[SOLVED] how to create slackware usb installer in windows 10

slac-in-the-box · 05-09-2016, 12:10 AM

Hello LQ

I goofed and forgot to update lilo after updating a kernel, resulting in a screen with an L and lots of 9s being displayed upon boot. No sweat, I thought, and got out my usb install media so I could manually mount my system, chroot into it and run lilo: that's when I discovered my usb slackware install media had been physically damaged and no longer worked...

I had to get on a train for 48 hours where I plan to do nothing but work on projects on my main system, but I didn't have a spare Linux system with witch to create new install media, and it's Sunday when most shops are closed; so on the way to the train station I got a new thumb drive and a core i3 lenova ideabook at the nearest box store, and figured I could use these to make the install media.

Booted to find windows 10 installed --argh.. Googling how to do it found http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/welcome-windows-user/, and proceeded. However I think something's changed in the windows world since alien wrote that how to, because it didn't work for me.

In my situation, I don't need the slackware tree on the thumb drive--just need to boot and chroot. So I downloaded the dd-0.6beta3.zip, and instead of extracting into some kind of windows installer that asks to be allowed to modify the system, it just unzipped into a folder containing two text files and dd.exe.

Here's what I typed. I did the win-R and ran cmd.exe, which opened a command prompt. I cd and dir until I find the slackware-current folder I downloaded, and navigated to the folder containing the dd.exe command. Then I typed

Code:

dd.exe if=c:\Users\pilot\slackware64-current\usb-and-pxe-installers\usbboot.img of=\\.\f:

I walked away, had dinner, and when I returned there was a message of how many bytes had transferred, they way dd always reports when it's through..

I turned off that windows 10 system, and tried to boot my slackware system from the usb install media, and all I get is a hanged screen with an underscore _ .

Thinking that perhaps the usbboot.img didn't download cleanly, or that the beta3 dd is too beta, I am about to try again using an older version of their dd...

But I wanted to know if anybody has successfully made a slackware usb thumb drive installer with windows 10? I haven't used windows since windows98, and the moment I turned this windows 10 on, it already started telling me I had infected files, and wanted to run scans and sell me antivirus, activating one drives, and all this garbage that drove me away in the first place... yuck yuck yuck.

If there's any other procedure that can use windows 10 and a usb drive to get my slackware system booting again, please advise.

Didier Spaier · 05-09-2016, 04:09 AM

Download any Slackware ISO (same architecture as your Slackware system) and burn it to your USB stick using Rufus. You can use a mini-iso provided by Eric.

Then boot the installer, mount your Slackware root partition as /mnt and do:

Code:

mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc 
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt

You are in your Slackware, do what you want.

slac-in-the-box · 05-09-2016, 09:04 AM

Thanks Didier Spaier: I'm sure that would work.

Before you replied I read a post about unetbootin-windows, and I was able to use it to make a live slax usb, and used that to rescue my system. The unetbootin utility was so easy to use, that I would recommend it to any windows user curious about linux.

Thanks again LQ!