How To Get Grub Back With My Fresh Slackware Installation

Alexzee said:
Good-

I'll see if Slackware 15 is out yet--
Click to expand...
i mean better than an older current version. 15 is not released yet. But you can upgrade one old version of current to a newer one. That what i did i upgraded from September release to yesterday which changed kernel 4.19.75 to 5.4.12 along with package updates.
 


captain-sensible said:
i mean better than an older current version. 15 is not released yet. But you can upgrade one old version of current to a newer one. That what i did i upgraded from September release to yesterday which changed kernel 4.19.75 to 5.4.12 along with package updates.
Click to expand...
How would I upgrade Slackware-current when Slackware 15 is out?
 
This is what i intend to do , i will keep updating current at regular intervals since every day "current" changes, but i tend to pick a point at which there has been a significant change , like change of kernel.

You installed current later than me , whats your kernel for slackware out of interest?

By the way people say slackware is old and out of date; when you look at kernel.org you will see that latest stable is 5.4.13 and i'm now running 5.4.12 and all the packages using it.

The last update of "current" for me will probably be the day that Slackware 15 is released. then on that day current==15 stable release.Then i edit all configs so that mirrors , slackpkg ,slpkg all configs use stable.

But you can go straight from current to stable , just following "Alien Bob" procedure on docs. Have you read that yet ? and also this excellent article on the slackware docs : https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:misc:anatomy_of_a_slackbuild

[if not the 2] important points are don't just use slackpkg and hope for the best, since if you don't set up your kernel install and then blacklist those kernel installs then slackpkg upgrade will wipe out your old kernels, then if something goes wrong you can't boot because you will not have ANY kernels to boot from.

If you are doing that it should work but you are taking a chance for slackware. Obviously you could still boot up mint or your other OS, but for Slackware it would mean i fresh install



Also when i did it i found that my system boots from EFI and thus I ran elilo.conf before i re-booted.

i'm not an expert on grub, but i'm pretty sure that since you have multi boot you would just update grub
 
captain-sensible said:
This is what i intend to do , i will keep updating current at regular intervals since every day "current" changes, but i tend to pick a point at which there has been a significant change , like change of kernel.

You installed current later than me , whats your kernel for slackware out of interest?

By the way people say slackware is old and out of date; when you look at kernel.org you will see that latest stable is 5.4.13 and i'm now running 5.4.12 and all the packages using it.

The last update of "current" for me will probably be the day that Slackware 15 is released. then on that day current==15 stable release.Then i edit all configs so that mirrors , slackpkg ,slpkg all configs use stable.

But you can go straight from current to stable , just following "Alien Bob" procedure on docs. Have you read that yet ? and also this excellent article on the slackware docs : https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:misc:anatomy_of_a_slackbuild

[if not the 2] important points are don't just use slackpkg and hope for the best, since if you don't set up your kernel install and then blacklist those kernel installs then slackpkg upgrade will wipe out your old kernels, then if something goes wrong you can't boot because you will not have ANY kernels to boot from.

If you are doing that it should work but you are taking a chance for slackware. Obviously you could still boot up mint or your other OS, but for Slackware it would mean i fresh install



Also when i did it i found that my system boots from EFI and thus I ran elilo.conf before i re-booted.

i'm not an expert on grub, but i'm pretty sure that since you have multi boot you would just update grub
Click to expand...
I'm running kernel 4.19-

Thanks for the link to go from current to stable but I'm not interested.
I'd rather run current all the time now.
 
if your running current and still have kernel 4.19 that means you are not correctly updating and your current is out of date. Current is now using kernel 5.4.12 should you wish to give it a go let me know
 
captain-sensible said:
if your running current and still have kernel 4.19 that means you are not correctly updating and your current is out of date. Current is now using kernel 5.4.12 should you wish to give it a go let me know
Click to expand...
I'm willing to give it a go-

What do I need to do?
 
ok, hang on let me first just heads up @70-tango-charlie "English humour alert"

Well upgrading could be said to be a bit of a "performance" and you know singers just don't go and do their stuff. No first they warm up with Do,re, mi, Fa, scales. So first warm up your brain reading this 5 times :

howtos:misc:anatomy_of_a_slackbuild - SlackDocs

docs.slackware.com docs.slackware.com
if you can spot any errors let me know! (i wrote it)

end of english humor

Next I have to acknowledge & bow down to Alien Bob and who's article i mostly used.You can read it direct here:

howtos:slackware_admin:systemupgrade - SlackDocs

docs.slackware.com docs.slackware.com

my post is simply my experience with explanation


Next head over to : https://mirror.slackbuilds.org/slackware/slackware64-current/slackware64/a/

Down load by right mouse clicking on entries ,save link as .. and thus down load :

kernel-firmware-20200114_9c340bd-noarch-1.txz
kernel-generic-5.4.12-x86_64-1.txz
kernel-modules-5.4.12-x86_64-1.txz
mkinitrd-1.4.11-x86_64-14.txz

then head over to : https://mirror.slackbuilds.org/slackware/slackware64-current/slackware64/ap/ right click on slackpkg-2.83.0-noarch-4.txz download link as ...an thus download latest slackpkg

We are going to do some manual stuff and leave nothing to chance. Your slackware has been booted and logged in as normal user. We don't need telinit 1 or anything special.

