Installation notes for Slackware 1.1.0. To install Slackware, you must have a 3.5", 1.44M first or second drive, and a 3.5", 1.44M, or 5.25", 1.2M boot drive. If you are installing from a 5.25" boot drive, you will need to read the file "README_5_25_Install" as well as this one. Things have changed for the installation procedure, but only slightly. You will need to get the bootdisk.gz and gunzip it, and then write it to a floppy with Linux dd or the rawrite.exe program under DOS. If you don't have gunzip or gzip to uncompress bootdisk.gz, just grab "bootdisk" instead. Other than the compression, they are the same. NOTE: When using dd to create the boot disk on Suns and possibly some other Unix workstations you must provide an appropriate block size. This probably wouldn't hurt on other systems, either. Here's an example: dd if=bootdisk of=/dev/(rdf0, rdf0c, fd0, or whatever) obs=18k NOTE: There is a script (/pub/linux/slackware/scripts/makeflop) that automates the process of making a set of floppies. You must have some or all of the distribution set up on the drive similar to the way you see it in /pub/linux/slackware. The script works on Suns and Linux machines. Thanks to David Niemi for sending this script to me just as I needed to crank out a set of disks. :^) These are the disk set that are available to install: A: Base system including NET-2, news, C/C++, smail, and much more. This system is at kernel level .99pl13, libc.4.4.2a. E: Emacs 19.19 F: All the most current Linux related FAQ lists. (HIGHLY recommended) IV : InterViews development libraries, includes, and the doc and idraw apps. Requires X. OOP: Object Oriented Programming. Currently just GNU Smalltalk, but if I get motivated about it maybe you'll see Scheme someday. TCL: Tcl/Tk script language and X windows toolkit. Q: This is sort of an alpha-stuff series that may change and/or disappear at any time. Currently it contains source for the Linux kernel .99pl13 with net2 fixes, and two .99pl13 zImages, one for IDE and one for SCSI. X: XFree86 2.0 Base X windows system. XAP: X windows applications. XD: X program/server development. XV: XView 3.2 (OpenLook Window Manager) Y: Games. The used to be the 'G' series, but was changed because of a name conflict with the SLS custom German series. The 'Y' series now contains Curtis Olson and Andy Tefft's port of the BSD text games collection. I'm still open to suggestions for more stuff here. There is a rescue disk that contains an editor, lilo, several useful file system utilities, and man pages for all these things. This disk (rescue) and a compressed version of the same thing (rescue.gz) are written to a floppy with dd or rawrite.exe just like the bootdisk. It uses a cheap on-the-fly compression system to pack quite a few useful things onto a single disk. I think you'll find it useful. SLS sets such as the T (TeX) set may also be installed right along with the Slackware sets. The OI ObjectBuilder disks are also now available. The bootdisk is no longer the first disk of set A -- instead it has been made a seperate item. I suppose the official name of this disk would be the "Slackware boot/install disk." Disk A1 is now an MS-DOS format disk containing packages like all the other A series disks. For each disk, make an MS-DOS format disk and copy the proper files to it. The "00index.txt" files are added by the FTP server. You don't need those. If you're using NFS or hard drive installation, just set up a directory with the disk subdirectories for the disk sets you want. You'll only have to make the boot floppy, in that case. Make sure you have a blank, formatted floppy ready to make your Linux boot disk at the end of the installation. [NOTE]: You may install most software packages by typing "setup" on a running system. If you reinstall the A series, or the Q series (which replaces your kernel), be sure to run LILO or make a new boot disk using the rescue disk. Also, if you reinstall some of the base packages you might need to reconfigure files in /etc, or /conf/net. You may install extra software on an existing system from the slackware bootdisk as a result of improvements in version 1.0.4. Just boot the disk as if you were going to reinstall, add your swap partitions, and then the system will detect that your root partition has already been formatted and will ask you if you want to reformat and start over, or add new software to your existing installation. The /etc/pkgtool script can still be used to install extra software as well, but this is another option you have now. In addition, you can add new software from floppy, hard drive, or NFS, something that couldn't be done as easily before. Your packages are listed in /INSTALL/packages. Any of these packages may be removed or reinstalled using "pkgtool". Enjoy! Patrick Volkerding volkerdi@ftp.cdrom.com volkerdi@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu