I don't have any help for the poor fellow who's trying to get X working on
ZipSlack, but I thought I might explain a couple of things about Slackware that
should clear up a little confusion so you will understand what Slackware users
are asking about.
Slackware has its own packaging system, much as Debian has apt and RedHat (and
many other distros) have RPM. It is possible to use apt and rpm packages on
Slackware but that is not its native package format.
A Slackware package is a gzipped tar file, which contains the files that go into
the package tarred as relative pathnames with the assumption they will be
unpacked in the root directory. There is an optional post-install script that
is included in the .tgz file in a directory that does not get installed - the
post-install script is copied out to some temporary location, executed and then
I think deleted.
Although it uses .tgz as its _format_, one should not gunzip and untar it.
Instead one should use installpkg, much as on debian you use apt-get to install
a package. This will ensure the files go in the right location and that the
post-install script gets run. You can also cd to the directory containing your
packages, run pkgtool and select "Install from current directory".
It is also important to use the packaging system for your installations so the
list of installed packages will be properly maintained; this is especially
important if you will ever remove a package - some files are contained in more
than one package but the package system ensures that removing a package won't
remove files that are used by another package.
When creating a Slackware package from source drop that is not made for
Slackware, one usually sets the prefix or destination directory to be something
in /tmp, and then creates the package from the installed files there. If you
look at the source code for Slackware you will see there are a lot of custom
build scripts along with the distribution sources for each program that do this
sort of thing.
Slackware packages on the installation CD's or FTP site come in what are
traditionally called "disk sets". In the old days each file in a disk set would
physically fit on a floppy disk (and there were one or two hundred floppies to
download and copy), but this is no longer true except for the basic root
filesystem and networking disk sets - that way a machine without a CD can get
initialized via floppy and then complete its installation via NFS over the
network from a machine that either has the CD mounted or has copied the
"slakware" directory to its hard drive. ("slakware" because it is 8 letters and
will fit on an ISO9660 CD with no extensions).
The disk sets come in groups organized around the purpose of some of the files.
The base X11 installation is in disk set x1. Gnome is disk set gtk1 and KDE is
disk set kde1. You can see the files that are in disk set x1 here:
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/slackware/slackware/slakware/x1/
and descriptions of the package contents in this file:
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/slackware/slackware/slakware/x1/diskx1
the packages, the disk?? files, and the files named "tagfile" in each disk set
directory go together to provide a Slackware installation - the tagfile contains
the configuration of which packages are installed - whether always, recommended,
optional or never. One can copy the tagfiles to a floppy and edit them to
customize a Slackware installation that installs pretty quickly, it is less
error prone and is easier for multiple machine installations.
A nicer way to browse the slackware package contents is on this page:
http://www.slackware.com/packages/
You select the slackware version, architecture (386, alpha or Sparc) and the
disk set and then you get the description files like the one above only on a web
page.
Zipslack is a smaller Slackware installation with fewer packages that is meant
for installating on a FAT partition. It is specifically meant to install on Zip
disks, so you can use Linux without having to repartition your disk - if you
want to just try it out, or have occasional use. You can get it here:
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/slackware/slackware/zipslack/
Here's the readme:
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/slackware/slackware/zipslack/README.1st
basically it comes in a .zip archive, you unzip it on the destination disk, make
a boot floppy using RAWRITE.EXE, and you're off.
But to save space I guess ZipSlack doesn't have X, and so our friend is trying
to install it using either gunzip (incorrect) or installpkg (correct).
Now my question is, after running installpkg, do you see a bunch of directories
in /usr/X11, and is there a /etc/X11? There should be. "du /usr/X11" should be
many megabytes. (Or is it /etc/X11R6? I'm running Windoze at the moment...)
If these directories exist, the problem is probably not that the packages didn't
get installed, but likely that there is a problem with the video card. There
should be a file called /etc/X11/XF86Config after the installation - the
contents of this file are important and are the usual topic of discussion on
this mailing list.
My advice would be to enable to framebuffer device and use the version of the
XF86Config that is set up for framebuffers - the Slackware X1 install puts that
in /etc/X11 under a different name. However, it may be that the Zipslack kernel
does not support framebuffers, to save space. Even if it does you will need to
enable with with the lilo configuration file.
Zipslack doesn't come with kernel source, you can either get the kernel source
as a Slackware package:
ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/slackware/slackware/slakware/k1/
or you can download a .tar.gz or .bz2 file from http://www.kernel.org/
I give some tips on getting started with building the kernel here:
http://linuxquality.sunsite.dk/articles/whytestkernel/index.html
also see http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
and also
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO.html
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html
I suggest starting with the vesa2 framebuffer driver, it is the easiest to get
working. Once you have X working try a kernel with the driver for your specific
card.
If you want accellerated 2d you will need to have X use a driver for your video
card, and you will need to setup the XF86Config file to handle this. Try this
after you get unaccellerated framebuffer support to work. To use 3D
accelleration you will need to get the Direct Rendering Infrastructure support
to work - for that you will need a 2.4 kernel and to understand the
documentation at
http://dri.sourceforge.net/
Best of luck to you.
And if you get it working write up a web page about your experience to help
others. I have some stuff on configuring my machines at:
http://www.goingware.com/linux/
not a lot yet, just some of my configuration files.
Finally, I want to say that I've been a happy Slackware user for years. The
only other distribution I've used on my own machines was Yggdrasil in the early
days and Debian PowerPC on my Macintosh (which was a real pain to install, but
worked).
It is important to work with its packaging system, just as it is with other
distributions. The main beef I have with it is that it's not set up so well to
completely upgrade an existing installation, but aside from that it is very
reliable and stable, and there is good online support in the forums at
http://www.slackware.com/ . A few times I've emailed Slackware author Patrick
Volkerding directly and I've found him very responsive and helpful.
Also a few times I've had trouble with bugs in some installed software and found
that I was able to fix them readily by installing development packages from the
slackware-current version - slackware-current holds packages while a new
Slackware release is in development. It doesn't always work to install from
slackware-current but usually does.
You can buy Slackware CD's here:
http://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/slackstore
and download CD images here:
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware/isos/
At the very least buy the Slackware Essentials book from the online store (It
is included in with the CD's in the combo pack too). When you're in the middle
of an installation having a printed, bound book to refer to sure beats having to
go over to a friend's house to look at a HOWTO on the net.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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