I've trying to install slackware 10 on a P3, 500 dell with a WD hard drive, 10 Gig.
I have had experience with slackware before and have it running on a laptop with dual boot, but that runs a boot manager with Win 2000.
The desktop I want to run only slackware.

EAch time I install, it doesn't boot. I know it's a slackware problem not reading the drive parameters or have a problem with translation.

I installed fedora with no problems, I can get windows to install and boot but not slackware.

How can I make slackware boot from the 10 gig drive. IT has more than 1023 cylinders. No matter what I tell the CMOS, Slackware does it's own check so it knows what the drive really is.

Whats the actual error youre getting?

Where did you install lilo? Did the lilo install go smoothly?

yes the LILO install goes fine.
I know I've read of problems with WESTERN DIGITAL drives and drive translation using SLACKWARE.
Other drives, I've heard, seem to be ok.

I get no error, it simply doesn't boot. I've tried the super block as well as MBR.

Presently I'm reinstalling now. I partitioned /dev/hda1 as 750 megs for boot, hda2 as swap, 750 megs and the rest as hda3 for /

The other option is to install, and not to install LILO, then use BOOTMAGIC on the hda1 partition to boot

no go this time either. I get a grub menu, and it now says it can't find anything bootable.

I know there's nothing wrong with the drive. IT has something to do with slackware and the western digital drive translation.

I'm going to try partition magic again and boot magic. I'll see if I can get boot magic to boot, then it can boot slackware.

this is the only other option besides replacing the drive with a non WD drive. I'm certain this will work.
I'm going to EBAY to order another one. I prefer my linux install to be without a boot manager

did you set /dev/hda1 to active, ie., bootable flag?

Need a bit of confirmation here

So you don't have any one time more than one system? You are just proving the WD disk is OK, right?

Previously you claimed Slackware installed Lilo but now you said it is Grub you are having.

If you do get a Grub menu pressing "c" can get you into a Grub prompt (for the most of the Grub installation) then you can boot Slackware manually.

I too often have to do this for Slackware too but the dude is dead easy to boot because it always use vmlinuz as the kernel name and has no initrd. So in your case I expect to see at least Slackware's kernel up and running even if its X-window is a complete trash. Try this at Grub prompt

root (hd0,2) <------------you dis say Slackware's / is in hda3
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda3
boot
--------------------------------------------------------

It is a pity that not many know Slackware has an excellent kernel with which I have been using to boot other distros in a distressed state.

I can confirm Western Digital disks works fine, and as saikee said, if you see Grub, then LILO wasn't properly intalled, follow his options to boot Slackware.

Fedora es based on the same kernel as Slackware and most other distributions.

thanks to all that replied.

I've often told people: The truth is what we choose to believe.

this was the case here.
I remember not that far back when slackware DID have problems with larger IDE drives. this wasn't the case here.

The drive translation wasn't the problem. The problem came when I installed LILO. When I manually installed lilo using the expert install things worked well. If I let the install do it, it wouldn't boot.

I remember the very firt time I installed Slackware. 1996. What a pain!!!!

I installed a dozen times to get it right! Booting from floppies etc.

Thanks to everyone. It's up and running, things are just fine.

Now, I need to know the best working wireless G network card to install into it.

-ej

Now that you mentioned it, I've never gotten lilo installed with the basic install, had to always go expert.. PErhaps just an odd coincidence tho..

It is quite common for a distro to fail to install the boot loader for a variety of reasons. I have installed over 80 systems into the box and about 70 of them are Linux. I would say about 20% of them didn't end up unbootable.

The booting mechanism is quite simple and can be personally intervened as I described in the post. About 80% of the unbootable systems can be cured easily by booting to another Linux, say one on a Live CD, mount the unbootable Linux partition on it, change root into the unbootable Linux and the replicate its boot loader. Both Lilo and Grub have "lilo -b" and "grub-install" for this purpose.

Tougher ones can all be booted directly by naming their kernel, with initial ramdisk file if applicable.

If all the above fail the Linux can still be booted using a more powerful or up to date kernel from another Linux.

Slackware's kernel is my favourite for saving other unbootable systems.