Slackware on Raspberry Pi

[root]

Is there any interest or experience in this group about installing
Slackware on the Raspberry Pi. Sarpi is a group that has built
what is almost a standard install procedure for Slack 14.2
or Slack current.

After a couple of false starts I managed to install 14.2
on the Pi3B+ but I have no internet connection.

FYI: the Pi3B+ is a very impressive unit and, if you
go the raspbian route you get a free copy of
Wolfram Mathematica by itself a $320 value.

If anyone is interested I will reveal the steps I
took to install Slack on the Pi.

[Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood]

Groovy hepcat root was jivin' in alt.os.linux.slackware on Wed, 29 Aug
2018 11:16 am. It's a cool scene! Dig it.

Post by root
Is there any interest or experience in this group about installing
Slackware on the Raspberry Pi. Sarpi is a group that has built

I have something of a cursory interest in the matter. I mean... I'm
not a regular Slackware user; I do dabble with old versions of the
distro on some old hardware. (That's why I hang out in this NG.) But I
am interested in what's happening in the RPi world.

Post by root
what is almost a standard install procedure for Slack 14.2
or Slack current.

Cool!

Post by root
After a couple of false starts I managed to install 14.2
on the Pi3B+ but I have no internet connection.
FYI: the Pi3B+ is a very impressive unit and, if you
go the raspbian route you get a free copy of
Wolfram Mathematica by itself a $320 value.
If anyone is interested I will reveal the steps I
took to install Slack on the Pi.

I'd like to see that, even if just for curiosity's sake.

[root]

Post by Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood

Post by root
If anyone is interested I will reveal the steps I
took to install Slack on the Pi.

I'd like to see that, even if just for curiosity's sake.

Sarpi is a group that has built a Slackware version by taking
the Slackware sources and compiling them for the arm processor.

In my (short) exposure I think some things are broken, but
overall I am impressed with the effort. I have only worked
with the Pi3B+ which is a marvel at under $40. So far I
have tried Raspian, OMSC, and the Slackware OS. OMSC is
what used to be Kodi and Raspian is a version of Debian.

It is clear to me that more effort has gone into the
development of Raspian than that of Slackware.

Nevertheless I much prefer Slackware so I bought two
Pis, one for Slackware and one for Raspian. Overkill
since all you have to do is swap out a micro-sd
(msd) card and you change the OS.

You start with the Raspberry Pi 3B+, a 5V 2
A charger
with a micro-usb connector, and a (fast) micro-sd
card of at least 16GB. I used 32GB cards.

Google for the Sarpi page by searching for
Slackware on Raspberry Pi.

You can choose from either 14.2 or Current.
DO NOT choose the 14.2. It is not complete and it
has only software floating point.

You download the installer:
sarpi3-installer_slackcurrent_20Jul18_sp1.img.xz

Then you write that to your msd, here is my command line:
xz -dc sarpi3-installer_slackcurrent_20Jul18_sp1.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdg bs=4000000

Then you have to fetch the Slackware packages built for the Pi
wget -r ftp://ftp.arm.slackware.com/slackwarearm/slackwarearm-current/slackware/

you get some crap ahead of the slackware directory. I just moved the
slackware directory to the head of the file and copied
that file to a USB stick.

Now you are ready to go.

Connect a monitor and USB keyboard to the Pi, insert
the USB flash drive containing the Slackware packages
and power up the Pi from the msd.

Set the date: date -s yyyy-mm-dd

Important: now you run fdisk. This is to partition the msd.
The device is /dev/mmcblk0. You will see a /dev/sda1 that
is the USB stick.

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

There will already be one partition on the msd. Leave that
alone, that is the boot partition.

You will create two partitions a swap partition (type 82)
I chose 512MB. Next assign the rest of the msd to
a third partition.

write the result to the msd and run fdisk -l to
see what you have.

Now you can run setup and the rest of the install
process will be perfectly familiar. When you
are done DO NOT reboot. Exit the install window
into a console.

Type these commands:

ROOT=/mnt removepkg kernel_armv7 kernel-modules-armv7
mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/boot
cd /mnt/boot
rm initrd.gz
cd
ROOT=/mnt installpkg /rpi-extra/kernel* /rpi-extra/sarpi*

umount /usb-stick
remove usb stick

reboot

That's it. When the system reboots you will be in Slackware
on the Pi.

There is a serious problem booting into Slackware:
sometimes the system hangs with an unending series
of WARN about intr 68. The only recourse is to
pull the power plug and start over. I find it
sometime works to have the keyboard disconnected
when applying power. If you don't have a monitor
connected the system defaults to very low resolution
and big characters.

When you log in you should mount the partition
/dev/mmcblk0p1
there is some information there including a small
config file.

After a new Slackware install I always have lots of
changes to make before I am comfortable. Some of
my own programs compile differently and I find that
certain features of fvwm2 do not work. I tried
kde but I think it was a little too much for the Pi.

The Pi 3B+ is a 32 bit quad core device. After installing
Slackware, you should use another micro-sd and install
Raspian. I think you will find the result more polished
than the Slackware: not because Debian is better, but
because more effort has been put into porting over
to the Pi. The fact that the Raspian also includes
a workable copy of Mathematica is pure gravy.

Raspian also includes a config program which
must be run as root. Under Raspian you run
as user pi. You access the config program by

sudo raspi-config

You should first change the password to defeat
a nuisance message at boot, then enable sshd.
I find it much easier to change stuff on the
Pi if I log in from my (real) machine.

sudo -s

allows you to run as root until you exit.

I know this is more than you wanted, but you asked
for it.