The Slackware Server Project
The Slackware Server project happened because I wanted to use Linux on an Industrial 486 Computer to control the PCL-730 I/O cards I purchased off of ebay and the computer parallel port.
I tried many versions of Linux (Tom's Root Boot and many others I can't even recall) but many would not work on the hardware, and the ones that would work, did not have the features I wanted (Apache Server, PhP, and GCC).
Then I found various articles that suggested older versions of Slackware. It seemed to install OK, but then LILO would not boot the system. I found various articles that said that LILO uses the BIOS HDD routines and if the harddrive was larger than the BIOS could handle, it would not work (this was the case with my system since it was a 486 with an 8Gig HDD).
I found that you could overcome this problem by a few different methods:
Get a BIOS Exdender card - this was not an option for me since the Industrial Computer has 4 slots and each was taken: Single Board Computer, Video, NIC, and PCL-730 IO Card.
Get a smaller harddrive - try to find one under 1Gig now.
Partition the hell out of it - I really wanted the max size for linux I could get without a lot of crap
Use a boot time program - tried it and failed.
Finally read about LOADLIN and although booting DOS to get to Linux seems sacsacrilege, it looked like it would work (I also like fooling around with DOS networking anyway).
Steps for set up:
Do a low level format of the HDD (optional)
Boot to DOS
- Perform an fdisk and make a partition for DOS (I made mine 2Gig (max for my bios))
- Format the partition (dont forget to make it bootable with /sys or do the system command after the format is complete)
- Copy all the regular DOS files to the HDD (you will also need PKZIP (placed in a directory called \pkzip)in a future step).
Boot to Slackware 8.0 CD*
- Login (just follow on screen instructions)
- First you need to create 2 more partitions out of the space left
- Create a swap space with the New partition command and use the Type command to set it to type 82 (Linux Swap)
- Create a Linux partition using the New partition command and set to type 83 (Linux Native).
- write the changes and exit
- Now type "setup" and follow the prompts. I did a "Full" install but you can pick and choose if you wish.
- When asked if you wish to make to DOS partition accessable to LINUX answer YES and call the partition /dos.
- DO NOT INSTALL LILO when you get to that part of the install, create a boot floppy, but do not install LILO on the HDD.
- finish the install following the prompts (including configuring your network)
- remove the CD
Boot to Slackware 8.0 via the floppy boot disk created above
- Put back in the CD
- login
- execute the following commands (to move loadlin to dos directory):
- mount /dev/hdx /cdrom (where hdx is the cdrom drive)
- cd /cdrom/slackware/a1 (one not the letter l)
- mkdir /dos/loadlin
- cp loadlin.tgz /dos/loadlin
- cd /dos/loadlin
- tar -xvzf loadlin.tgz
- When you do the tar the files will be placed in a subdirectory called root (I wanted them in loadlin) so the next commands move them back
- cd root
- mv * ../
- cd ..
- rmdir root
- cp /cdrom/isolinux/kernel/bare.i /dos/loadlin (more minimal boot file to \loadlin directory)
- shutdown -h now (shutdown linux)
- boot to dos (remove CD and Floppy disks)
- cd loadlin
- c:\pkzip\pkunzip -d loadli~1.zip (this is really loadlin, but since DOS 6.22 does not allow long file names, this is how it will appear unless you have LFN tools and use them)
- xcopy c:\loadlin\loadlin c:\loadlin (again I wanted everything in c:\loadlin)
- edit the Linux.bat file provided as follows:
- replace zimage -> bare.i
- replace hdb2 -> hdax (where x in the partition number you installed SLACKWARE to, not the SWAP space)
- typing c:\loadlin\linux.bat should start linux.
you will probably want to do the following:
- edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.modules as follows:
- in the network section - remove the "#" from the line for your ethernet card
you will need to reboot for the changes to take affect
Slackware 8.0 notes:
www default pages are stored at /var/www/htdocs
apache setup files at /etc/apace/httpd.conf
default user public directory is public_html
apachectl start|stop|help (used to start/stop appache server)
/etc/rc.d/rc.sshd start|stop|restart (used to start/stop sshd)
ifconfg (used to obtain network info)
lynx (text only www browser)
more to come (need to verify my notes before publishing)
* - Why Slackware 8.0 and not the most recent Slackware? Well I found that this was the last version that would run on a limited system (486, limited memory etc).