Install Slackware Linux 9.1

tankado · 07-02-2004

If you were getting this prob while partitioning then you were most certainly exceeding the partition limit of your HDD.
I never create a boot partition for myself.

abhay · 13-02-2004

If you properly optmize redhat linux, then it can be faster than slackware.

yes dream on.

The main thing that i don't like about Slack is that everything has to be done manually. Installing a small package requires compiling it, checking out the dependencies manually ( which btw is a real pain in the @$$ ) and a lot of other headaches. Personally, i don't feel that slack can be classified as a modern distro.

another guy who has never ever used Slackware "seriously" has posted. when was the last time you had your hands on a slackbox?

I guess the majority of slack users are people who have too much time on their hand. LoL ... Try compiling the X server ... the sheer no. of dependencies is surely going to put you down.

i m a final year MBBS student and believe it or not, time is the last thing i have in my hand but i like giving my Linux box a bit of time. it is better than having to format my Windows Partition.

If you really want a good distro, then i suggest that you go with Gentoo ( spelled A.W.E.S.O.M.E ) or Debian. Both of them have a real good package management system. Gentoo comes with Portage which is a real kick ass, and Debian has apt-get.

Gentoo????? not being able to use your PC for a week while installation, watching Wine compile for 5 hours, Mozilla for 12 hours and KDE for more than 24 hours can be your idea of fun, not mine. i would rather set swaret and its repositories the way i like them and keep my system to slackware-current.
btw for your info, Swaret does check for Libraries dependceny. though pre-compiled packages are available but if you still wanted to compile your own X-Server then you just need one package from your Slack CD i.e. xfree86-devel. it not only has the files for compiling X programs but also helps in compiling X itself.
apt-get of Debian? ever tried urpmi of Mandrake? you will forget apt-get.
btw try swaret and you will forget anything anyways...

Sumeet the problem you were facing was that you were setting a partition just for /boot. if you wanted to do that then you will have to set it for all of the points, example /usr, /tmp, /bin, /dev etc. since you did not do that, it was showing you that the "Device is full". at least that is how it goes for Slack and that is why i did not talk about it in the guide, to keep it simple.
about the /mnt thing. well i like to keep all of my 3 HD's under same roof so i chose that

**Sumeet** · 13-02-2004

Ahh! Finally you're back! Hoping for more discussion on Linux stuff!

**psynaps3** · 15-02-2004

yes dream on.

What speed difference does a redhat and slack box, both running the same kernel compiled with the same version of gcc and optmized using the same c(xx)flags, running similar services on similar systems have ? You can't say that one distro is faster than the other. An out of the box slack is faster than a redhat box coz redhat comes preloaded with a bunch of services and pakcages. Slackware has (or is it had ?) a very stripped down installation.

another guy who has never ever used Slackware "seriously" has posted. when was the last time you had your hands on a slackbox?

It has been ages since i have touched a slackware box, and yes when i used it, it didn't have any dependency checking or a good package manager.

Gentoo????? not being able to use your PC for a week while installation, watching Wine compile for 5 hours, Mozilla for 12 hours and KDE for more than 24 hours can be your idea of fun, not mine.

Ever heared of GRP installation ?

apt-get of Debian? ever tried urpmi of Mandrake? you will forget apt-get.
btw try swaret and you will forget anything anyways...

LoL... y mandrake ? try windows ...
Never heared of swaret. Btw try portage and you will forget swaret

Sumeet the problem you were facing was that you were setting a partition just for /boot. if you wanted to do that then you will have to set it for all of the points, example /usr, /tmp, /bin, /dev etc. since you did not do that, it was showing you that the "Device is full".

Nowadays workstations don't have seperate partitions for /usr /var etc. It will simply mean more access time. All you need is 3 partitions - root, swap and boot
root - reiserfs
swap, boot - ext3

abhay · 15-02-2004

What speed difference does a redhat and slack box, both running the same kernel compiled with the same version of gcc and optmized using the same c(xx)flags, running similar services on similar systems have ? You can't say that one distro is faster than the other. An out of the box slack is faster than a redhat box coz redhat comes preloaded with a bunch of services and pakcages. Slackware has (or is it had ?) a very stripped down installation.

there are very basic differences between Slack and RedHat which makes the former faster. you can't make a bloated OS faster than a lean machine. Slack uses inetd instead of Xinetd (RH) for handling services. that straight away takes a huge and i mean HUGE load off your machine but the problem is that inetd is not easier for n00b's to handle. also there are not all those wizards in Slack which again makes it faster cos of smaller scripts. there is no database in Slack like the one that RH has (rpm db?) rather there are just small files which are easier on resources to access.
when i last checked it was not all about how your kernel is compiled but how things are working in there. no matter how much you deny or how much you tweak a RH box, it cannot be compared with Slack (go fetch)!!!

