Thank you, tommcd. Interestingly, I re-installed and got the same error when I tried to boot from grub. However, on a hunch, I tried entering the boot perameters (hugesmp.s root=/dev/sda5) from the installation cd and it booted right away into Slack, so at least I know the installation is OK. I will try your suggestions and edit the menu.lst and add those entries and see what happens

One note, as you know in the Ubuntu menu.lst the there is a separation line that says

***********************END OF DEBIAN AUTOMATIC KERNELS****************************

Usually, I put other OS's below this line because Ubuntu has a habit of removing kernels when a new one is added. Any issue with this?

Really appreciate your input.

Bob

Thanks again, tommcd. Your link to post #4 provided some insteresting detail. Following these directions,if I type:

kernel (hd0,4)/bo (then hit tab) I get
Error 2: Bad file or directory type (same error I have been getting

If I type:

kernel (hd0,4) /bo

I get a listing of all the Ubuntu kernels.

So, it appears that grub has a problem with (hd0,4). However, this partition as I noted before WILL boot when using the parameters on the installation disk. Adding the savedefault and boot lines just produced the same error 2.

I guess I will google around and see if I can find a solution.

Bob

Yes that is where I put them. during a fresh Ubuntu install, if it detects other operating systems on the machine, it adds them below the "END OF DEBIAN AUTOMATIC KERNELS" under a heading "Other operating systems" (or something like that). You can also put Slackware before the "DEBIAN AUTOMATIC KERNELS" if you wanted Slackware to be the default that boots after the timeout.

After you install Slackware you could also boot up Ubuntu, open a terminal, and run "sudo update-grub" and it should automagically add an entry for Slackware to the menu.lst. Just back up the menu.lst first though to be safe, but I don't think this would cause any problem.
I'll post my menu.lst entry when I get home. In the meantime here is a great site to learn about grub:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm

Thanks again, tommcd, and all others who helped. Searching and googling led me to a post where a user solved this same problem by simply getting to a grub prompt and typing

grub>grub-install /dev/sda5

After this, it booted just fine with my original entry in Ubuntu's menu.lst. Have no idea why grub needed to be installed to /dev/sda5, but it worked. I suppose there was no way to boot the kernel without it which is why I was getting the "Bad file" error.

Now that I am able to boot Slack, the fun begins. Just as I suspected, sound will not work, even though the snd-hda-intel module is loaded. Recognized the sound card, ran alsa conf, alsamixer. No dice.

Oh well, one problem solved, others begin. Fun!!

Thanks again,

Bob

Glad you got it working. I was running out of ideas.
This would have installed grub to your Slackware partition. You can check it by looking for a /boot/grub/ directory with a menu.lst inside it. I'm not sure how that let you boot Slackware with you original grub entry from Ubuntu, since that was set for a direct kernel boot and not a chainload or config flie boot.
Anyway, as promised, here are my Slackware entries from Ubuntu's menu.lst for the huge-smp and the generic-smp kernels. I still have the huge-smp kernel listed there as a backup, even though I boot the generic-smp kernel.

As for the sound, make sure you run alsaconf (i.e., no white space between alsa and conf.

Thanks, tommcd. Still dealing with sound. alsaconf has no effect, but all the sound modules are loaded. Got another thread dealing with wireless.

Thanks again.

Bob

[QUOTE=BobNutfield;3159101]Thanks, tommcd. Still dealing with sound. alsaconf has no effect, but all the sound modules are loaded. Got another thread dealing with wireless.

Alsaconf doesn't finish the job.

alsaconf to find the card
alsamixer - presumably you set levels and unset mutes (with 'm' key)
exit that, then
alsactl store to save the settings
alsactl restore to reload them

these last 2 are done automatically on powerdown/boo0tup

Thanks for the post, business kid. I have already done all in your post. When googling this problem, it seems that many Toshiba laptops with this sound chip (ATI SB600 Azalia) seem to have this problem. All of the modules are loaded, dmesg does show this:

So, that is possibly my problem. No idea how to fix it, still searching....

