Three Years Later...

When I learned that Vista was soon to be released, I promised myself I'd be up and running on Linux before XP became obsolete.  No, it's not from some belief that Vista is so much worse than XP.  After all, my primary system for over a year was an ME computer, and Vista couldn't possibly be that pathetic.  The reason I promised such is because I'm better at accomplishing things when they come with a deadline. Now that Windows 7 is almost ready for release, it's past time to get moving on this.  The plan is to be comfortable using Linux before it's easier to find drivers for Linux than it is for XP.

I have a new machine, which should help matters.  It has to be a good sign that this one doesn't have an  ATI graphics card.  (Then again, ATI was purchased by AMD in late 2006, so maybe they've improved by now.)  My ex-husband, who is altogether a cool guy, was awesome enough to hand-me-down an Athlon 64 machine.  I used one of the utilities on the UBCD to partition my hard drive, featuring 15 gigs for XP.

I have Slackware 13.0, (slackware-13.0-install-dvd.iso), downloaded. I verified the md5sum and burned it to a DVD using InfraRecorder.  Reboot.

I bothered to read the help file and concluded that I want my partitions to be sized differently.  Very well, exit setup and type 'cfdisk.'  Moving around partitions was quite easy.  The only extra information to be offered is that if the program says it can't make another partition, nuke the last one and make it a logical partition, rather than a primary one.  Here's my current setup:

This is how my partitions are set up:

       Size  Type  XP Label  Linux Label
     *  15G  NTFS     C:        sda1/
     *  10G  Ext4               sda3/
     *  10G  NTFS     D:        sda4/
     *   2G  Swap               sda5/
     *   5G  Ext4               sda6/
     *  25G  Ext4               sda7/
     *  25G  FAT32    I:        sda8/

     sda1/   contains Windows XP and its programs
     sda3/   is for Linux / (boot)
     sda4/   contains a Windows Vista recovery partition
     sda5/   is the Linux swap partition
     sda6/   is for the Linux /usr branch
     sda7/   is for the Linux /home branch
     sda8/   is for music files, documents, etc.

Thanks much to whomever finally realized that the floppy is dead, therefore we need the ability to make a boot flash drive!  After I inserted the flash drive, a big pile of status messages appeared, making the option to create a boot drive or not disappear.  Does a blinking cursor at the end mean it's working, or that it's waiting for me to figure out what it wants?

I ended up pressing the 'up' arrow, and it happily gave me my 'yes' and 'no' buttons back.  Windows manager?  I Googled some advice.  Holding to the original spirit of the project (command line is my friend, masochism) I have selected TWM.

At the end of it all, I rebooted and got a splash screen that said 'Slackware.'  Sweet!  But the setup claimed I'd get "a cool penguin logo at boot time"...

After a few restarts, the computer decided it only boots XP, as the option to boot to Slackware went poof.  And my flash boot drive?  Maybe my BIOS just isn't set up to boot from a flash drive, but it's not helping.  Where's LILO?!  How do I get it back?!

I tried using the Slackware installation disk to 'Configure,' which is the menu that created LILO last time, but the menu doesn't work now.  The big question is, do I scour Google, or do I save myself a little harassment and reinstall Slackware just to get LILO back?  And if I scour Google, do I hunt for ways to fix LILO or to set up GRUB?  And most importantly, will either give me a cutesy penguin on my startup splash screen?

While pondering my penguin dilemma, I went back to the UBCD and got /sda8 to format properly.  Penguins, where do I get penguins?

Back to the Slackware install disk, I have a command prompt, which looks like root@slackware:/#.

First up is to mount the root partition.  Now, the install disk doesn't want mere mortals using the mnt/ directory.  Type vi mnt/README to see the message for yourself.  To get back to the command prompt, type :q and press enter.

To create a new directory to mount the drive:

mkdir sda2

Or you can replace sda2 with whatever name you like, so long as it's not already a directory.

To mount the partition:

mount /dev/sda2 sda2/

Though, if your root partition isn't sda2/, replace it with whatever its name is.

Trying what I found here to fix Lilo, I've typed:

chroot /sda2 lilo

Which resulted in several warnings, but the question is, did it work?

Remove the Slackware disk, type reboot, and...

Sweet.  No penguin, but the Slackware splash screen is back.  And the splash screen is just a bitmap in the boot/ directory, so I can add my own pipe-smoking penguin later if I like.

Okay, what's with the pointy-pawed rodent with the penguin beak at the top of my screen?  Hi, Tuz.  I hereby apologize for calling you a rodent, as you are clearly a pointy-pawed dog-sized marsupial.

We have much joy -- Slackware is up and running.