It has been ages since i have touched a slackware box, and yes when i used it, it didn't have any dependency checking or a good package manager.

exactly...and still you pass comments like "Slack is not a modern distro"? fantastic!!!

Ever heared of GRP installation?

yes but then doesn't it lose all the sense behind a source based distro?

Never heared of swaret. Btw try portage and you will forget swaret

you will not improve. again talking without knowing what swaret is. right?

**ferrari** · 15-02-2004

Sumeet do you'l have project work in the final year B.E
My friend had done a project on LINUX in a software company. It was something related to Configuring webserver and FIREWALL. He gave me some nice and interesting tips on Firewall. If u are interested i'l request him to give me permission to post the project report on tech-arena. Sumeet i do not guarantee. But he is my very very close friend. Lets see what he says.

**Sumeet** · 16-02-2004

I'll be having projects (only) in final year, but I don't have much of an Idea about what it's going to be about. I might be having Linux/Unix stuff, but again, I dunno when. Maybe after 6th sem... So right now, I don't think I'll understand much of it, but put it here, maybe someone else will benefit from it!

**psynaps3** · 17-02-2004

Slack uses inetd instead of Xinetd (RH) for handling services. that straight away takes a huge and i mean HUGE load off your machine but the problem is that inetd is not easier for n00b's to handle.

Can't you force redhat to use inetd instead ? BTW what proof do you have to support that statement ? AFAIK xinetd was supposed to be a safer replacement to inetd, maybe there is a performance drop, but it should be negligible. Also, inetd doesn't do things on it's own, it needs the tcpd daemon. This is not the case for xinetd.
If you are so concerned about xinetd, then why not let redhat simply start all the daemons as standalone servers ?
As far as saying that inetd is not suitable for noobs, do you thing xinetd is suitable for them ? Xinetd has a whole bunch of security/configration features.

also there are not all those wizards in Slack which again makes it faster cos of smaller scripts.

Again, why use the wizard if you can do them manually? Don't forget that we are comparing the issue of speed here. Just do a basic installtion of redhat ( i am sure that the installer asks you for which all packages to install in the expert mode ) and then configure all the installed packages properly.
Once again, an *out-of-the-box" slack installtion is faster than a redhat box, but there is no point in saying that slack is faster that redhat.

there is no database in Slack like the one that RH has (rpm db?) rather there are just small files which are easier on resources to access.

Easier on resources, but are they faster ? Like you said redhat makes use of a *database* wheras slack uses a whole bunch of small *files*.

exactly...and still you pass comments like "Slack is not a modern distro"? fantastic!!!

I said this before and i am saying this again " That was a mistake on my part " .. Read my previous posts. When i used *slack* it was lagging behind all the other major ditros in terms of user friendliness.

yes but then doesn't it lose all the sense behind a source based distro?

We are not concerned about the source-based aspect of gentoo here, what you were concerned about is the long waiting time for the packages to compile, and what I suggested is to go for the GRP installtion if time is a big issue for you. ( BTW gentoo has CD's optimized for all the major architectures )

you will not improve. again talking without knowing what swaret is. right?

Just want to quote something you said earlier

btw try swaret and you will forget anything anyways...

How can *you* say this if you personally haven't tried portage ? Ever heared of how wonderful BSD's ports system was. Well portage just takes it one step further.

Regards
psynaps3

abhay · 17-02-2004

As far as saying that inetd is not suitable for noobs, do you thing xinetd is suitable for them ? Xinetd has a whole bunch of security/configration features.

no i never intended to say that Xinetd doesn't have configuration features but rather inetd cannot be controlled with those wizards that redhat has. no matter what you do...

