I want to personally extend my thanks to the whole Slackware team for their constant efforts to make the core of my infrastructure (and yours too) as good as it can be.

Want a copy now? Right now? Ok. Here’s the official torrents

Torrents for Slackware 13.37, 32-bit x86

• Install ISO disc 1 (A/AP/D/E/L/N, bootable installer, kernels, testing/, Slackbook)
• Install ISO disc 2 (F/K/T/TCL/X/XAP/Y, L source, /testing kernel source)
• Install ISO disc 3 (KDE, A/AP/E/F/installer source)
• Install ISO disc 4 (KDEI, /extra packages, source for D)
• Source ISO disc 5 (KDE/XAP source)
• Source ISO disc 6 (/pasture packages, K/N/T/TCL/X/Y source, USB and PXE installers)

• Slackware 13.37 x86 DVD ISO (everything)

Torrent for Slackware 13.37, 64-bit x86_64

• Slackware 13.37 x86_64 DVD ISO (everything)

Keyboard layout modifications are back to (almost) normal – but instead of using /etc/X11/xorg.conf, we’re now using /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-keyboard-layout.conf.

To change your keyboard layout from US to GB (for example):

Modify the file to replace:

Option “XkbLayout” “us”

With:

Option “XkbLayout” “gb”

.. just as you would have done a few years ago with xorg.conf.

1. Make sure you have a copy of the version you want to upgrade to available.
2. Make sure your slackpkg config points to it

Bear in mind that you need to know what modifications you’ve made to your system in the “clean-system” stage. slackpkg will offer to remove any package that’s not part of the version you’re upgrading to. If you need to keep any extra packages that you’ve installed you need to make sure you don’t uninstall them at this stage. For this reason I heavily recommend that you blacklist SlackBuilds.Org packages in the slackpkg blacklist file.

Just in case there is a reason you should need libxfs.h on Slackware:

You now have libxfs.h installed at /usr/include/xfs/libxfs.h

Because of the nature of the shared environment in which I work, I changed my default umask to 002 in /etc/profile. I’ve just discovered a big problem as a result. When directories such as $PKG/etc aknd $PKG/usr are created as part of the SlackBuild, they are created with file permission 775 as per the umask. Then when it comes to installing those directories from the package, the installer overwrites the permissions on the directories in your system with the permissions set in the package.

So, if $PKG/etc was created with 775, your /etc directory will be modified from 755 to 775 and this can do harm. This especially the case with directories such as /etc/mail which are checked by daemons for security before they run. If the permissions are too loose, the daemons don’t run.

Before you run a SlackBuild script, check that your umask is 022!!

The big problem this causes is that any machines with a remote filesystem, such as an NFS share, in their fstab fail to mount the shares at boot; which means I have to manually ssh in and issue a mount command as root.

The solution is to ask rc.inet2 if it would kindly consider waiting just a little longer for the network to come up and not mount remote filesystems if it doesn’t.

The following patch attempts to ping an always-on host, preferably the host that serves the filesystem(s) you are going to mount.

• If a response is received, the boot process continues as normal.
• If there’s no response to the first ping:
  • A further 5 pings are attempted.
  • A countdown is displayed.
  • After 6 failed attempts boot continues, but with no attempt to mount remote filesystems.

rc.inet2.diff (download rc.inet2.diff.gz):

In order to apply the above patch, do the following as root:

Do not forget to manually edit your newly patched file to replace “<known up host, or remote filesystem server>” with a valid hostname or IP address.

rc.S (downloadable rc.S.diff.gz):

This patch effectively changes the automatic permissions on USB devices so that the group owner is the plugdev group and so the group owner has write permissions. Make sure any users in the vboxusers group are also in the plugdev group… but you knew that.

In order to apply the above patch, do the following as root:

Or just make the change by hand, given how small it is.

To be fair, most of the software in 13.1 is working pretty well without fault. Certainly I’m not aware of any specific complaints with the latest KDE SC, but the kernel is another matter. The 2.6.33.4 kernel has some major problems. There’s a bug between the versions of LVM and DRBD that causes massive data corruption. There’s a bug in LVM startup scanning that stops some LVM devices from being properly configured. There’s new ACPI bugs. All of these being major problems for production systems.

In practice this means that all my production stuff is halted at Slackware 13.0 which is pretty rock-solid. I really truly hope that Pat is planning to run a 13.2 in a few months and more than that I hope he doesn’t bow to any pressure to release anything prematurely. To give an indication of what I mean, it took just two weeks for Slackware 13.1 beta1 to go through rc1 and rc2 all the way to full release and in the melee it appears Pat forgot to update the README files in usb-and-pxe-installers.

