Slax linux ��������� ����������

What is Slax

Slax is a Live operating system based on Linux. Live means it runs from an external media without any need for permanent installation. Slax boots from USB mass storage devices such as Flash Drive keys as well as from regular hard drives and CD/DVD discs. Simply plug your device in and boot from it. Entire Slax operating system resides in a single directory /slax/ on your device, making it easier to organize with your other data.

Slax provides FluxBox window manager already preconfigured for the most common tasks. Included is a Web browser chromium , Terminal emulator xterm and simple text editor leafpad and calculator qalculate . You can put Slax on wide range of different filesystems, including EXT (ext2,ext3,ext4), btrfs, and even FAT and NTFS.

When Slax is started from a read-only media such as CD/DVD, it keeps all system modifications in memory only, and all the modifications are lost when you reboot. On the other hand, if you run Slax from a writable device such as USB Flash Drive, it can store all changes there, so all your configurations and modifications are restored next time you boot, even if it is on a different computer. This feature is known as Persistent Changes and you can read more about it in a separate chapter.

Choosing optimal Slax architecture (32bit or 64bit)

You probably noticed that Slax is available for 32bit and 64bit processor architectures. The 32bit version is designed to run on very old computers (as old as Intel 686; that dates back to 1995). It will run properly on brand new computers too, but it is somehow bigger download. Furthermore it has a limitation that single application can address only 4GB of RAM. On the other hand, the 64bit version is smaller, does not have such limitation, and it will run on most computers available nowadays. So in general, if you plan to use Slax on very old archaic computers, then choose 32bit. If your intention is to use Slax on machine made in this century, you better go for 64bit. And if you don’t know what your target hardware is, go for 64bit too, because the chance you’ll ever see a 32bit computer nowadays is almost zero.

System requirements to run Slax

Slax 32bit version	Slax 64bit version
Processor:	i686 or newer CPU, all Intel processors and AMD processors will work	An x86_64 CPU, like AMD Athlon 64, Opteron, Sempron, Intel Core 2/i3/i5/i7, and others
Memory:	128 MB of RAM for desktop 512 MB of RAM to run Web browser	128 MB of RAM for desktop 512 MB of RAM to run Web browser
Peripherals:	CD or USB drive to boot from	CD or USB drive to boot from
Optionally:	network card, sound card	network card, sound card

Source code and license of Slax

Slax is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation. Slax is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; use at your own risk. The GNU GPL license requires that all source codes are published so others could reuse it, modify or learn from it. You can trust me, this is very good idea — without it, there would be no Slax at all. Slax itself shares most of code with Debian, whose source code is as well publicly available.

Источник

Slax on CD/DVD

If you plan to run Slax from a CD or DVD disc then you need to download Slax as an ISO file. In fact, the ISO file is a complete image of a CD, so what you need to do is to burn it to a CD/DVD media. Actually it doesn’t matter if you choose CD or DVD, both will just work. The most important part is that you can’t burn it as a regular file. That wouldn’t work. Instead, you have to burn it as a disc image. In Windows 7 for example, just right-click the ISO file and select Burn disc image from the context menu. On older windowses, you’ll need some special software for the task, for example you can try Free ISO Burner. When done, put Slax CD/DVD disc to your CD/DVD drive and reboot. You may need to press some key to show a boot menu while your computer starts and select to boot from CD/DVD. That magic key which shows you the boot menu is usually F11 , F9 or Esc , consult your BIOS documentation or watch onscreen instructions when your computer reboots to make sure.

Install Slax on hard disk or USB flash drive

In order to run Slax from hard drive or from an USB device, you need to copy the contents of the ISO file directly to your disk’s root. There is just one folder called /slax/ , which needs to be copied. For example Windows 8.1 will simply open the ISO file for you as like if it was a directory. You may need some special software for this task if your operating system can’t access the contents of the ISO file. Alternatively, you can burn the ISO file to a CD/DVD disc and then copy it from there. You should end up with /slax/ folder on your disk, for example like E:\slax\ . It is required that your disk uses msdos partition scheme (use MBR, not GPT). Furthermore, it needs to be formatted, FAT32 or ext4 is recommended.