Again, why use the wizard if you can do them manually? Don't forget that we are comparing the issue of speed here. Just do a basic installtion of redhat ( i am sure that the installer asks you for which all packages to install in the expert mode ) and then configure all the installed packages properly.

have you ever tried removing those wizards from expert installation? i am *dead* sure that you have not cos if you try to remove those wizards, the install procedure will show dependency issues (go fetch?) and it is a must to install them. so now do you have any ways to remove those wizards. i would love to know about them

Easier on resources, but are they faster ? Like you said redhat makes use of a *database* wheras slack uses a whole bunch of small *files*.

one word. "yes". go and try it and you will know. i wonder you even asked this question. what is better for you, opening a text file or a database?

We are not concerned about the source-based aspect of gentoo here, what you were concerned about is the long waiting time for the packages to compile, and what I suggested is to go for the GRP installtion if time is a big issue for you. ( BTW gentoo has CD's optimized for all the major architectures )

if we don't take advantage of Gentoo being a source based distro then i fail to understand that how is Gentoo better than Slack? the only point of having Gentoo in first place is that it is source based which gives you more flexibility and speed.

How can *you* say this if you personally haven't tried portage ? Ever heared of how wonderful BSD's ports system was. Well portage just takes it one step further.

i cannot talk about BSD's port system as i have never tried BSD but Gentoo is there in my bag of tried and fiddled with distros and the only thing i can say is that i wasted my one week (no i didn't know about GRP that time) in installing it. the point of compiling everything from source and waiting for it never excited me.

**psynaps3** · 18-02-2004

no i never intended to say that Xinetd doesn't have configuration features but rather inetd cannot be controlled with those wizards that redhat has. no matter what you do...

I fail to understand what wizards has to do with the performance issue that we were talking about. Besides, which wizard are you talking about ? I haven't come upon a graphical way of configuring xinetd till now.
Your statement was that inetd has a *HUGE* performance advantage over xinetd. I would appreciate it if you could back your statement with some proof.
Anyway, since you seem to be deviating from the performance issue here, let me tell you some advantages that xinetd has over inetd.
1) The most imp feature - you can limit the number of instances of a service spawned + you can limit the service based on time.
2) A very good logging feature that allows individual logging of services to different files.
3) xinetd allows you to bind a service to a specific interface rather than binding it to all the interfaces as inetd does.
4) Bugs fixed as soon as they are reported coz xinetd is more actively maintained that inetd.

Now with all these advantages that xinetd has, why would slackware use inetd ? Don't tell me it's because of the speed unless you can support your statement.

have you ever tried removing those wizards from expert installation? i am *dead* sure that you have not cos if you try to remove those wizards, the install procedure will show dependency issues (go fetch?) and it is a must to install them. so now do you have any ways to remove those wizards. i would love to know about them

I think i am lost now, what is this wizards that you are talking about ? Is it the redhat-config type commands ?
Anyway, if you don't want any sort of wizards, then why not install redhat with no desktop environment and later you can add some light weight window manager instead. This will get rid of most of the wizards, i guess.

one word. "yes". go and try it and you will know. i wonder you even asked this question. what is better for you, opening a text file or a database?

LoL, opening a text file is faster, but is searching through 1000's of text files faster than searching a database ?
Try find / -iname test.txt and locate test.txt to see the difference. I am sure that the locate command is there in slackware and locate uses a *database*

if we don't take advantage of Gentoo being a source based distro then i fail to understand that how is Gentoo better than Slack? the only point of having Gentoo in first place is that it is source based which gives you more flexibility and speed.

Bah, i don't want to start a gentoo vs slackware flame war here. If you want to know why gentoo is the future, check out their forums and see the number of registerd users. Or even better check out slashdot. They recently conducted a survey on the major distros, and Debian came first closely followed by Gentoo.

and the only thing i can say is that i wasted my one week (no i didn't know about GRP that time) in installing it.

One week ? You can get a fully functional Gnome system in MAX 2 days on a p3 600 mhz system.

Now why do i like gentoo so much ?

Intitially a windows user
Tried mandrake -> Returned to windows
Tried Slackware -> Returned to windows
Tried Redhat for 2 years along with windows -> Returned to windows completely
Tried Gentoo -> Use windows only for playing games now.

