Slack 9 problems!!!

[Doug]

Slacking ...

For setting ethernet, there is a utility called netconfig.
It will probe and find the ethernet card, and it asks you
for IP address and DNS info. It will write the info to the
/etc/hosts and other network config files.

 > do I have to insmod every single module I need, and have to
 > manually configure everything?

Look in /etc/rc.d ... you will see rc files for network and
cdrom and other devices. The netconfig utility mentioned
above will write the proper info into rc.netdevice and the
rc.inet files. You typically need to edit rc.modules file.
In there are all of the insmod (modprobe) commands. You
will see that there are tons of them in there but most are
commented out. For most setups there is not much you need
to do in here except audio configuration. Look for the
lines that correspond to your audio hardware.

 > I assume any modules that need to be loaded on startup need
 > to be loaded in /etc/modules.

Slack uses a BSD kind of init method, rather than system V.
Like I said, look in /etc/rc.d.

 > alias eth0 ne2pci

You can set up aliases like this in /etc/modules.conf, but
this is for the kernel module loader to autoload stuff. It
is often not even necessary to put stuff in there. I usually
have most of my module info in /etc/rc.d. Sometimes you do
need stuff in /etc/modules.conf to pass parameters to
modules on load, but it depends ...

 > Does something special have to be done with setting up modems
 > under Slackware?

Just like with networking, there is script for configuring
ppp for modem access. Running the script asks you questions
about your ISP and such and generates files for pppd. Then
typically all you need to do is type a single ppp command
to dial in. Use the pppsetup to configure your modem. After
running that, ppp-go does the dialup ...

 > I tried sending a simple dial string to my modem on every
 > serial port, and I did not get a blip, beep, pop, etc.
 > Which means Slackware can not find my modem. since Slackware
 > is so alien to me I am not surprised, but I also can not get
 > it going.

See above. There is a symbolic link /dev/modem which will
point to a serial port. Check the /dev directory and see if
you have /dev/modem.

 > How on earth do you activate and turn off services under Slackware!!!!!

What services do you want to activate or turn off?
The modules are configured in /etc/rc.d. As I said this is
a BSD-ish setup not SVR4 like Redhat. Sorry but this is not
very automated. This is good and bad at times.

 > Where is the slackware kernel source

If you installed it, the source should be in /usr/src/linux.
If you didn't, run pkgtool and install it ...

You might want to check out the slackware support forums.

   -- Doug