Probs with slackware 8.1 root disks

[Contrarian]

Slack 8.1 has changed to use 5 uncompressed root disks instead of a single compressed one. I can't get these things to work. I created them as instructed using "cat install.1 > /dev/fd0" and so on. I boot from the boot disk OK, then insert the first root disk when it asks, then it goes haywire with reams of errors such as

floppy0: probe failed...
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy) sector 0

and so on, you get the idea.

I have tried different floppies, all of which read OK for other purposes; and I've tried re-downloading the install files from ftp; but no joy. If I mount the first root floppy on my other machine I can see the file system and it looks OK.

The old system of a single compressed root disk (color.gz) worked just fine. Could it be that the program loaded by the boot disk is still expecting a compressed root image?

Has anyone else tried this? Any ideas? The install help on the slackware site seems to be out of date, it still refers to the system with a single compressed root disk. It's only the README file in the rootdisks directory which describes the new system. And Patrick Volkerding has not replied to my plea for help...

[ChickenTrucker]

I copied this directly from the readme file in the Get Slack directory at www.slackware.org:
"
Mini FAQ:
> Q. But I just want something like the old color.gz that I can load
> as an initrd from the hard drive with LILO, or syslinux, or loadlin.
>
> A. I think what you're looking for is: isolinux/initrd.img
> This is a self contained, gzipped initrd like the old color.gz.

In addition to the install images, you'll also need a bootdisk. See the
bootdisks directory for those.

"

Hope this helps; the 5 disks are for running the new installer from a DOS partition apparently, but I didn't read the whole thing.

The claim is the installer is now larger than 1.44 mg when compressed, so they are trying this kluge. According to them, the iso image should be what you are looking for.

[Contrarian]

Yes, trouble is I need to use floppies. It's an old machine and, although it has a CD drive, it won't read CD-R's...

So this image is no good, as it's too big for a floppy and I can't get it onto the machine.

Of course I could pay money for a distro on a real CD. I know I'm a cheapskate. I have bought distros in the past, but I don't have one which is up-to-date enough to support this particular hardware. I am hoping to do a network install after booting up; but for this, I need PCMCIA support for my hardware, which only appeared in slack 8.1. Hence the current predicament. Other distros, like the latest redhat, won't install at all as I only have 16MB RAM...

[ChickenTrucker]

Prolly a dumb question, but are you using the new bootdisk image as well?

[ChickenTrucker]

The only thing I can come up with is the floppies were not completely clean and rawrite didn't load the complete image, so the file table on the floppy is trashed. If the hardware is okay, then a clean formatted disk should have handled the image okay; rawrite doesn't give errors, so you never know.

[Contrarian]

Well I'm certainly using the new boot disk, and it comes up with "welcome to the slackware bootdisk v8.1.0". And I re-formatted the floppy before copying install.1 across.

I used "cat install.1 > /dev/fd0", rather than RAWRITE, as I run slack 8.0 on my desktop machine.

My impression is that it's still expecting 1 compressed root disk instead of 5 uncompressed ones (it still says "insert root disk", not "disks"...). Don't understand this though.

I guess what I will have to do now is install an old version that I have real CDs for (slack 3.5), re-compile PCMCIA support from source, to get the network going, then try and upgrade from there. What a pain.

[Contrarian]

UPDATE: I now realise this is a more general problem than just a slackware install issue. Having installed slack 3.5 successfully, I now find that I have exactly the same errors (probe failed etc.) if I try to mount any floppy; INCLUDING the boot and root floppies that worked successfully for the install itself!

I have tried floppies formatted with both DOS and ext2 (floppies that read OK in my other machine).

Anyone know what these errors might indicate?

[ChickenTrucker]

Check your bios settings and cables, or swap your floppy drive with the other machine's and see what happens. I'm hesitant to blame the Slak code, since I've loaded it several times over the years and the quality has always been outstanding.

[Contrarian]

The thing is, the floppy worked all right for the install itself. That makes me think it must be an IRQ conflict or somesuch thing, which only appears when other stuff is enabled; i.e. when I boot the whole system.

Also the floppy worked fine under Win95, and I had it working fine when I installed RedHat 6.0. (The trouble with THAT installation was, I couldn't get PCMCIA support working; and after re-compiling the latest PCMCIA drivers from source, the machine wouldn't boot because of a PCMCIA crash at boot time). But at least the floppy worked...

I don't know much about debugging these kind of conflict problems so if anyone could point me to some tips on that it would be useful.

[JerryW]

when I mount my "boot" floppy I can see the files recorded on the floppy. But when I try to mount my "install.1" and "install.2" floppies, I get a mount error telling me to specify filesystem type. I think this is normal.

I think your problem might be that the "install" floppies don't use the standard ext2 filesystem. Try creating theses floppies using this command from the command line:
dd if=[your image file] of=/dev/fd0

I'm not sure about how to create the "boot" floppy.

[bwkaz]

...

Whatever his problem was, it presumably went away 5 years ago, since that was the date of the last post in this thread... ;)