[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.

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HOWTO articles - Slackware Administration

Although Slackware tries to limit distribution specific tools compared to other distributions, there are a few cases where specific tasks are unique to Slackware. This section contains those special cases.

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Overview of Slackware Administration HOWTOS

PageDescriptionTags
Booting the Installation Environment from HDDBooting the Installation Environment from HDD This article shows how to boot the Slackware installation environment from a hard drive instead of the usual installation media. The Slackware installation environment is a small live Linux system with busybox, partitioning and some other useful utilities, and the,
Building A PackageBuilding A Package This is a rough outline for building Slackware packages. Some steps may not be neccessary, some steps might be missing. Use the discussion page for side-notes such as using slacktrack (when DESTDIR fails) and other utilities like checkinstall., , , ,
Building and Installing Packages with sbopkgBuilding and Installing Packages with sbopkg Sbopkg is a command-line and dialog-based tool to synchronize with the SlackBuilds.org (“SBo”) repository, a collection of third-party SlackBuild scripts to build Slackware packages. The program has a curses based interface which lets you pick and assemble the programs which you want to compile from source into packages. It can also be used non-interactively in case you know beforehand what your goal is - in that case it is, , , ,
Building the Linux kernel using gitBuilding the Linux kernel using git Author's note: I am writing this in as impartial a way as I can, because I think the user should decide what is best for them. Where to build There are two common places to build the kernel. It is important that wherever you build the kernel, it must be a location that does not change nor risk deletion or corruption. For example do, , ,
Creating a Package Using a SlackBuild ScriptCreating a Package Using a SlackBuild Script Overview Occasionally, you will find that there is an application that you would really like to utilize, but it is not available in Slackware's repository. For times like this you have options, one of which is using a, , ,
Cross Compiling The Linux KernelCross Compiling The Linux Kernel Introduction I freely admit there are other HOWTOs on this subject, but I wanted to show you a neat way that rides on the back of the great Buildroot project, instead of doing all the compiler setup by hand. As a bonus you can target different architectures pretty easily., ,
Setting up GRUB 2 on install (without rebooting)Setting up GRUB 2 on install (without rebooting) There is GRUB in A series of Slackware-14.1. If you want to install GRUB immediately after install (and before restarting), below is a simple method that assumes you use traditional BIOS and MBR partitioning (if you plan to use GPT instead of MBR partitioning, refer to, ,
HibernationHibernation Hibernation (also known as suspend-to-disk) is a method used to power down a computer while preserving the state of the operating system. Once powered up, the operating system will be in the exact state as it was at the time of hibernation., , , , ,
Chroot From Installation MediaChroot From Installation Media Slackware is full of tools that can help when the system becomes unstable and cannot boot. One example is upgrading the kernel image and forgetting to run lilo afterwards. In order to gain access to your system without booting directly to it, it is possible to use an installation media such as Slackware CD1 or the DVD. Once the installation media loads and starts, you can change the media's root directory into a mounted hard-disk partition and use it as the root …, , , ,
How to configure fstab and lilo.conf with persistent namingHow to configure fstab and lilo.conf with persistent naming Have you ever had your /dev/sda and /dev/sdb drives switch order? Has plugging in a USB device before booting your computer caused a kernel panic? Do you frequently unplug or plug in new devices into your computer, thus changing the order of the device names? If you said yes to any of those, you might be a good candidate to use persistent naming within your bootloader and fstab.,
Installing SoftwareInstalling Software Overview There are three basic ways to install software in Slackware: install a pre-build binary package, make your own package, or compile the sources and install the resulting binaries manually. If you need to compile a program from source code, making it into your own package is easy and useful. Here's how these methods work., , , ,
Install Slackware on an online.net Dedibox BareMetal ServerInstall Slackware on an online.net Dedibox BareMetal Server This tutorial explains on how to install and boot Slackware Linux on online.net Dedibox BareMetal Server Start Family. It is focused on servers that you don't have the physical access to and those that don't support remote exposure of the hardware (i.e. no KVM over,
Installing Slackware on UEFI-based hardwareInstalling Slackware on UEFI-based hardware Slackware setup supports UEFI installs. To get Slackware to boot on UEFI machines, bypass the LILO installation and select ELILO installation when prompted during the install. Installing Older Slackware on UEFI-based hardware, , , , , ,