Regards
psynaps3

abhay · 18-02-2004

I fail to understand what wizards has to do with the performance issue that we were talking about. Besides, which wizard are you talking about ? I haven't come upon a graphical way of configuring xinetd till now.

you never looked in RH Services Manager? btw don't you think that more bloating of a OS = making it slower i.e those wizards?
anyways, i still repeat that Xinetd is a better option than inetd but inetd is still not dead. it has +ve's over xinetd when it comes to installing and getting programs to work. qmail still has problems with xinetd while programs that require two simultaneous instances to run cannot be done with xinetd (yes there are programs like those). now on to why inetd is faster. you must be knowing that xinetd uses libwrap to handle all the services while inetd still uses TCP wrapper of tcpd. what it does is that while Xinetd runs and monitors to kill and start instances of services regularly, inetd does not. it simply loads the stuff at boot time and sleeps in back ground till it gets HUP signal or an execution of a script to do something special, which helps it to reduce the load on resources. secondly, you must also be knowing that Xinetd maintains logs of every service functioning, starting, stopping and current status (as to how it is working), inetd does not. i know this makes inetd trivial but man that adds to performance boost. i don't know whether i was able to convince you or not but the truth stays that Xinetd is better but inetd is faster.

I think i am lost now, what is this wizards that you are talking about ? Is it the redhat-config type commands ?

yes i was talking about redhat-config. can you remove those packages? i hate them, you have any ways to remove them at any time?

Anyway, if you don't want any sort of wizards, then why not install redhat with no desktop environment and later you can add some light weight window manager instead. This will get rid of most of the wizards, i guess.

wow man!!! i *HAVE* to work with fluxbox cos i want to make RH go faster? where did the motto of choice go from Open Source products? Slack will be faster even if you are working on KDE and that too out of box.

LoL, opening a text file is faster, but is searching through 1000's of text files faster than searching a database ?
Try find / -iname test.txt and locate test.txt to see the difference. I am sure that the locate command is there in slackware and locate uses a *database*

i can't say that you are wrong in passing that comment, cos you never actually used Slack. how about if we removed those last 3 zeros and concentrated on just that 1? yes just one file!!! now do that comparison again

Bah, i don't want to start a gentoo vs slackware flame war here. If you want to know why gentoo is the future, check out their forums and see the number of registerd users. Or even better check out slashdot. They recently conducted a survey on the major distros, and Debian came first closely followed by Gentoo.

i never intended to start any flame war anyways. i just wanted to say that the essence of having Gentoo is it being a source based install and hence a faster and more flexible OS. did i say something wrong there? btw nice to know that you are already in future.

One week ? You can get a fully functional Gnome system in MAX 2 days on a p3 600 mhz system

KDE was my choice of desktop environ. btw if compiling mozilla takes 12 hours, i wonder how you got your system ready in one day (assuming that you have at least a P-4 >= 1.5 GHz) but then that is how our future will be. stuff will compile faster and you already said that gentoo is future. so gud luck with that future...keep it intact and hand over to us Slackers when we reach there. best of luck

**psynaps3** · 18-02-2004

qmail still has problems with xinetd

There is no point is saying that so and so application has problem with xinetd. Do you think all the programs work properly with inetd ? If there is a problem, submit a bug report or even better try to correct it on you own.
Anyway, here's an entry from the xinetd faq

Code:

Q. Has anyone been able to get qmail working with xinetd?
A. yes, here is the entry info 
service smtp
{
    flags      = REUSE NAMEINARGS
    socket_type   = stream
    protocol    = tcp
    wait      = no
    user      = qmaild
    server     = /usr/sbin/tcpd
    server_args   = /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env -R /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd
}

Contributed by&#58; Anthony Abby
This method will allow you to set environment variables and whatnot in /etc/hosts.allow. Although xinetd can be compiled with libwrap support, this doesn't mean it can completly replace tcpd's functionality. xinetd calls host_access&#40;&#41;, which performs the access control documented in host_access&#40;5&#41; man page. This is a subset of the features offered by tcpd.

you must be knowing that xinetd uses libwrap to handle all the services while inetd still uses TCP wrapper of tcpd
what it does is that while Xinetd runs and monitors to kill and start instances of services regularly, inetd does not. it simply loads the stuff at boot time and sleeps in back ground till it gets HUP signal or an execution of a script to do something special, which helps it to reduce the load on resources.

Care to explain more on this, specifically the inetd part ?

Xinetd maintains logs of every service functioning, starting, stopping and current status (as to how it is working), inetd does not. i know this makes inetd trivial but man that adds to performance boost.

You can disable the logging feature.

i don't know whether i was able to convince you or not but the truth stays that Xinetd is better but inetd is faster.

