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PROMPT MODE HELP
Software packages are about to be transfered onto your
hard drive. Several options exist for selecting which
packages you wish to install.
If you select "full", the install program will just go
ahead and install everything from the disk sets
you have selected. If you've got enough disk space, this
should work fine. You'll have some packages you don't
need on your hard drive, though, like fairly large X
servers for display hardware you don't own. Not a problem,
if you run short of space, go into /var/log/packages and
read any or all of the files with 'less' to see what
packages you have installed, and remove any unnecessary
ones using 'removepkg'.
For people who know what they want to install and would
like to select the packages from menus instead of
individually, there are two menu installation modes:
"menu" and "expert".
"menu" mode puts up a menu at the start of each series of
packages, from which you can install systems such as
the GNU C/C++ compiler, or the Linux source code. It's
easy to use, and makes installation go much faster than
"newbie" mode.
"expert" mode is similar, but allows the toggling of every
individual package. This offers the greatest control over
what gets installed on the machine, but can be tricky for
beginners.
The so-called "newbie" mode will follow a defaults file in
the first directory of each series you install that will
install some required package automatically, while prompting
you about the rest of them, one by one. This mode of
installation _really_ is no longer recommended. There are
so many packages now that the time added to the installation
is quite significant, and the chance of accidentally leaving
out an important package is high. If you haven't installed
Slackware before, the best thing to do is make sure you have
plenty of space and go for a "full" installation.
About the "tagfile" files:
The package installation defaults are user definable - you
may set any package to be added or skipped automatically by
editing your choices into a file called TAGFILE that will be
found on the first disk of each series. The tagfile contains
all the instructions needed to completely automate your
installation.
NOTE: Software may be added to your system after the
initial installation. Just type 'setup' to add software
to your system. Another script, 'pkgtool', may be used to
add software packages from the current directory, or to
cleanly remove packages that you want uninstalled. Also,
command line utilities (installpkg, removepkg, makepkg,
etc) are available, and (once learned) more efficient to
use. These are what I use for package management.
If you use tagfiles, you might want to use a custom
tagfile that you have created yourself instead of the
default ones that come with Slackware (the ones named
'tagfile'). For instance, I use custom tagfiles called
'tagfile.pat' that you might see on your disks. :^) You
make a custom tagfile by copying the 'tagfile' on the
first disk of a series to a file named 'tagfile.???'
where .??? is a custom extension of your choosing. (I use
'.pat') Once you've done this, you can edit the defaults
any way you like. (but be careful about changing stuff
that was installed by default)
To use a custom tagfile, just choose "custom" on the
prompt mode menu, and enter your custom extension. Any
tagfiles with this extension will then be used for the
duration of the installation. If at any point a tagfile
with that extension cannot be found, the default tagfile
will be used instead.
-- End of prompt mode help text
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