Objects are closer than they appear.

=-=-=-=-=-
boot=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3e1fcea7-d5ba-471c-a5e9-7714a2bd7188
root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3e1fcea7-d5ba-471c-a5e9-7714a2bd7188
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image=/boot/vmlinuz
initrd=/boot/initrd
read-only

frankbell, you're probably on the right path, in fact what Pedroski is describing here is exactly the same issue I had after installing Slackware the first time. I wanted to multi-boot it alongside with Debian and m$-XP, and I was using Grub. After installing Slackware I tried to put Lilo on the MBR: this made both Linuxes unbootable (but not m$-XP) and I had to chroot into Debian, reinstall Grub and only then I could boot all systems again. I put Lilo in a corner (not because of Lilo, but for my lacking knowledge of it) until I ended up using Slackware as my only OS. I don't think the issue here is related to a missing initrd (the huge kernel booted just fine here).

I found a link about clearing out the MBR, I never tried that and I wonder if it's the right way to solve such issues: [link removed].

Best regards,
Philip

It should not be necessary to zero the MBR before installing a new boot loader. The boot loader should preserve the partition table part of the MBR and write over the software part of the MBR. Windows uses the bytes from 1B8 through 1BB (hex) to store a disk signature, so changing or zeroing those bytes can prevent Windows from booting. Most boot loaders now preserve the disk signature bytes during installation.

The instructions that you referenced zero the entire MBR including the partition table and disk signature. You should only do that if there are no partitions defined on the disk drive that you want to preserve. After clearing the MBR to zero there will be no partitions defined.

Also, the instructions do not completely remove a GPT (GUID Partition Table). A GPT is stored at both the beginning and end of the hard disk. To clear a GPT you can use the "gdisk" utility with the "-z" option.

Thanks Erik FL for the valuable insight, it seems that I have digged up a piece of obsolete documentation, linking it too quickly here. I'll remove it from my post, to avoid suggesting disastrous steps. Sorry for that.

Grub2 is very good about detecting and managing multiple operating systems on a hard drive. You shouldn't have had to even install LILO at all. My question is these:

1. Where did you attempt to install LILO?

A) Master Boot Record
B) USB Thumb Drive
C) SuperBlock of Hard Drive
D) I didn't install LILO at all, I skipped it.

If you're using Grub2 or Grub, you don't need to install LILO/eLILO at all. Grub2 should use the os-prober's scripts to detect which operating systems are on your drive(s) and add the appropriate lines to the boot scripts of Grub2's configuration file.