Installing Slackware Using GPT with a BIOS motherboardInstalling Slackware Using GPT with a BIOS motherboard It is possible to install Slackware to a disk that uses a GUID Partition Table (GPT), even on a machine that uses BIOS (i.e. you do not need a UEFI-based machine). Using GPT allows you to install Slackware onto very large disk drives (the theoretical maximum addressable disk size is 2 ZiB). As always, partitioning should be done prior to starting the 'setup' script, however you must use a GPT aware partitioning tool, e.g. gdisk, cgdisk or p…, , , , , , , ,
Building a Linux Kernel from SourceBuilding a Linux Kernel from Source This is how I build my 2.6 kernels. It will apply almost completely to the 3.x kernels in Slackware 14 and onwards. X and su I run the commands from an X terminal, and at some point start the X based kernel configurator. I run my desktop as, , ,
Linux kernel options for UEFI and ELILOLinux kernel options for UEFI and ELILO The purpose of this article is to inform the user about necessary kernel options for booting from UEFI, and some info about how ELILO and perhaps other EFI bootloaders work, as this is currently difficult to find and understand online.,
Querying Installed PackagesQuerying Installed Packages Sometimes you might want to check whether a particular package is installed or which version of a package is installed on your system. If the package is part of the Slackware installation you could use the slackpkg tool:, , , ,
Setting up a Recovery Boot OptionSetting up a Recovery Boot Option Overview and Purpose Currently most Linux based distributions install a recovery/safe option and a memory test option in the default bootloader. While Slackware does not install such options by default, they can be easily added to any system., , , , , ,
StyleSlackware uses a simple BSD style init script system. Following the Slackware philosophy, init scripts are quite simple and do not perform any kind of black magic. For example, there are no dependencies between init scripts or monitoring. In this section we will cover the creation of a usual script. Please follow the template as much as possible for consistency with all scripts.
Set up Grub as boot loader on UEFI hardwareSet up Grub as boot loader on UEFI hardware Installation and running of Slackware on computers that use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) rather than traditional BIOS poses problems. It may be impossible to boot the official install media via UEFI directly and the installation discs do not include a UEFI bootloader., , , ,
Set up SYSLINUX as boot loader on UEFI based hardwareSet up SYSLINUX as boot loader on UEFI based hardware SYSLINUX is a boot loader that loads Linux (among other things) from FAT filesystem. The Syslinux Project, of which SYSLINUX the boot loader is a part, contains also ISOLINUX, EXTLINUX and PXELINUX, basically its variants to boot from optical media, ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS, UFS/FFS and NTFS or from network., ,
Slackware Automation Using AnsibleSlackware Automation Using Ansible Rationale, and What Is Ansible, Anyway? Like everyone else, I used to write Perl and bash scripts to automate things, but decided to learn the modern way of doing such things. I looked at Puppet initially but decided to learn Ansible instead. I wrote a simple collection of Perl scripts and Ansible playbooks to be run on a fresh Slackware install, and was told in Freenode #slackware that I ought to write something for the wiki, which brings us up to date.
Install Slackware on a CloudVPS by ArubaCloudInstall Slackware on a CloudVPS by ArubaCloud ArubaCloud offers excellent low-cost VPS services, starting at 2.79 € / month (updated May 2020; was 1€/month in feb. 2018, see ArubaCloud offers and limitations). This article refers to installing Slackware on, , , , ,
Install Slackware on a VPS based on Proxmox VE or SolusVMInstall Slackware on a VPS based on Proxmox VE or SolusVM I've been faced with the challenge to install Slackware as a VPS at a hosting provider that had Proxmox VE as virtualization platform. Proxmox VE is a complete open source virtualization management solution for servers. It is based on, , , , ,
Upgrading Slackware to a New ReleaseUpgrading Slackware to a New Release Upgrade or Install from Scratch Installing Slackware fresh and from scratch is always the best method if you are running a fairly old release of Slackware and want to skip a few releases. Too many intrusive changes to the distro will have occurred if your Slackware is relatively old. It will make a manual upgrade process painful and will not guarantee success., ,
UEFI dual or more boot using rEFIndUEFI dual or more boot using rEFInd Machines are now coming in with the UEFI standard. It presents some advantages like the ability to boot from disks over 2TiB and flexible pre-OS environments as drivers can be loaded in the UEFI firmware. But Linux users found that, suddenly, it was more difficult to multi-boot as we used to do in the past. However, Linux users have a variety of resources and we found a way to work with the new standard. It is not as straightforward as in the past, but it is …, , , , ,
Yet Another Kernel Compile GuideYet Another Kernel Compile Guide Why and How? A few years ago I wrote a couple of HowTos on compiling and packaging a complete kernel+modules package. Recently, I decided to look at how the stock Slackware kernel packages are built. I put this guide together from what I picked up.,

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