5.1. Booting the installation CD-ROM

The easiest method for booting the installation system is by using the installation CD-ROM. The Slackware installation CD-ROM is a bootable CD, which means that the BIOS can boot the CD, just like it can boot, for example, a floppy disk. Most modern systems have a BIOS which supports CD-ROM booting.

If the CD is booted when you have the CD inserted in the CD-ROM drive during the system boot, the boot sequence is probably not correctly configured in the BIOS. Enter the BIOS setup (usually by this can be done by holding the "Del" or "Esc" key when the BIOS screen appears) and make sure the CD-ROM is on the top of the list in the boot sequence. If you are using a SCSI CD-ROM you may have to set the boot sequence in the SCSI BIOS instead of the system BIOS. Consult the SCSI card manual for more information.

After booting the installation system, you will be asked whether you are using a special (national) keyboard layout or not. If you have a normal US/International keyboard, which are the most common, you can just press "Enter" at this question. After that the login prompt will appear. Log on as "root", no password will be requested. After logging on the shell is started, and you can start installing Slackware Linux. The installation procedure will be explained briefly in this chapter.

5.2. Partitioning a hard disk

Installing Slackware Linux requires at least one Linux partition, creating a swap partition is also recommended. To be able to create a partition there has to be free unpartitioned space on the disk. There are some programs that can resize partitions. For example, FIPS can resize FAT partitions. Commercial programs like Partition Magic can also resize other partition types.

After booting the Slackware Linux CD-ROM and logging on, there are two partitioning programs at your disposal: fdisk and cfdisk. cfdisk is the easiest of both, because it is controlled by a menu interface. This section describes the cfdisk program.

To partition the first harddisk you can simply execute cfdisk. If you want to partition another disk or a SCSI disk you have to specify which disk you want to partition (cfdisk /dev/device). An ATA hard disks have the following device naming: /dev/hdn, "n" is replaced by a character. E.g. the "primary master" is named /dev/hda, the "secondary slave" is named /dev/hdd. SCSI disks are named in the following way: /dev/sdn, "n" is replaced by the device character (the first SCSI disk = a, the fourth SCSI disk = d).

After starting cfdisk currently existing partitions are shown, as well as the amount of free space. The list of partitions can be navigated with the "up" and "down" arrow keys. At the bottom of the screen some commands are displayed, which can be browsed with the "left" and "right" arrow keys. A command can be executed with the <Enter> key.

You can create a Linux partition by selecting "Free Space" and executing the "New" command. cfdisk will ask you whether you want to create a primary or logical partition. The number of primary partitions is limited to four. Linux can be installed on both primary and logical partitions. If you want to install other operating systems besides Slackware Linux that require primary partitions, it is a good idea to install Slackware Linux onto a logical partition. The type of the new partition is automatically set to "Linux Native", so it is not necessary to set the partition type.

The creation of a swap partition involves the same steps as a normal Linux partition, but the type of the partition has to be changed to "Linux Swap" after the partition is created. The suggested size of the swap partition depends on your own needs. The swap partition is used to store programs if the main (RAM) memory is full. If you have a harddisk of a reasonable size, it is a good idea to make a 256MB or 512MB swap partition, which should be enough for normal usage. After creating the partition the partition type can be changed to "Linux Swap", by selecting the "Type" command. The cfdisk program will ask for the type number, "Linux Swap" partitions have type number 82. Normally number 82 is already selected, so you can go ahead by pressing the <Enter> key.

If you are satisfied with the partitioning you can save the changes by executing the "Write" command. This operation has to be confirmed by entering yes. After saving the changes you can quite cfdisk with the Quit command. It is a good idea to reboot the computer before starting the installation, to make sure that the partitioning changes are active. Press <ctrl> + <alt> + <del> to shut Linux down and restart the computer.

5.3. Installing Slackware

The Slackware Linux installer is started by executing setup in the installation disk shell. Setup will show a menu with several choices, you can see a screenshot of the installer in Figure 5-2. Every option has to be completed to do a complete Slackware installation, but once you start the setup guide will guide you through the options.

The first part of the installation is named "ADDSWAP". The setup tool will look for a partition with the "Linux Swap" type, and ask you if you want to format and activate the swap partition (see figure Figure 5-3). Normally you can just answer "Yes".

After setting the swap up space the "TARGET" menu is launched, which you can see in Figure 5-4. It is used to initialize the Slackware partitions. Setup will display all partitions with the "Linux native" type.

After selecting one partition, the setup tool will ask whether you want to format a partition or not, and if you want to format it, whether you want to check the disk for bad sectors or not (Figure 5-5). Checking the disk can take a lot of time.

After selecting whether you want to filesystem or not, you can specify which filesystem should be used (Figure 5-6). Normally you can choose the ext2, ext3 and reiserfs filesystems. Ext2 was the standard Linux filesystem for many years, the disadvantage is that Ext2 does not support journaling. A journal is a special file or area of a partition in which all filesystem operations are logged. When the system crashes the filesystem can be repaired rapidly, because the kernel can use the log to see what disk operations were performed. Ext3 is the same filesystem as Ext2, but adds journaling. Reiserfs is a newer filesystem, that also provides journaling. Besides that Reiserfs uses balanced trees, which make many filesystem operations, especially when you are working with many small files, faster than with Ext2 or Ext3. A disadvantage is that Reiserfs is newer, that is why it can be a bit more unstable.

The first initialized partition is automatically mounted as the root (/) partition. For other partitions the mount point can be selected after the initialization. You could, for example make separate partitions for /, /var, /tmp, /home and /usr. This provides extra protection against crashes. For example the, / partition is barely changed after the installation if you create these partitions. So, on the occasion of a crash, the chance that the / partition was in the middle of a write operation is much smaller.

The next step is to select the source medium (Figure 5-7). This dialog offers several choices, like installing Slackware from a CD-ROM or installing Slackware via NFS. Most of the times Slackware is installed from CD-ROM, so this is what we are going to look at. After selecting "CD-ROM" you will be asked whether you want to let setup look for the CD-ROM itself ("Auto") or you want to select the CD-ROM device yourself ("Manual"). If you select "Manual" the setup tool will show a list of devices. Select the device holding the Slackware CD-ROM.

After choosing an installation source the setup tool will ask you which disk sets (series) you want to install packages from (Figure 5-8). A short description of each disk set is listed.

Now it is almost time to start the real installation. The next screen asks how you would like to install. The most obvious choices are "full", "menu" or "expert". Selecting "full" will install all packages in the selected disk sets. This is the easiest way of installing Slackware. The disadvantage of this choice is that it can take quite much disk space. The "menu" option will ask you for each disk set which packages you want to install. The "expert" option is almost equal to the "menu" option, but allows you to deselect some very important packages from the "a" disk set.

After the completion of the installation the setup tool will allow you to configure some parts of the system.