So I've decided to to try out the Slackware linux distro, but boy am I having trouble right off the bat.

If you go to the official slackware site, the versions they have available for download are at various ftp and http mirror sites. Once at the site , all that one finds is a list of links, some with readme texts others with binary files and such.

First issue I'm having is this; how do I decide on which files I need eg. bare.i for booting and then kernel, software files and so on? My initial goal is simply to learn linux better and eventually to be able to install and start using asterisk to build PBX's. I know thats a long way off but I have to start somewhere.

I'd like to make a bootable cdrom of slackware but I have no idea how to do this from my linux box and so far the documentation I've found is either geared for making bootable floppies or they simply say 'to boot from a cdrom, simply set your computer to boot from cd and insert the disk.' Well if I want to burn my own iso's onto a bootable cd that advice doesnt help much.

This is a rather involved question so I thank you all in advance for any and all help.

Slackware is much like it's name, a simple, concise distro that you use to build up your own server environment. The good part about this is that it uses all regular vanilla 'packages' that usually require little to no heavy customization to use. The bad news is that it doesn't have any easy in-roads for a new comer. You will learn to "compile from source" for all but the most basic of things and in the process you should learn quite a bit about linux.

As far as what file to download, you just need to dig deep enough to find the ISO file. Here is the current ISO file for Disk 1 for Slackware v.12: https://slackware.mirrors.easynews....e-12.0-iso/slackware-12.0-install-d1.iso

This was found at slackware.com, by going to "Get Slack" on the left hand menu bar, then scrolling down and clicking on "USA", then scrolling down to the slackware.mirrors.easynews.com link (I know this is a fast link), then selecting the slackware-12.0-iso link, then downloading the file (disk 1). If you want to run X-Windows (windows-like graphical interface) then download Disk 2 as well. Just burn these ISO's to CD-Rom and boot from Disk 1, and follow the on-screen instructions. Here is a link to the online help for installing: https://www.slackware.com/install/

Enjoy

hi kumba

I was close just not quite there. From the slackware site I had gotten as far as the list of iso's but wasnt sure which disks I'd need, would I need the .asc's and the Md5 sums in order to make a working system,? Wasnt sure whether disks 1, 2 and 3 were all the same or did I only need one of them or were some things Id want be on disk one and some on disk 3. I dont like to download at random, it makes me feel messy.

So youre saying that i need disk 1 and then 2 if i want X. Whats on 3 then?

My last question for now is this. Once i save the iso's to disk, how do i ensure from there that im going to burn a bootable disc? In the past with mswindows xp i thought that copying the iso to a cdrom would make a bootable disc but then discovered that i needed a program like infra-recorder to burn a bootable. What are the commands to do this from a linux machine? Specifically debian/ubuntu.

Ill check out the ubuntu site and see what I come up with.

thanks

The ACS and MD5 are used to verify the integrity of the file. They are not needed unless you are worried that you didn't download slackware.

Disk 1 is the first part of the installation packages.

Disk 2 is for the X-Windows and gui app's.

Disk 3 is the first disk of Source Code, and the rest are as well.

You will need a CD Burning program. I think Ubuntu has one, just search google like you suggested.

I think I need a basic linux class or something. I looked up the commands for making iso's and burning cd's; mkisofs and cdrecord, but holy bujeezus there's so many options and whatnot that I just wound up feeling rather lost. I can just use nautilus the frontend for cdrecord, it just seems like the gui's are kind of a copout. Especially if Im trying to move on to slackware...

If you're running X the 2 most common burner programs are XCDRoast and K3B. Both have an option to burn from ISO image.

From Winblows, the most common ones are Roxio and Nero, these also have the option to burn from ISO image.

The default on ubuntu is nautilus I guess. It worked fine but now I'm running into new troubles.

Scenario: I had ubuntu 7.10 running on the system that I want to put slackware onto. The cd's I made for slackware boot fine but it's in setup that I'm having trouble. I had my ubuntu and swap partitions on the second half of my drive and the first half was blank so I made a new partition on the first half of the drive for slackware. During the setup I accidently chose my ubuntu partition as the target for root and all the software was installed there, rendering ubuntu useless.

Ok so no big deal, didnt have anything worth mentioning on the drive so I blasted the partitions and started over. Made a partition for slackware, one for swap and one for ubuntu if I decide to reinstall. This time I chose the right partition as the target for root (i think) and installed the software packages again. At the end of setup it tells me that I have no password set for root but when I go to set the password, I get

chroot cannot execute /usr/bin/passwd: no such file or directory

I tried making the directory and trying again but I keep getting the same message about /usr/bin/passwd.

So I skip past the step and go through the configure step of setup, creating a new fstab and then rebooting, but the computer is unable to boot and GRUB bootloader returns an error. As I understand slackware prefers LILO but I'm not sure how to replace GRUB or whether I can use it to load slackware.

So 2 questions I guess. How do I set a password from slackware's setup, and more importantly, how do I get GRUB to recognize slackware so that it will boot? I dont care whether I'm using GRUB or LILO, I just want my system to boot.

Help?

Thanks guys.

I haven't seen the password issue before, but if it won't let you set one it should let you login with no password.

I've always used LILO, nice & simple. Tell setup to install it to the master boot record and go on.

Unless you have no easy options or need to boot into 20 different operating systems, just use Lilo... it's so much easier with linux then grub...

just to follow up on this thread. the iso checked out ok so i thought maybe i just needed the third installation iso, perhaps my installation attempts were just incomplete. so i burned the third iso (not knowing what was supposed to be on the disc) and went through the installation process again. this time the first install disc went through a whole series of software installs including LILO (i had selected full install each time) that it had not gone through before. the first few times i tried the install, after choosing which software packs i wanted, I was immediately prompted for the second disc.

im not sure why the software on the first disc was not installed the first two times i tried. its a strange problem that resolved itself for no reason apparent to me. any ideas as to what might have happened would be great, but bottom line is that the install worked fine the third time and im a happy slackware newbie.

i am having a problem in xfce however. i have online courses for school that require adobe flash player but after downloading the tar files and unzipping them, when i attempt to install from x my system hangs and I have to do a hard shutdown.

*edit
kumba i know you had said that i didnt need the third disc but someone on another site said i did need it. they were wrong

Your a brave soal to take on slackware.

Slackware was one of perhaps 3 distros If i recall when I started using it in 1996. It was a tough way to learn linux but is rock solid and very stable.

There are a lot of readups on it. Make sure your hardware is in the HCL better known as the Hardware compatability list. Then download the ISO for your particular CPU type be it AMD or INTEL and start the install process.

I have been running slackware for my asterisk box for a couple years now and has proven mostly reliable with the exception of a occational reboot.

Good luck.