Getting Slackware

The official way to do this is, of course, to get it from slackware.com.

Personally, I have getslack, a bash script based on (more accurately, a trimmed-down version of) the excellent (he termed it infamous) mirror-slackware-current.sh by Alien Bob. When going down this path, the next step would be to prepare the installation media.

I no longer need an ISO image (refer to USB installer below). But, I have my slack2iso script (also based on Alien Bob's script) that can help in creating one using the tree downloaded by getslack.

Alien Bob has provided a script to make/setup/configure a USB-based Slackware installation media. I wanted to do something simpler using the existing files in the Slackware tree that I mirrored using getslack (mentioned above). So, here is how I got that working.

1. Create a FAT32 partition
   • use fdisk and make sure it is bootable (bootable flag enabled)
   • use mkdosfs (e.g. mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/sdb1)
2. Use syslinux to provide bootloader
   • create a /linux/boot/syslinux folder on the USB
   • type

     syslinux -d /linux/boot/syslinux /dev/sdb1

     Note: On newer syslinux, use -i to indicate new installation

   • a file ldlinux.sys should appear in /linux/boot/syslinux
3. Copy boot facilities from Slackware tree to the media
   • copy a kernel from slackware tree to /linux/boot (I used huge.s)
   • copy initrd.img and message.txt to /linux/boot
   • copy isolinux.cfg to /linux/boot/syslinux as syslinux.cfg
   • edit syslinux.cfg accordingly (initrd, kernel params, etc.)
4. Copy slackware<64> in the Slackware tree (I used a shorter folder name like slack on the USB)

And… we're done! Now we have a simple Slackware USB Installer and install it on every computer we can get our hands on!

Things moving to (U)EFI and GPT… slowly leaving legacy BIOS and MBR.

Instead of MBR, we use GPT partitioning scheme:

• supports bigger disk
• supports EFI booting (easier to maintain actually :p)

Partition codes are 2-bytes instead (only 1-byte on MBR's partition table). Among the common ones:

• EF00 (EFI System Partition): this is what EFI boot look for
  • format FAT32

    mkdosfs -F 32 -n MY1EFI /dev/sdxx

• 0700 (MS Basic Data): Windows Partition
  • format NTFS

    mkntfs -f -L MY1WIN /dev/sdxx

• 8300 (Linux filesystem): Linux Partition
  • format EXT4

    mkfs.ext4 -L MY1LIN /dev/sdxx

Once boot using EFI, efibootmgr tool can be used (available on Slackware 14.2)

• to create an entry labelled Slackware with loader file named \efi\slackware\elilo.efi located on first partition of first disk (/dev/sda1)

  efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -L "Slackware" -l "\efi\slackware\elilo.efi"

• to delete an entry xxxx (bootnum)

  efibootmgr -b xxxx -B

• to re-order boot sequence

  efibootmgr -o xxxx,yyyy,zzzz