J_K9 @ Linux

My Slaxperience

April 12, 2006 on 9:18 pm | In Linux, Distributions |

I have been using Slackware 10.2 for a week now, and I have to say I love it. I have no regrets - every day I like Slackware more and more. Slackware, along with Gentoo and possibly Debian, is considered to be one of the most difficult distros out there, and is the ultimate target for every newbie. I have always thought: The day I use Slackware, I can consider myself adept at using Linux. That day has come.

Let me start by describing the installation, where this experience began. I had already downloaded the 10.2 isos from LQ ISOs, so I burned those to disk and inserted the first disc into my laptop. Here are its (main) specifications:

Compaq Presario R3000T Dedicated Graphics
3.0 Ghz Pentium 4
1 GB RAM
128 MB ATI MOBILITY Radeon 9600
1280×800 resolution
ATI Technologies Inc IXP150 AC’97 Audio Controller (soundcard)
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10) (NIC)

The installation went well. I installed quite a lot of packages, I included X and KDE (a little ‘mistake’), and once that was over I rebooted. The system came up, and I booted into root. I created another user, switched over to that account, and ran ’startx’. KDE 3.4 was looking good!

But I wanted a bit more. So, I tried accessing the internet - that was a no go. There was something wrong with my ethernet network card and it just wasn’t allowing me to go online. I tried running ‘ifconfig up eth0′ to start it, but that still didn’t work. Looking back on what I did, I realise that I should have tried setting the IP address, subnet mask and DNS addresses (in resolv.conf) manually!

Out of frustration, I started up my desktop and shot off an email to Ray - a seasoned Slackware user - with the outputs of ‘lspci’, ‘ifconfig’ and ‘dmesg’ attached. I then shut down the laptop, and waited for his reply. When it came (not long after), he suggested I try ‘dhcpcd eth0′ because it appeared that dhcpcd was not running - and to add a line to rc.inet1.conf to make dhcpcd start on boot. So, I booted the laptop and was just about to test out Ray’s suggestion when I realised that the blasted network card had decided to work, and that I could now browse the internet. Ah well, at least I’ve learned something!

Pleased that I could now access the internet, I popped over to Linux Packages and downloaded the latest version of nano, which came as a tgz file. Being a Slackware newbie, I did what most other Linux users in my situation might have done - that’s right, I tried to unpack it! Having run a ‘tar xzvf nano*’, and attempting to chmod a+x and run the installer script, I figured out that something was wrong. It wouldn’t install properly!

I got bored of trying to install nano and went over to swaret. I had heard a lot about swaret, so I was eager to try it. Having come from a Debian-based background, I thought swaret was like apt-get, a package manager - which it isn’t, and I learned that the hard way. What it does excellently though is keep your system up to date. Anyway, back to my story. So I downloaded the swaret tgz and reflected on the fact that I would still be stuck if I tried to install it. I took a peek at the FAQ and discovered the wonders of the ‘installpkg’ command from there. I contentedly returned to my terminal window and ran ‘installpkg nano*’ and ‘installpkg swaret*’. Slackware was already winning me over.

Ray had kindly supplied some hints as well:

I always use Swaret. Basically, my steps are:
* install Slack with no gui but with xorg
* do “links www.linuxpackages.net” and grab nano (for fixing
/etc/swaret.conf.new)
*change the swaret settings to “current” from “9.1″ and do “updatedb
&& swaret -update && swaret –upgrade -a”
* go to www.alsa-project.org and grab the latest drivers (swaret
updates alsa but doesn’t get it working and I prefer to hand build
them)
* do “swaret –install qt, swaret –install kdebase, swaret –install
kdelibs and then grab the rest of it [swaret –install kde]
* go to www.linuxant.com and get hold of my wireless drivers - after
having ndiswrapper randomly screw up and fail to install a few too
many times, I got fed up and went to Linuxant, I always have success
with them!
* then I go and get mplayer and the codecs and then get all my Firefox
extensions and plugins from inside KDE

I had already installed X.org and KDE on top, and I didn’t really want to reinstall Slackware, so I moved on to the next step - configuring swaret. With Ray’s advice, that was fairly easy - simply altering /etc/swaret.conf. Then I ran all the commands he had supplied - including the KDE ones. When I rebooted the computer once all this was done (I left it overnight - they are large downloads), I was greeted by KDE 3.5.2 on starting X; brilliant!

However, I had a problem. Since the KDE upgrade, artsd crashed with a signal 11. Had I reread Ray’s first email, I would have saved him a response. Why:

* go to www.alsa-project.org and grab the latest drivers (swaret
updates alsa but doesn’t get it working and I prefer to hand build
them)

He replied, explaining the above a bit more (it is only upon writing this post that I have realised he actually answered my problem in his first email), and also giving me a few more tips. Following the instructions on the alsa website, I managed to set it up.

Now that I had the core of the OS set up, I wanted to move on to another issue - my graphics driver. I have an ATI graphics card, and in the Linux world ATI cards are renowned for being pains in the neck to configure correctly. I was unperturbed by this thought, and downloaded the ATI driver to give it my best shot. I tried no less than four times - and failed every single one of them - to set it up. It was hopeless. My card just wasn’t going to work, and I was going to have to get used to running at 1024×768 on a 1280×800 screen. Imagine what DVDs must look like

I needed a firewall too. I was thinking of going for Firestarter or guarddog, but they ended up being problematic. Then Ray told me to search his bookmarks for a premade iptables script - and I found it. It works very well. Here you go: firewall.

I was tempted to install MPlayer, but I couldn’t really be bothered so I stuck with NoAtun instead. I also downloaded VLC a bit later! I got w32codecs from the MPlayer site, and I also downloaded a couple of libraries and applications from Linux Packages. It’s a great resource! I was surprised to see that even applications as large as the latest release of OpenOffice.org were available from Linux Packages as a single tgz file. Ray also threw in a hint of using ‘pkgtool’ - which you can use to install all the packages in a directory instead of having to install each one individually with ‘installpkg’.

I’m into penetration testing, so (naturally) I wanted to install some security tools. nmap, nessus, hping, metasploit, ipsorcery, nikto, hydra, ethereal, dsniff and ettercap were top on my list. I’m glad to say I installed most of them, whether from source or from tgz files, but there are a couple I’ve had some trouble with (especially dsniff). If worst comes to worst, I’ll set up a dual-boot with a distro I know they work on, but I know I’ll be able to get them going in the end. Just give it time

I still get an artsd crash when I start the computer, but then I load up konsole, type ‘alsamixer’, turn up and switch on the inputs, and my audio works like a charm.

Thanks Patrick for this great distro! (And Ray for your help!) I’ve found that, with Slackware, there’s always something new to learn, and another feat to accomplish. This makes it even more fun than the rest