I am not a total Linux newbie, but it has been awhile since I have had it, and the last distro I had was Mandrake.. however, I have installed Slackware before a few years back.... anyway I digress ...

Here is the deal, I downloaded the packages I wanted, got my Boot disk and the 2 install disks working (after some minor frustration at trying to find 3 "perfect" floppies.. because they must be perfect to work !) and viola I was setting up !! got my partition done, and formated, and the swap formatted and activated. set my source and destination, installed everything, but at the end of the installation it tells me to reboot, which I know is probably not right, because I am expecting to setup Lilo and the x-server which it gives me no propts to do. no mater what I am unable to find any way to get at least lilo setup. so I do the reboot like it tells me, and of course it wont boot into Linux because there is no lilo.

OK.. so I do the recommended trick of using the bootdisk with the mount root=/dev/hda4 parameters, and it starts to boot and then panics and says no initrd

If I had DSL instead of 56k connection, I would have just downloaded the ISO's and probably be a happy camper by now. but now I am stubborn about it, and I will make this work.

I have a rescue boot disk called RIP . and I can boot it and do some things with midnight commander, but I beleive it is working as a ramdisk, and I am not sure how to get things to affect my slackware install. for example, I can browse by slackware files and copy and do things to the files, but executing them seems like it is only trying to do things to the ramdisk I am running.. if that makes sense. or am I off base here ??

Anyway ... your mission, should you accept, and understand the problem and have solutions,.. is to set me on the path to sanity !!

Thanks

To get access to your linux installation, you need to first mount the partiton your slackware is installed and then chroot into it (man chroot). Now you are at the point as you could have just booted the system to single user mode and you can run and modify the system as you will.

with your slackware bootdisk you should also be able to set initrd's location, if not you may also be able to boot a rescue version of lin, and setup lilo to install.. a man page or how-to on lilo may help out.

also the lilo.conf man page will help you to setup your /etc/lilo.conf file for install..

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show them the way of the light, Tux is at the other end.

Thanks !!

I will try the chroot "route" and recompile the kernel and setup Lilo. hopefully that should fix it !! I think this may all be caused by the wrong boot disk. I used adaptec.s instead of bare.i because the RIP rescue disk said my CDR was a scsci and called it SCD0 Also I ended up with the adaptec.s because it was the first boot image that worked (I must buy some new floppys someday, but who uses them ??)

I greatly appreciate both your replies !!
I will post my new adventures in this install tommorow !!

Thanks again
Dennis