Nope, you are a long way from convincing me. I did a search through google, but i didn't come across any reference where inetd was mentioned as having a performance gain over xinetd. Maybe you could post some links to back-up your statement ?

yes i was talking about redhat-config. can you remove those packages? i hate them, you have any ways to remove them at any time?

Why bother with removing them ? If you don't want them, then just don't use them. I am sure they won't take up that much of your valuable hdd space.
Anyway, you could try rpm -e redhat-config-* , though this *might* mess up some of the dependencies. Or you could check out the /usr/bin directory. I think they store the settings in /etc/sysconfig. BTW those are just tiny python scripts. Even if you remove all of them, you might gain a measly 2-3 mb.

wow man!!! i *HAVE* to work with fluxbox cos i want to make RH go faster? where did the motto of choice go from Open Source products? Slack will be faster even if you are working on KDE and that too out of box.

How much time is installing fluxbox going to take ? Are you so short on time ?
Anyway just to remind you, what i initially said was that Redhat can be made faster than slackware and for this, you *need* to put in some effort.

KDE was my choice of desktop environ. btw if compiling mozilla takes 12 hours, i wonder how you got your system ready in one day (assuming that you have at least a P-4 >= 1.5 GHz) but then that is how our future will be.

I don't have KDE on my system. Using XFCE4, with firebird and a few other applications on a P3 600.

Regards
psynaps3

abhay · 19-02-2004

Nope, you are a long way from convincing me.

stay with your thoughts man. you haven't ever tried the stuff that i am talking about and want me to explain everything to you? sorry...u r not in luck

.

Why bother with removing them ? If you don't want them, then just don't use them. I am sure they won't take up that much of your valuable hdd space. Anyway, you could try rpm -e redhat-config-* , though this *might* mess up some of the dependencies. Or you could check out the /usr/bin directory. I think they store the settings in /etc/sysconfig. BTW those are just tiny python scripts. Even if you remove all of them, you might gain a measly 2-3 mb.

nice. you have just said that developers of programs like XP-Lite shouldn't have done what they did (removing wizards and bloatedness) cos it is useless. in anycase which all packages should i start deleting from /usr/bin? should i delete cups? i don't want it but RH won't let me remove it as it is required for ggv? cups is required for a pdf viewer??? can i remove PS? sendmail? those kind of things make RH a bloated OS.

what i initially said was that Redhat can be made faster than slackware and for this, you *need* to put in some effort.

i will rather use that much of effort in using my box for something creative.

I don't have KDE on my system. Using XFCE4, with firebird and a few other applications on a P3 600.

firebird depends on mozilla and compiling it from source took me 8 hours on my P4 1.6. i am still wondering how you got your machine up and running in 2 days with X but then i must not forget that you are in future.

**psynaps3** · 19-02-2004

stay with your thoughts man. you haven't ever tried the stuff that i am talking about and want me to explain everything to you? sorry...u r not in luck

And what stuff is that ? Just go through what you have written about xinetd and inetd and see if it makes any sense to you. TCP wrapper of tcpd .. lol

should i delete cups? i don't want it but RH won't let me remove it as it is required for ggv? cups is required for a pdf viewer??? can i remove PS? sendmail? those kind of things make RH a bloated OS.

Why bother with installing them in the first place. Redhat gives you a custom installtion where you can select each and every package that you want.

i will rather use that much of effort in using my box for something creative.

Don't you thing making redhat less bloated is more challeging and creative ?

[quote]i am still wondering how you got your machine up and running in 2 days with X but then i must not forget that you are in future[/quote
8-10 hours max for firebird
3-5 hours for X

BTW in gentoo, there is something called the USE flags whereby you can take out unnecessary dependencies like kde, qt, gnome etc which saves a considerable amount of time while compiling. ( Yeah i know that you can do this with ./configure , but USE flags are more easier and they work all the time ).

abhay · 19-02-2004

...see if it makes any sense to you. TCP wrapper of tcpd .. lol

<read sarcasm>
yup it does not

Why bother with installing them in the first place. Redhat gives you a custom installtion where you can select each and every package that you want.

dude i don't want to be harsh but please stop!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE STOP TALKING ABOUT STUFF YOU HAVE NOT TRIED

Don't you thing making redhat less bloated is more challeging and creative?

no...i think it is stupid wastage of time. it is a distro for n00b's and it should stay the way it is.