Also, to clarify my concerns about the kernel, there are a number of features in 2.6.33 that people have been asking for but it is brand-spanking new and will only be supported for 6 months or so. Pat missed a golden opportunity to release 13.1 with the 2.6.32 kernel which is very stable and well tested and will be supported for between 2 and 3 years because it has been designated for long term support.

Could the people who really wanted a 2.6.33 kernel not have upgraded to it on their own without taking the whole stable Slackware release with them?

I can only hope for my own sake that 2.6.34 (or at least 35 or 36) proves itself rock solid so that I will be able to upgrade the servers that matter but still have a kernel I can trust.

Firstly, there are two options, the open source driver and the proprietary driver. Many people use the open source driver, I prefer to not. NVidia made the GPU, why not use their driver as it’s most likely to be the best performing option (and allows for VDPAU too). So that’s what these instructions are for.

Now that you’ve picked the proprietary driver, there are two more options; you can either use the installer provided by NVidia, or use the nvidia-driver and nvidia-kernel SlackBuilds provided by Heinz Wiesinger. Personally I use the NVidia-provided installer for a few reasons:

1. The latest driver is always available (if not necessarily stable) whereas the SlackBuild can be behind due to workload or because it’s been held back intentionally for stability/compatibility.
2. As with kernels, I never find the need to uninstall NVidia drivers, except with the installer when upgrading to a new one, so the usefulness of having a package is lessened.
3. I started with the NVidia installer many moons ago and never found enough reason to change my habits.
4. I’m too lazy to keep a copy of the xorg.conf handy and the NVidia installer creates one for me.

That said I have the utmost respect for Heinz’s SlackBuild and recommend you consider it as an option depending on your needs, especially if you are playing with different setups rather than just doing a one-time install on a box for which you know exactly what you need.

So, off we go..

Firstly, read my post about the nouveau kernel module: slackware-current and nvidia

Option 1: NVidia Installer
Then go to http://www.nvidia.co.uk/Download/index.aspx and get the latest driver for your architecture. Right now, for me, this would be:

Then head to tty6 (Ctrl-Alt-F6), login as root, drop to runlevel 3, make the installer executable and then run it:

Go through the installer with all defaults. If you are on Slackware64 with multilb (as so many are) say yes when it asks if you want the 32bit compatibility bits.

Once it’s done, you should find yourself with a new xorg config in /etc/X11/xorg.conf; but don’t start X back up just yet, you need to strip some lines out of the xorg.conf so as not to confuse X. In Slackware 13.0+, xorg takes its information about your input devices from HAL (see Slackware 13.0 – Xorg + Hal). NVidia doesn’t acknowledge this and adds default entries in the xorg.conf it creates for a mouse and a keyboard.

Here is a default xorg.conf created by the NVidia installer (this is an example, don’t just copy and paste.. do what I tell you to with YOUR copy):

And here’s what you need to make it look like by stripping out the input parts:

Of all of that the absolute minimum you need is:

But I recommend keeping the other bits that NVidia provide because if you use nvidia-settings later to specifically adjust your config, there may be a number of options it sets and the xorg.conf it will generate will include these anyway. So just take what NVidia give you and strip out the input devices as above.

Option 2: SlackBuilds
Install nvidia-driver and nvidia-kernel. I recommend doing so with sbopkg.

Then create yourself a valid xorg.conf. If you’re not sure how, then you won’t go far wrong with using the default NVidia-created xorg.conf from above.

Finally…

Once you’re done, you can start X back up, either by issuing “startx” at the command line, or re-entering runlevel 4 with “init 4″.

Now that you are back in X you should have fully functional DRI and compositing.

If you have a non-standard setup such as multiple-monitors or you need to boost the gamma on a bad monitor or something like that, then you need to configure the driver to do what you want. This is done very simply with the NVidia configuration tool:

Play with the settings however you need, but remember that this is not Windows. Clicking “Apply” will apply the settings for this session only. If you want the changes to be permanent you must save the settings to a new xorg.conf. Since you’re not running X as root because you’re not an idiot, you will likely not have permissions to overwrite the xorg.conf. There are ways around this, but the simple way is to just save the new xorg.conf in your home directory and move it to /etc/X11 manually (remembering to back up your working copy first).

And that’s it. Go enjoy your new graphics driver and, if your GPU supports VPDAU, go get the VDPAU-enabled MPlayer too.

Have fun!