setup on install disk

[root]

Shortly after 15.0 came out I made a bootable USB stick
from the installation iso. I used that to install
15.0 on my current machine.

This afternoon I tried to re-use that install USB and
I found that there was no setup command. Any ideas of
what happened?

[Rich]

We can only guess -- you have the actual stick and could investigate to
determine what happened.

Two guesses:

1) low quality stick that has lost files since it was written.

2) pebkac deleted the setup command from the stick

[root]

Rich <ri...@example.invalid> wrote:
>
> Two guesses:
>
> 1) low quality stick that has lost files since it was written.
>
> 2) pebkac deleted the setup command from the stick
>

The USB stick is a Sandisk USB3.
I only used the stick, exited after the installation
and put it aside.

Thanks for responding.

[John Forkosh]

I've re-used usb install sticks from various slackware64-current/
dates post-15.0 (most recent was 06Jul2023, don't recall earliest)
without any trouble whatsoever. Exactly how'd you create yours?
My two-step procedure (both as root) is...

(a) download >>everything<<
rsync -av --delete \
rsync://mirrors.kernel.org/slackware/slackware64-current/ \
my_local_slackware64-current_directory/
(b) create the usb stick, let's say mounted on /dev/sdb
(see "Create a bootable USB stick non-destructively" in README_USB.TXT),
cd my_local_slackware64-current_directory/usb-and-pxe-installers/
chmod 755 usbimg2disk.sh
./usbimg2disk.sh -f -s my_local_slackware64-current_directory/ \
-o /dev/sdb
(for help info just run ./usbimg2disk.sh without args,
then use "example#2" as shown, i.e., for those -f -s switches)

...So, exactly and precisely, how did you create your usb stick?
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j...@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

[Petri Kaukasoina]

How did you find there was no setup command? If you mount the USB stick and
browse its contents, you shouldn't see it.

You boot your machine from that USB. Its boot loader prints some info and
after the prompt 'boot: ' you press RETURN and then it loads the kernel and
an initrd containing the setup system. Then you select the keyboard and
after pressing another RETURN, you are root in the setup system. Now, you
type 'setup' and you say it doesn't work?

The setup command is in directory /usr/lib/setup of the setup system. The
setup system is extracted from an XZ compressed initrd image (if you mount
the iso9660 partition of the USB stick, the initrd image is in
isolinux/initrd.img).

[John Forkosh]

John Forkosh <for...@panix.com> wrote:
<<snip>>

> (b) create the usb stick, let's say mounted on /dev/sdb

^^^^^^^^^
Sorry, did I say "mounted"? Just plug it in to /dev/sdb,
but don't explicitly mount it. The script will do all that.
<<snip>>

[protozoaire]

On Saturday, December 2, 2023 at 4:31:08 AM UTC-5, Petri Kaukasoina wrote:

> . . .

> The setup command is in directory /usr/lib/setup of the setup system. The
> setup system is extracted from an XZ compressed initrd image (if you mount
> the iso9660 partition of the USB stick, the initrd image is in
> isolinux/initrd.img).

initrd.img is (normally?) a gzip compressed cpio archive, known by
$ file (PathtTo)/initrd.img
Example to extract all files/dirs tree in current dir:
$ gunzip -cd (PathTo)/initrd.img> | cpio -i -d -m -H newc --no-absolute-filenames
For succinct documentation, your friends are, on a slackware with manual pages:
$ man file $ man cpio $ man initrd for more details

[root]

John Forkosh <for...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> ...So, exactly and precisely, how did you create your usb stick?

I did this shortly after 15.0 came out. As best I can remember, I
downloaded the .iso image, dd to the USB stick. Then booted off
the stick.

[root]

Petri Kaukasoina <kaukasoina...@sci.fi> wrote:

> How did you find there was no setup command? If you mount the USB stick and
> browse its contents, you shouldn't see it.
>

I was trying to use the same stick to install 15.0 on a different
machine. I booted off the stick. After logging in as root, I
typed setup as normal. I got command not found.

[John Forkosh]

Oh, you're using the slackware64-live-current.iso image
from https://download.liveslak.org/slackware64-current-live/ ?
I should have guessed because a while back I had exactly your
same problem with the iso. Can't recall where I found the
answer, but here it is...
note: to use same usb stick several times, cd to its mount point,
cat /dev/null > persistence/var/log/messages
cat /dev/null > persistence/var/log/syslog
(these get filled up, using 100% of the usb stick)
So mount your stick, do a df, and see if its Use% is 100.
Did that work for you, too?

[Petri Kaukasoina]

protozoaire <jpmo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>initrd.img is (normally?) a gzip compressed cpio archive, known by
> $ file (PathtTo)/initrd.img
>Example to extract all files/dirs tree in current dir:
> $ gunzip -cd (PathTo)/initrd.img> | cpio -i -d -m -H newc
>--no-absolute-filenames

Insert the USB stick. OK, it's the 3.5G partition, /dev/sdb1 here. initrd is
XZ compressed. bsdtar extracts anything! 'setup' is there. You can even try
to run it from the extracted setup system via chroot. (Won't work correctly
there, of course.)

root@acer:~ # lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
|-sda1 8:1 0 931.5G 0 part /
`-sda2 8:2 0 1007K 0 part
sdb 8:16 1 28.6G 0 disk
|-sdb1 8:17 1 3.5G 0 part
`-sdb2 8:18 1 1.4M 0 part
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
root@acer:~ # mount -o ro /dev/sdb1 /mnt/memory
root@acer:~ # file /mnt/memory/isolinux/initrd.img
/mnt/memory/isolinux/initrd.img: XZ compressed data, checksum CRC32
root@acer:~ # TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
root@acer:~ # cd $TMPDIR
root@acer:/tmp/tmp.Pr2IHKp8O9 # bsdtar xf /mnt/memory/isolinux/initrd.img
root@acer:/tmp/tmp.Pr2IHKp8O9 # ls -l usr/lib/setup/setup
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17982 2022-02-02 10:20 usr/lib/setup/setup
root@acer:/tmp/tmp.Pr2IHKp8O9 # chroot $TMPDIR /usr/lib/setup/setup

[root]

Thanks for responding. I didn't make myself clear, I have
both a 15.0 live and an install usb stick. The live boots
directly into slackware, while the install comes up with
the standard stuff like "in a pinch ...".

I was deinitely using the install.