okay - here's an odd one - I tried to boot from the second CD to see if
that would work and the loadlin command had a parameter that struck me
as interesting...

ramdisk_size=16384

that was the only thing that was really different about booting from the
CD so i tried inserting that into the prevously stated command and
voila! it worked... up until the login screen.

here, it says:

Welcome to Linux 2.4.22 (tty1)

(none) login:


no matter what I type, all that I get is that prompt again, in it's
entirety.

any thoughts? am I just too new to Linux to know what to do here? I
thought if i typed root, it would ask for a password which i could
either leave blank or type 'null' or something. but no, it just doesn't
like anything.

thoughts?

if this is another thing that can be easily solved, i apologize... I
know how easy it is to find answers if you know where to look - i guess
i just don't know.


thanks guys/girls,


chip



Chip Snider wrote:

> Thank you for the quick response!
>
> To answer your questions, it's a Pentium-S 100MHz processor with 32mb
> RAM and I currently have three small hard drives in it; 400mb, 800mb and
> 1.2Gb respectively.
>
> It also has an LG/Goldstar 8x CD-ROM and a Linksys NIC (the model of
> which I cannot remember off the top of my head, but it is only a year or
> two old.
>
> Right now, the machine is running Windows 95, and I have Netscape 4.x
> running on it so it can access the internet if I need something that is
> not in the Slackware 9.1 CDs.
>
> I'll give the initrd.img angle a shot and let you know if it works or if
> I have any other issues.
>
>
> -chip
>
>
>
>
> /dev/rob0 wrote:
>
>> In article <Luqyb.2782$zf2.133449@news20.bellglobal.com>,
>> Chip Snider wrote:
>>
>>> decided to go open source. My friends tell me that Slackware is the
>>> way to
>>> go so I want to test it on an older machine of mine.
>>
>>
>>
>> You've got smart friends. How old is the machine?
>>
>>
>>> The floppy drive doesn't work, so I have to make it go using the
>>> instructions on the Slackware site (installation FAQ #11). However,
>>> after
>>
>>
>>
>> Most things at that site are out-of-date, but you hit on a good one
>> there. The FAQ for this group has much better and up-to-date resources.
>> AFAICT Pat only maintains the front page, www.slackware.com.
>>
>>
>>> following these instructions, I get the message "Uncompressing
>>> Linux... Ok,
>>> booting the kernel." and then it hangs...
>>
>>
>>
>> Errors at this point usually indicate a CPU incompatibility with the
>> kernel. Is this a 386? Pat dropped 386-compatibility after 8.1. If you
>> have an especially small hard drive you might want to go back to 4.0. I
>> did run 8.1 on a 386 for quite some time, however, so it will work. But
>> some 386-era hardware (I'm thinking of old IDE controllers) might not
>> work with drivers which have become standard.
>>
>>
>>> C:\LOADLIN\loadlin bzimage rw root=/dev/ram initrd=color.gz
>>> load_ramdisk=1
>>>
>>> Not knowing what the root and load_ramdisk switches do makes me think
>>> that
>>> the problem may lie there.
>>
>>
>>
>> No, that command line looks correct (assuming your kernel and color.gz
>> are in the current directory.) Oh, maybe part of the problem is with
>> color.gz; I think the file you need in later releases is called
>> isolinux/initrd.img. That file itself is too big for a floppy, so you'll
>> have to figure out a DOS way to split it. (I think pkzip can do it.)
>>
>>
>>> If I have left anything out, or if this is a common problem and I've
>>> simply
>>> not looked hard enough for an answer, please advise and point me in the
>>
>>
>>
>> There's another thread about an old machine which started a few days
>> ago: "swap space" or something like that.
>>
>> We'll need more detailed information about the hardware and the
>> Slackware version you're using.
>
>