Slackware Linux 8.0 Installation and User-mode Linux

Jul 19 2002: patches updated

• copy rootdsks/color.gz from Slackware 8.0 Installation CD to your hard-disk and unpack it (gunzip color.gz)
• if you have minix file system driver built into your uml kernel (not as a module), rename color to inst_fs_slackware_8_0 and mount it

  mkdir new
  mount inst_fs_slackware_8_0 new -t minix -o loop
  

  Otherwise create 4MB file inst_fs_slackware_8_0, create ext2 file system on it, mount it to new, mount the color file to orig and copy everything from orig to new:

  dd if=/dev/zero of=inst_fs_slackware_8_0 bs=1M count=4
  mke2fs -F inst_fs_slackware_8_0
  mkdir new
  mount inst_fs_slackware_8_0 new -t ext2 -o loop
  mkdir orig
  mount color orig -t minix -o loop
  cp -a orig/* new/
  umount orig
  rmdir orig
  

• run

  patch new/usr/lib/setup/fdsetup uml.fdsetup.patch
  

  and optionally (for CD-ROM auto-detection)

  patch new/usr/lib/setup/INSCD uml.INSCD.patch
  

• create /dev/ubd? special files in new/dev

  cd new/dev
  for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do mknod ubd$i b 98 $i; done
  cd ../..
  

• umount new; rmdir new
• create big slackware.root file e.g. with

  dd if=/dev/zero of=slackware.root bs=1M count=512

• run uml

  ./linux mem=64M ubd0=slackware.root ubd1=inst_fs_slackware_8_0 \
   ubd2r=/dev/cdrom root=/dev/ubd1 rw devfs=nomount
  

  and proceed with Slackware installation as usual. If the color menu doesn't work try export TERM=vt100 before running setup. There is no need to create partitions with fdisk, the whole slackware.root file will be used as a root partition. CD-ROM can be auto-detected.
• after the installation run halt, the uml should exit cleanly
• mount the slackware.root file somewhere

  mkdir mnt
  mount slackware.root mnt -t ext2 -o loop
  

  and create /dev/ubd? special files and install kernel modules (see uml documentation). It is not a bad idea to comment out some getty lines in /etc/inittab. I don't use devfs, so I don't know exactly what to do to make it work. See this.
• run your slackware with something like this:

  ./linux mem=64M ubd0=slackware.root devfs=nomount