When done, one more step is required in order to make the drive bootable: navigate to /slax/boot/ directory on your USB device or hard disk and locate bootinst.bat file there (Linux users look for bootinst.sh ). Just run it by double clicking, it will make all the necessary changes to your device’s master boot record so your computer’s BIOS could actually understand how to boot Slax from your disk. Keep in mind that the boot installer does not support multiboot, so only Slax will be bootable from the given drive.

Next follow the same procedure like if you were booting from CD — reboot your computer and choose to boot from the USB drive or hard disk in your computer’s boot menu. Again, you may need to consult your BIOS documentation to find out how to boot an operating system on your computer from your desired device.

Slax boot options

Before Slax itself starts loading, you can see a big clover image in the middle of your screen. This is the boot logo. It is displayed for a short while, and you have exactly four seconds to press Esc key during that time in order to fine tune the way how Slax is going to boot. Pressing Esc will invoke a simple boot menu like the following:

You may use this menu to copy Slax data to RAM during startup or to run Slax in «fresh start» mode, in case if your persistent changes are broken. Use arrow keys to navigate and Enter key to select any option.

Persistent changes

When running from a read-only media such as CD/DVD, Slax stores all system changes in memory only and you lose them when you reboot. If you start Slax from a writable media, such as USB drive, then all the changes you make to the operating system itself are saved and restored next time you boot. If your device uses FAT filesystem, which is most common on USB flash drives, then all file modifications to Slax itself are saved into a special file changes.dat , which is created on your boot device in /slax/changes/ directory, and grows automatically in size up to 4GB. If your boot device uses a native Linux filesystem such as ext4, then the changed files are saved natively to /slax/changes/ directory without any need for intermediate changes.dat file. If you, for any reason, do not like persistent changes, simply select a different option in the boot menu and your Slax will start using the default ‘fresh’ configuration and won’t save any modifications. It may be useful also in cases you’d like to test something system-wide, since you can always revert to the default state by simple reboot (in case things screw up).

The file changes.dat is designed to work even on FAT filesystems, which are commonly used on most USB flash drives. Unfortunately FAT is limited to 4GB file size; for that reason, persistent changes can’t grow more. In case you need to save more, please format your storage drive with some Linux filesystem such as EXT4 or BTRFS and install Slax to it. Slax will be able to save changes natively and will be limited only by the actual capacity of your device. Persistent Changes functionality does not (of course) affect files on hard drives in your computer. If you modify these files, they will always be modified regardless of your persistent changes settings.

Shutting down Slax safely

When Slax is running, it reads system data from the device it booted from. If you’re using Persistent Changes then Slax even writes data to your boot device. Unplugging or ejecting it would make the operating system crash. Due to that, you can unplug the boot device only after your computer is switched off or reboots to other operating system. Similarly, if you access your computer’s hard drives while running Slax, those will stay mounted and will be marked as ‘in use’. Be sure to always shutdown Slax properly, either from the shutdown menu or using poweroff or reboot commands, and always wait until the system ends.

Running Slax from memory

There may be situations though when you need to unplug the boot device as soon as possible while keeping Slax running. This is indeed possible; it requires your computer to load (copy) all Slax data to RAM memory during startup, so it is accessible even after your boot device is no longer plugged in. In order to put this «Copy to RAM» feature into action, make sure to start Slax with this boot option in boot menu. The time needed to start Slax will increase, since it will need to copy the entire /slax directory from CD or USB to your computer’s memory, but then it will run Slax from there, letting you disconnect your boot device. Your computer will need at least 512 MB of RAM to hold all Slax data while still having enough free RAM for the operating system itself. Remember that even if you run Slax from memory, you have to properly shut it down when needed in order to safely unmount your hard drives (if any).

