Sunday, October 07, 2012

Configuring Slackware 14

Lilo Configuration
By default Lilo gives two options of OS to start, Windows and Linux, and wait a minute to run automatically the first option. I just have Slackware in my PC so it is unnecessary that Lilo asks and wait.

To change the default Lilo behavior you have to change /etc/lilo.conf, this is what I have changed.

1. No waiting until systems starts. Comment prompt line
# Wait until the timeout to boot (if commented out, boot the
# first entry immediately):
#prompt


2. No Windows option. Comment or delete the Windows section at the end of the config file:
#other = /dev/sdb1
#label = Windows
#table = /dev/sdb


3. Use the command compact to skip memtest and start the system quickly.

To apply any modification to the boot loader it is necessary to run the command lilo.
# lilo


Configuring the system to multi user with session manager
Most of the time I use KDE, so I prefer start KDM it when the system goes up. To do that you have to change the default runlevel configuration in file /etc/initab to the option 4:
# 4 = X11 with KDM/GDM/XDM (session managers)
...
# Default runlevel. (Do not set to 0 or 6)
id:4:initdefault:

Problem:
After booting in runlevel 4 the computer showed an error with the sound card and didn't play any sound. This is because in runlevel 4 users don't belong the audio group, so you have to add your user to it.

# usermod -aG audio user_name

This problem can affect other resources, as scanners, printers, etc the solution should be adding the user to the appropriate group.

Network manager configuration
In this distribution KDE gets its own network manager, if you want to use it just changes permissions of rc.networkmanager:
# chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager

In case you prefer wicd, you have to install it from /extra/wicd folder in the Slackware installation DVD and change permission to /etc/rc.d/rc.wicd to 755 after installation.

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