Installing Slackware 9.1

I have noticed a new tutorial on installing Slackware 9.1 and it really just skimmed through the basics of installation so I decided to write a tutorial that is a little more in depth and made for someone who is coming to Slackware or even linux for the very first time. Another good one is http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=251388 by gore.

Your first order of business is to get ahold of two seperate ISO images: Slackware 9.1 disk One and Dropline Gnome. You only need disk one of Slackware because Gnome is on the other cd. Dropline is a version of Gnome that has been optimised for Slack. They Can be found at the following two sites:
Slackware:
http://ncart.scs.ryerson.ca/pub/slac...kware-9.1-iso/
http://sunsite.ulatina.ac.cr/Unix/Li...kware-9.1-iso/
http://www.tux.org/pub/distributions...kware-9.1-iso/


Dropline: http://www.dropline.net/gnome/download.php

Once you get the ISO's you will need to burn them onto two cdroms. After this is done you are ready to move on.

You will now need to set your BIOS to boot from cdrom if you haven't already. This will allow us to boot into the Slack installation. When it boots you should get a screen that asks which kernel you will want to use, unless you are using SCSI drives your best bet is to just press enter. When you do this it loads
the kernel and you are on your way...

Now you should have a prompt that asks you to select a keyboard map. Most will choose 1, because you have a us keyboard. You should now log in as root and partition your hard drive. Most will swear that you should use fdisk but if this is your first time partitioning your drive it is much easier to just use cfdisk. I can't tell you exactly what size your partitions are going to be but it is a good rule of thumb to make your swap partition twice the size of your physical ram. For simplicity make the next partition the rest of the drive and make sure you flag it as bootable. When you are done save your changes and exit.

When back at the prompt type 'setup' and you will be presented with a nice colorful menu. Press the down key until 'Addswap' is highlighted and press enter. This will format your swap space and turn it on for immediate use. Now after that is finished it is time to set your source drive which in our case we will want it to probe for the cd in its drive, it is also time to chose a filesystem for your system. Reiserfs is probably your best bet.

Now you will be asked to choose which packages you want to install we want to leave everything checked except KDE and Gnome (we will install Dropline Gnome later, remember?). When it prompts you for the type of install just do the full. Many will argue against this but it is waaayyyy easier like this when you are new. It helps you from not installing something that was needed. You will be able to trim your system down later when you get more comfortable with it.

After the packages are installed it is time to congiure your new system, all of this is very simple and straight forward, but somethings that need to be noted are:

If you have a cdburner you will have to trick linux into thinking it is SCSI. To do this all you have to do is type 'hdx=ide-scsi' at the append part of the prompt where x is the drive letter corresponding to the burner.
hda = Primary Master
hdb = Primary Slave
hdc = Secondary Master
hdd = Secondary Slave

Also, when you start choose the services you will want started just leave everything off except sshd, smbd, inetd. You will need the ssh daemon running if you plan on logging into your box from another *nix machine on your network. You will need the smb daemon on if you plan to share files with a windows machine on your network also. One more thing make sure you chose fluxbox as the window manager to start with.

When everything is done highlight exit and press enter and you will be taken out of set up and the Slackware cd will eject, remove it and press Ctrl+Alt+Del and your machine will reboot. Congrats you just installed Slack!

Now when it reboots you will need to log in as root.

Type 'adduser', so you can add a user to your system. This is done as a procaution so you won't accidentally screw something up. When this is done type 'logout' and log in as your new user. When you are logged in type 'xf86congig' and read through the prompts and answer all of the questions it asks. When it asks you about your monitor I think that safe choices are 8 and then 4. When this is done and you are back at your prompt type 'startx'and hope that X loads. If it doesn't go into xf86config again and toy with the settings a bit.

When X is up open a command prompt and type 'su' and enter your password for your root account. Type 'emacs /etc/fstab'. The file should look a little bit like this one:
http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

for example if you have a cdburner and a seperate dvd drive the two entries for those would look like this:
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,usr,ro 0 0
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd auto noauto,usr,ro 0 0

when you are done editing fstab press 'f10' then 'f' then 's'. This will save the file. Then press 'f10' again and then 'f' then 'e' to exit. Next you will need to change to the /dev directory with 'cd'.

Now you are ready to remove the old entries for the cdrom and the dvd drive. Type:
rm /dev/cdrom
rm /dev/dvd
Then you are ready to create new links, type:
ln -s /dev/sr0 /dev/cdrom
ln -s /dev/hdx /dev/dvd (where x is the corresponding drive letter for the dvd drive.)

Then set the permissions and change the groups for the files:
chmod 777 /dev/dvd*
chmod 777 /dev/cdrom*
chmod 777 /mnt/dvd
chmod 777 /mnt/cdrom
chgrp wheel /mnt/cdrom
chgrp wheel /mnt/dvd

Don't forget to change your user to the wheel group!

You should now be able to mount your drives.

Pop the Dropline Cd into your drive and in the command prompt type: 'mount /dev/cdrom'
Change directories to /mnt/cdrom and into the folder that has all the packages. Now type:
'ls -l | grep install' this should show you the dropline-installer package. Type 'installpkg' followed by the file name that was brought up with the ls command. When that is installed you can type 'dropline-installer' and and it will bring up a pretty menu just like when you installed Slack. Go down to "preferences" and change the source to /dev/cdrom and continue. Just like with installing Slack we want to install everything. This will take a while. Once it is done logout of x and type 'startx' and you should load into Dropline. This should be pretty much it.

If I forgot anything please tell me. I hope this has helped some who are first time installers. Have fun! I you need anyhelp just PM me.