Say you have downloaded all to Desktop. Open up konsole or other terminal window:

cd Desktop
su <enter pasword> -># root

# installpkg kernel-firmware-20200114_9c340bd-noarch-1.txz
#installpkg kernel-generic-5.4.12-x86_64-1.txz
#installpkg kernel-modules-5.4.12-x86_64-1.txz
# upgradepkg mkinitrd-1.4.11-x86_64-14.txz

#upgradepkg slackpkg-2.83.0-noarch-4.txz

this will not clash with running kernel and will make sure you have most recent slackpkg

you have now installed latest kernels but at this stage still running old kernel.

Next because we have just installed latest kernels we don't want to do any overwirting by slackpkg ,so next we are going to stop any overwriting by:

cd /etc/slackpkg
ls --color
# nano blacklist

this opens up /etc/slackpkg/blacklist

my entries are:

kernel-generic
kernel-generic-smp
kernel-huge
kernel-huge-smp
kernel-modules
kernel-modules-smp
kernel-firmware
mkinitrd


#kernel-source
[0-9]+_SBo
[0-9]+alien
[0-9]+ponce
[0-9]+slonly

[to be more accurate they WERE my entries but not my present entries because part of the above is to protect your working kernel. once i got my new kernel working .all i wanted was to stop that being overwritten]


# with hash in front it does not pay any attention to line, without a hash line is taken into consideration. Thus all the above will not be affected by slackpkg upgrade. You don't want to do upgrade of kernels ,because you know you have the latest.

More importantly you don't want wiping of old kernels until you know new ones work !



You don't want thirs party packages touched either. The last four lines stop slackpkg messing up installed packages. That have alien, ponce, slonly or SBo packages for example latex2html-2019.2-x86_64-1_SBo

Next we need to make sure we are getting from current ,so next to edit mirrors for current

[next installment probably tomorrow]

with nano ^ represents control key. So edit and to write out is ctrl key + 0
hit return to write to file, and crtl +x to exit
 
Last edited:
That's a lot of work to do just to upgrade the kernel.
I've never done that before so I have to read through your instructions a few times before I'm ready to do that.

I'll have more time Wednesday.
 
Well that why i only do it say every three months or for you you could wait until release 15. You wouldn't have to do any re-install simply a "system upgrade". Right where did i leave off ?

oh yes edit /etc/slackpkg/mirrors


you need to make sure your downloading from the right place. my entry is:
# Slackware64-current
#----------------------------------------------------------------
# USE MIRRORS.SLACKWARE.COM (DO NOT USE FTP - ONLY HTTP FINDS A NEARBY MIRROR)


all the lines with hash are ignored; you must only "uncooment one line"/ As you can see i get slackpkg to get stuff from mirrors.slackware.com current 64 bit


So now we have the latest slackpkg (we installed it manually)
Next we update slackpkg by running as root:


# slackpkg update
// can't remember if i ran slackpkg update gpg, i sure it will tell you if needed



most people next run
# slackpkg upgrade slackpkg

i knew i had the latest but did it anyway just in case

then

# slackpkg new-config

if you get an option choose over write

next:


# slackpkg upgrade glibc-solibs
# slackpkg install-new
slackpkg upgrade-all

//the line above is the one that will mess things up if you have not blacklisted packages and the kernels

next:


# slackpkg clean-system
 
still more to come. but isn't it worth it to have a bleeding edge OS . i think the kernel is more recent than Mint 19.3 cinnamon !
 
Bleeding edge is nice to have, yes.

I now have kernel 5.4.13--:)

Now I have to fix my Sony laptop. It's running Slackware 14.2.
 
there isn't anything else but 14.2 either its 14.2 stable or 14.2 current

run this:

$ cat /etc/slackware-version

yours should be 14.2+ (i.e current)


Now then i did previously say i wasn't finished. last bit :

run

#slackpkg new-config to choose new or old config files


next to start setting up links to new kernel run this(replace 5.4.12) : with what ever kernels you installed.

/usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh -k 5.4.12


You will get some output

the output you will get will be something like :
mkinitrd -c -k 5.4.12 -f ext4 -r /dev/sda3 -m xhci-pci:eek:hci-pci:ehci-pci:xhci-hcd:uhci-hcd:ehci-hcd:hid:usbhid:i2c-hid:hid_generic:hid-asus:hid-cherry:hid-logitech:hid-logitech-dj:hid-logitech-hidpp:hid-lenovo:hid-microsoft:hid_multitouch:jbd2:mbcache:ext4 -u -o /boot/initrd.gz

what ever output you get, copy the code and run that code as root eg the above i ran as
# mkinitrd -c -k 5.4.12 -f ext4 -r /dev/sda3 -m xhci-pci:eek:hci-pci:ehci-pci:xhci-hcd:uhci-hcd:ehci-hcd:hid:usbhid:i2c-hid:hid_generic:hid-asus:hid-cherry:hid-logitech:hid-logitech-dj:hid-logitech-hidpp:hid-lenovo:hid-microsoft:hid_multitouch:jbd2:mbcache:ext4 -u -o /boot/initrd.gz


finally before you shut down update bootloader. I am using elilo so I ran,


$ eliloconfig

you can try # update-grub

now you can reboot. the upgrade went like a dream for me.
 
once Patrick V settles on a kernel, then updating will be much easier. I will keep kernel blacklisted on slackpkg until i'm ready to do updates for them. Also i will keep _Sbo , Alien and ponce blacklisted so that any upgrade will leave them alone. So to upgrade at that point, it should be just a couple of lines to update packages.

slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade slackpkg
slackpkg new-config
slackpkg upgrade glibc-solibs
slackpkg install-new
slackpkg upgrade-all
slackpkg clean-system
 
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