Slack 9.1 installation gone wrong...

[satchmo]

I installed slack 9.1 successfully the other day, but I failed to create a swap drive and set up my partitions. So I RTFM, as someone politely suggested, and proceeded accordingly. I set up my partitions and encountered some discrepancies:
1. # of cylinders for this disk is 2434. It came up as some kind of warning. The manual reads it should be 1060.
2. When it was time to designate space, it wouldn't let me begin at 0. I had to begin at 1. I don't know if this is a big deal or not.

Using fdisk, I was able to set two partitions, one being a swap. I designated it at 128 and used the rest for my root. Later I was going to set up a /home.

I proceeded with the format and install. At package "A" I encountered this:

installpg error #1 - Fatal error attempting to install:
/var/log/mount/slackware/a/procps-2.0.16-i486-2.tgz. The package may be corrupt, the installation media may be bad, or something else has caused the package to be unable to be read without error. you may hit enter to continue if you wish, but if this is an important required package then your installation may not work as is.

This is using the same disc that was able to successfully install just the other day. It stayed in the cd tray, so I am kind of puzzled how the cd could be the problem.

As of right now, I am going to reformat the cds and reburn the iso and give it another try.

[serz]

Have you tried with other cdrom drive?

[satchmo]

no I haven't. the disk still boots, but it has an error when installing A package.

[SunOfTux]

perhaps I'm just lazy (and/or don't want to read and comprehend the fdisk man page), but I just pop in a RedHat install CD, and set up my partitions there.
I then reset my computer and install Slack.

[andysimmons]

Originally posted by SunOfTux
perhaps I'm just lazy (and/or don't want to read and comprehend the fdisk man page), but I just pop in a RedHat install CD, and set up my partitions there.
I then reset my computer and install Slack.
SonOfTux - screw the man page, here's a rundown on partitioning:

You can set up 3 partitions, /boot, root (/), and a swap partition. Make /boot bootable, and make it a normal Linux filesystem (ext3 or reiserfs). 100 MB is plenty. Then, create a swap partition (filesystem: linux swap) that's twice the size of your total RAM. Use the rest for /, which is also going to be ext3 or reiserfs.

There ya go. If you want, you can also create a /home partition, which makes it easy to format without losing all your junk.

Satchmo, where are you seeing this error about the cylinders? Is it from fdisk, or the partitioning utility that comes with Slackware, or somewhere else? Which manual are you referring to where it says it should be 1060 cylinders?

Does the installer allow you to install any other packages? If not, it may not be able to write to your hard disk, and the media could be bad.

Also, if this worked the other night, and is giving you trouble now, you might test your memory to see if something's wrong there. There's a bootable stress-tester here (http://memtest86.com/) if you want to try it.

[satchmo]

http://www.slackware.com/book/index.php?source=x209.html
This is the manual I'm using.

The "2434" error is just after selecting fdisk /dev/hda

I get the installpg error when I select the software to install (default). It is everything except the International language app. Package "A" is the one that won't write to the hd. I haven't tried writing any other packages.

Can I write all packages except "A" which I think is the kernel.

[SunOfTux]

Here is my typical partition scheme:

/boot ~100 MB
/ ~ 1.5 GB
/usr >= 4 GB
/usr/local >= 4 GB
/opt >= 4 GB
/var ~ 1 GB
/tmp ~ 1 GB
swap 1 to 2 x system RAM
/home whatever space is left

So I know how to partition.

Peace.

[SunOfTux]

Oh, andysimmons, I also use reiserfs....