Q: I can't unzip the file -- it says I don't have enough memory! A: This happens if you use a 16-bit unzipper. You must use a 32-bit version such as WinZip or PKZIP for Windows95 or NT. (of course, unzip for Linux also works fine :) -------------------------------- Q: All I have is DOS! Do you know of an unzipper that works with zipslack.zip for DOS or Windows 3.1? A: Yes, (for Win 3.x) I hear there's something called Zip Navigator. If you can't find that, here's how to unzip it under Linux. First, grab a bootdisk that works with your system. For an average IDE system: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/bootdsks.144/bare.i For a SCSI system: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/bootdsks.144/scsi.s For an IBM PS/2 microchannel bus machine: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/bootdsks.144/ibmmca.s If you're unzipping the file to a parallel port Zip drive: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/bootdsks.144/iomega.s Then, you'll need the rescue disk. This is a small Linux system on a floppy disk. One of the utilities it includes is unzip. Here's where you can get the rescue disk image: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/rootdsks/rescue.gz Boot the first disk (the bootdisk), and hit enter at the 'boot:' prompt. When prompted, insert the rootdisk (rescue.gz) and hit enter to load it. Log in as root. Now, you'll need to mount the DOS partition where the zipslack.zip file resides. If the final destination is a Zip disk, you might still just want to go ahead and unzip the file on your DOS partition, and then move the directory tree onto the Zip disk under DOS with XCOPY or a similar tool. If you're not sure what the name of your DOS partition is under Linux, use this command: fdisk -l | more The partition name will be something like /dev/hda1. To mount the partition, use a command like this: mount /dev/hda1 /mnt -t msdos Switch to the /mnt directory, and unzip the file: cd /mnt unzip zipslack.zip That should unzip the file. Now you're ready to hit crtl-alt-delete and reboot your machine. From there, follow the directions in README.1st to boot the Linux OS. -------------------------------- Q: Are there other ways to handle the problem of 16-bit unzippers failing to unzip ZIPSLACK.ZIP? A: Yes. Here's another way to work around it that one of our users reported: I had trouble unzipping - I don't have a win95 machine, and pkunzip for DOS croaked horribly. Info-zip unzip did a much better job, but died after about 3/4 of the unzip process (out of memory). So, I used a "zip splitter" to split the zipslack.zip into floppy sized bites (from Simtel, filename zc300.zip), then extracted each of the 26 zips to the Zip disk. Booted like a champ, runs nice but slow on a 486/66 with 12Mb ram. -------------------------------- Q: How do I add X to this? A: Assuming you've got the space to install it, download the X packages (the files ending in .tgz) from this directory: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/slackware/slakware/x1/ You might also grab the diskx1 file, which describes each of the packages. You can save disk space if you don't install all of the X servers (you only need the one for your video card), and you might also leave out extra fonts, old X shared libraries (oldlibs*.tgz), and possibly development tools if you're not planning to compile X software yourself. Once you've collected the packages you plan to install into a directory, run this to install them: installpkg *.tgz Before running X, you'll need to set it up with 'xf86config'. -------------------------------- Q: I get "unable to open virtual console" when I boot! A: You're probably not giving LINUX.BAT the correct partition name. If you really have no idea which one to use, you can try each of these. If it's on an IDE partition, it will almost definately be one of them: /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hda3 /dev/hda4 /dev/hda5 /dev/hda6 /dev/hdb1 /dev/hdb2 /dev/hdb3 /dev/hdb4 /dev/hdb5 /dev/hdb6 /dev/hdc1 /dev/hdc2 /dev/hdc3 /dev/hdc4 /dev/hdc5 /dev/hdc6 /dev/hdd1 /dev/hdd2 /dev/hdd3 /dev/hdd4 /dev/hdd5 /dev/hdd6 If your know which hard drive (not C:, D:, etc, but which number drive, 1, 2, 3, or 4) the partition is on, then you can narrow the list down quite a bit. The first IDE drive's partitions all start with /dev/hda, the second hard drive's partitions begin with /dev/hdb, and so on.