Cheatcodes for Slax

Boot parameters (also known as cheatcodes) are used to affect the boot process of Slax. Some of them are common for all Linuxes, others are specific for Slax only. You can use them to disable desired kind of hardware detection, to start Slax from hard drive, etc. To use cheatcodes, press Esc key to activate boot menu during Slax startup as usual, and when you see the boot menu, press Tab . A command line will appear at the bottom of the screen, which you can edit or add new boot parameters at the end:

Cheatcode	Meaning	Example
from=	Load Slax data from specified directory or even from an ISO file	from=/slax7/ from=/Downloads/slax.iso from=http://domain.com/slax.iso
noload=	Disable loading of particular .sb modules specify as regular expression	noload=04-apps noload=apps|chromium noload=04|05
nosound	Mute sound on startup	nosound
toram	Activate Copy to RAM feature	slax.flags=toram
perch	Activate Persistent Changes feature	slax.flags=toram,perch
text	Disable starting of X and stay in textmode console only	text
debug	Enable Slax startup debugging	debug

Separate commands by space. See manual pages man bootparam for more cheatcodes common for all Linuxes.

Источник

Customize Slax

Even if Slax is running from a read-only media such as CD/DVD, it still provides fully writable root filesystem (with changes stored in memory), allowing you to install additional software from online repository or other sources. Unless you are using Presistent changes, everything you install is kept in memory only and is lost after you reboot. The tools to add software to Slax as well as tools to make the changes permanent are described below.

Adding software with apt

Slax fully supports apt command, which is a powerful command-line tool suitable for tasks such as installation of new software packages or upgrading of existing ones. For example, in order to install vlc video player, simply execute apt install vlc and you are all set up, Slax will download the requested package including all libraries and other dependencies which are necessary to run it. If you are unsure what package name to install, you can search using apt search your_keyword . Keep in mind that apt will automatically download its database of available packages when you run it for the first time. If your system is continuously running for several days, you may need to run apt update manually from time to time to ensure the database is up to date.

Adding software manually

If you prefer to add software to Slax manually, you can do so by downloading and compiling source codes from the internet. Just remember that in order to be able to compile source codes in Slax, you will need to apt install build-essential , which provides gcc compiler, make, and other tools necessary for that task. If you are downloading sources from github using git clone , you may also need to apt install git .

Making your changes permanent

If you are running Slax from a writable media, your changes are stored permanenly and there is no need for any further steps. However, if your are running Slax from a read-only media such as CD/DVD, or if you selected to disable Persistent changes feature during boot, there is still a way to save your changes by creating a module. At any point, when you have your desired applications installed and configured, use savechanges command to save all modifications made to the current system into a module. The command requires one parameter, which is a path to file where the changes will be saved. So for example, use savechanges /tmp/mychanges.sb . All modifications you made to the system will be stored, except of some predefined files and directories such as temporary files, caches, and so on.

Once your changes are stored in a module, all you need is to include this module in your Slax and it will be automatically activated during boot. Copy the .sb module to /slax/modules/ directory and reboot. If you are running Slax from a writable media such as USB drive, you can copy the module directly to /run/initramfs/memory/data/slax/modules/ , which is already mapped to your USB disk. If you are running Slax from a read-only media such as CD/DVD, you may need to re-generate the ISO image by using genslaxiso command.

If you wish to examine the contents of your module or modify files in it, you can use two commands available in Slax: sb2dir to convert your module into a directory, and then dir2sb to convert it back into a .sb file. Important thing to keep in mind is that a module converted into a directory is stored in memory (technically the directory is overmounted with tmpfs), so you may find it impossible to remove that directory with rmdir, even if empty (you will get EBUSY error). Use rmsbdir command to remove the directory created by sb2dir.

Note that these commands worked a bit differently in older Slax versions, so make sure you are using Slax 9.6.4 or newer.

Activating modules on the fly

If you have a Slax module (.sb) and you wish to activate it while running Slax, without rebooting, you can use slax activate command. Similarly, you can deactivate any module with slax deactivate . However, if any of the files from your module are open or used, deactivation will not be possible, so make sure to kill all processes which may use the files from your module before you attempt to deactivate it.

Источник