Bob

Well,

It took most of two days, but I have accomplished a lot in setting up my new Slackware install.

1. The stubborn grub error was solved as described previously.
2. Wireless with ndiswrapper took most of the time, finally sorted as described,
3. ATI drivers installed painlessly with the latest driver. DRI enabled.
4. Reconfigured a couple of minor details (i.e. keyboard layout was wrong)


FINAL HURDLE: Sound. This one looks like it is going to defeat me. No amount of searching has yielded a solution. I did see a number of bug reports from other distros while googling, but sound works in Ubuntu, so it must be possible, particularly since Ubuntu is using the same kernel. But, so far, it looks like I am going to have to do without sound in Slack.

I had forgotten how much Slackware forces you to learn. But, it's great! I was away from linux and computers in general for over two years (illness) and I feel like I have learned more in two days with Slack than I have in the last three months exploring other distros. Glad I chose Slack!!

Bob

Post the output of `lspci -vv` and `lsmod | grep snd`. It is entirely possible that, although the snd-hda-intel is loaded, it was loaded with the incorrect options. There are many possible options to pass to snd-hda-intel, some of which are necessary for individual sound cards. Note also that you should try muting and unmuting the sound in alsamixer -- some sound cards incorrectly interpret mute as unmuted and vice versa, so it's a good idea to try both settings. Make sure the volume is turned up all the way as well.

Thanks for the reply, T2slider, very long out, but here goes:

14:06.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff) (prog-if ff)
!!! Unknown header type 7f

[/QUOTE]

I have only posted the relevant entries as the entire out exceeds the amount I am allow to post.

lsmod | grep snd:

It's a lot to look at and I appreciate that you are taking the time. I can usually work on hardware issues and sort them with enough time, but this one is driving me nuts. Sound works on this laptop with Ubuntu and Knoppix liveCD. I have looked at the config files in both of those and they don;t reveal any clues.

Thanks again.

Bob

One other note: the colume icon on the panel in KDE is for the EARPHONES, not the master (or front). This is all that is being recognized by the volume controls. But, there is no output from the earphones, either.

Bob

It looks like you *may* be able to fix it by passing some parameters to the snd-hda-intel module. Try adding the following to /etc/modprobe.d/sound (create the file if it doesn't exist):
You'll need to restart to see if it works (since the file isn't read until a reboot).

Beyond that, you may wish to try compiling the newest ALSA drivers -- but that's a lot of work. Someone on the Ubuntu forums (sketchy source IMO) suggested using the HDA audio codec from realtek.com.tw -- but that's not the optimal solution (but if it works, it works). It also appears to be a wrapper for the newest ALSA sources, so you'd be better off trying the newest ALSA sources first.

If you wish to try other options to pass to snd-hda-intel, you could try blacklisting the module in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and manually loading the module using `modprobe snd-hda-intel model=modelname` and seeing if your sound works -- but finding the right option would be difficult.

Incredible! I spent an entire day searching Google, forums, hardware sites, and studying the config files of other distros and that one single line you suggested in /etc/modprobe.d/sound fixed it. Now I am off to find WHY that worked so that I can strengthen my own knowledge base and possibly help someone else in the future.

I know that everyone who posts here takes their own time to do so for no more reward other than they want help someone else. That is what makes this community, and particularly the Slack forum, so great.

Now, all that is left is little ditties like flash, video and music codecs and final fine tuning.

Once again, thank you taking your time to help.

Bob

Actually, I'm surprised it worked, but glad to hear that it does. For the record, I found the line here: http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/blo...te-a215-s7407/

Adding a parameter to the snd-hda-intel module tells ALSA to use a specific protocol for your card. Basically ALSA was probably detecting your card (or your model, anyway) as something else, and that line forces it to assume that's the model of your sound card. I had a similar, though not as serious, problem with my onboard sound card, and I had to add an option to /etc/modprobe.d/sound. For future reference, all of the possible options to that module can be found in /usr/src/linux-2.6.24.5/Documentation/sound/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txt (search for snd-hda-intel in that file and you'll find a large section with all of the possible options).