Installation notes for Slackware Linux 1.1.2.

Note: 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.

First off all, you will need the installation disks.  Slackware Linux 1.1.2
offers a new system that I recommend you use. The traditional tty-based
installation disk is still availiable if the new one doesn't work for some
reason. The traditional Slackware bootdisk is now called "tty144" and is found
in bootdisk/1_44meg. It boots and loads inself into the ramdisk, allowing you to
install from there. Sounds good - but the problem was that space was running 
out. Not only could I not fit any kind of editor on "tty144", but some of the
keymaps were in serious danger of filling the disk upon decompression. 

The solution: A new installation disk containing a kernel, which is used to
boot the second disk, a root disk. The root disk is like the old bootdisk, but
it doesn't contain a kernel and must be booted with a boot kernel. It's like
older distributions which used a boot/root system where the second drive was
mounted in the floppy, but a small kernel patch was used to allow the second
disk to be loaded into the ramdisk instead.

This has at least these benefits:
   --- more space on the rootdisk than the "tty144" disk has. I was able to
       include 'elvis' on it now.

   --- You can use different bootkernels to boot the same root disk. The boot
       kernels can offer different driver support. For instance, the boot
       kernels that are being offered initially are:
         
         bareboot: IDE only.
          cd_boot: supports IDE, all supported SCSI devices, and Mitsumi, 
                   CDU31A, and Panasonic (Sound Blaster Pro) CD-ROMs.
         net_boot: To avoid possible driver collisions, this boot kernel has
                   drivers for all supported network cards, but no SCSI or
                   CD-ROM drivers.
         scsiboot: This is the fully packed kernel, with all SCSI and network
                   drivers, but without CDU31A and Panasonic support.

To make your bootkernel/rootdisk combination, you'll have to get a boot kernel
and root disk from underneath /bootdisk. Use 'dd' or RAWWRITE.EXE to write them
to floppies.

  NOTE: When using dd to create the boot kernel disk or root 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/bootdisk/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. :^)

[ NOTE: This script has some known bugs, and they're mostly my fault :^)
  I'll try to fix it completely(?) in the near future ]

These are the disk sets that are available to install:

      A   - Base Linux system
      AP  - Various applications that do not need X
      D   - Program Development (C, C++, Kernel source, Lisp, Perl, etc.)
      E   - GNU Emacs (19.22, with and without X11 support. Your choice.)
      F   - FAQ lists (last updated, December 12, 1993.)
      I   - Info pages.
      IV  - Interviews: libraries, include files, Doc and Idraw apps for X
      N   - Networking (TCP/IP, UUCP, Mail)
      OI  - ObjectBuilder for X
      OOP - Object Oriented Programming (GNU Smalltalk 1.1.1)
            Also includes the Smalltalk Interface to X11.
      T   - TeX
      TCL - Tcl/Tk/TclX, Tcl language, and Tk toolkit for developing X apps
            More development packages to work with Tcl have also been added,
            as well as David Engel's Linux port with shared libraries.
      X   - XFree-86 2.0 Base X Windows System
      XAP - X Windows Applications
      XD  - XFree-86 2.0 X Windows program/server development system
      XV  - XView 3.2 release 5. (OpenLook [virtual] Window Manager, apps)
      Y   - Games (that do not require X)

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.

[NOTE: The rescue disk needs to be upgraded to the new libraries and utilities]

SLS disk sets can be installed right along with Slackware ones, if you 
really think you want to. Now that Slackware is starting to conform to
the recommendations of the File System Standard committee, most of the SLS
sets probably will not work. Because TeX was requested, I've converted over
the SLS TeX disks, making changes to the filesystem structure and fixing
permissions. Although I'm not 'supporting' those disks, I do provide them
in the /pub/linux/slackware/t? directories now. If time allows, I hope to
do a complete re-porting of TeX sometime fairly soon. Offers of help will
probably be accepted, since I don't know much about TeX yet.

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 other places.

Your packages are listed in /var/adm/packages. Any of these packages may be
removed or reinstalled using "pkgtool".

Enjoy!

Patrick Volkerding
volkerdi@ftp.cdrom.com
volkerdi@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu