The installation of Slackware can seem pretty spooky at first. I have installed Slack on different machines and followed the same install procedure most of the time.
Now this is not a definitive guide. It should provide the information required to get your new Slackware operating system up and running. The installation can at times prove difficult, but it is in the least one hell of a learning experience. Once you have cracked the installation, you should be ready to meet the challenges required to tweak your system to your liking.
If you run into problems the Slackware subforum Installation at LinuxQuestions is the place to look for a solution.
Prepare for take off.
Whilst some people reading this may feel that this is a little like teaching your granny to suck eggs, so to speak. Believe me, overlooking the simplest of things can lead to many hours of frustration. Been there and read the book.
First of all there are a few pre-installation tasks required before we actually put the cdrom in the drive. The first is to get the latest installation CD's or DVD by downloading them from the Slackware resources . The relevant ISO's can be retrieved by either a mirror service or as torrents. If your already running Linux, then use your favourite piece of software to burn the ISO's, mine would be K3b, to disk. I used my Windows XP installation and the excellent isorecorder software, thanks to Alex Feinman, to burn the ISO's.
Next we set your computer to boot from the CD or DVD drive. This involves getting into the bios program and changing the boot order so the boot loader boots from the required drive first. This is pretty much straight forward though not all PC's have the same method or Bios program. Once the machine is ready to boot from your chosen drive, insert first installation CD or the DVD and then reboot.
Countdown.
I have installed Slackware on a number of machines since Slackware 10.2. The instance here is specifically for the latest version 12.0. The installation process has hardly changed since I first installed 10.2 though.
Once the PC reboots and completes it's initial POST checks, your presented with the Slackware installation welcome screen. Take a minute to read the screen before hitting the enter button. You may have to pass some parameters to the kernel for your type of processor. Basically if your processor is rather old specify the huge.s kernel after the boot prompt, if not the default kernel will suffice.
Problem, CD Rom Wont Boot.
If for some reason the Cdrom drive wont boot, there could be a number of reasons, first reboot into the Bios again and check that it is set to boot from the Cdrom. If it is and the Cdrom still refuses to start, then this could be a problem. My old dog of a machine has this problem and needs a little coaching in order to start the installation.
This where the smart boot manager comes in. My preferred approach to solving this problem was not to use the version which comes with the third installation Cdrom but to go to WinXP to perform the task of creating the image.
First I surfed to this site after googling for smart boot manager. I downloaded the sbm.img file. From the afore mentioned page I then clicked on the Windows link in the text for this page. I then formatted a floppy disk in the floppy drive.
My Computer, right click on drive A, select format from the menu.
I first downloaded the RAWRITE.EXE from lower down the same page. This did not work on my system. So I then tried RAWRITE2.EXE. I ensured both the sbm.img and the RAWRITE2.EXE were in the C:\ directory. Clicking the RAWRITE2.EXE opened a command window. I specified C:\sbm.img as the image then A as the destination drive. At the next prompt I hit enter and before a blink of an eye the operation was complete.
I changed the boot order in the target machine so the floppy drive boots first, Cdrom drive next and finally the hard drive. Inserted the smart boot manager floppy, rebooted and was then presented with a basic menu from which I could select the Cdrom drive with the first Slackware installation disk. It worked a treat and I was able to start the installation.
The reason I could not use Linux for producing the smart boot manager floppy was that the Linux machine I was using at the time did not have a working floppy drive. Perhaps someone else could explain the procedure using Linux.
So we are now into the installation...
Choose Your Keyboard.
The next prompt is choosing the keyboard layout you require during the installation process. Hitting enter gives you the default US.map layout. Enter "1" at the prompt brings up a selection menu from which you can specify your keyboard layout. Mine was UK.map. You then have the chance to test your keyboard keys. To accept enter 1 after removing (backspace) any characters you have typed. I think entering "2" allows you to choose another layout if the one pre-chosen is incorrect.
At the next prompt enter "root" after reading the text.
Partake in partitioning...Anyone.
Slackware wont, like other distros, do the hard work of partitioning your hard drive prior to installation automatically. This may seem like to much and you can just see your hair going grey at the thought. You maybe just that lucky person who has a partitioned drive ready for installation. Then again if not then "cfdisk" is your friend. Instructions on the use of "cfdisk" are described in detail else where. In general, if your dual booting, get to know where your other Operating System is on the disk. As a general rule of thumb, whatever your hard disk size, I would use 6 or 7 Gigs for the root "/" directory. Linux requires a swap partition, you can allocate as little or as much space as you like, for my big drive I specified around 1 Gigabyte. The remainder of the drive I leave for the /home directory. For the old dogs 20 Gigabyte hard drive I have the following Sizes in (MB)...
| hda1 | Boot | Primary | Linux | 6497.98 |
| hda2 | Primary | Linux swap | 551.10 | |
| hda3 | Primary | Linux | 13440.11 |
To be honest I was terrified the first time I partitioned a hard drive for Linux. With cfdisk it is now a breeze. Have a go, especially on a drive where the lone installation will be Linux. One thing to remember is that no changes are made until you actually commit to writing the new partition table to disk. So if you get it wrong, quit and start again.
cfdisk detailing the partioning of my laptop's hard drive
Once you have completed the partition of your target hard disk you can now continue with the setup. This will carry on in my next post.
