Slackware comes with a handy tool to create a bootable USB stick containing the Slackware installer and packages. I thought it would be nice to have one containing both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Slackware. With a little bit of work, this can be done.

To do this yourself, you’ll need local copies of the Slackware and Slackware64 trees, plus a blank USB stick (or one that you don’t mind erasing). A 4GiB stick is large enough to hold both architectures of Slackware 13.37, minus the source code and a couple of other bits and bobs. All of the commands below should be run as root.

For the rest of this guide, I’m going to assume that you have the Slackware and Slackware64 trees mounted under /mnt, in the directories slackware-13.37 and slackware64-13.37 respectively. You can use a location other than /mnt if you wish, but the directory names must be the same for this to work. You could use the Slackware DVDs, or rsync the trees from a Slackware mirror, but personally I loopback-mounted the ISO images like so:

mkdir -p /mnt/{slackware{,64}-13.37}
mount -o loop slackware-13.37-install-dvd.iso /mnt/slackware-13.37
mount -o loop slackware64-13.37-install-dvd.iso /mnt/slackware64-13.37

Next, we’ll use the bundled tool to create a Slackware (32-bit) bootable USB stick:

sh /mnt/slackware-13.37/usb-and-pxe-installers/usbimg2disk.sh -f -o /dev/sdb -s /mnt/slackware-13.37

Replace /dev/sdb with the device name of your USB stick. The script will display some information relating to this device and give you a chance to back out if you chose the wrong one. Be very careful here, or you could end up accidentally formatting a hard disk.

Once the script has finished, the next step is to copy the kernel, initrd and packages from the Slackware64 tree to your USB stick. First, mount the USB stick under /mnt/usb and copy across the 64-bit kernel.

mkdir -p /mnt/usb
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
cp -a /mnt/slackware64-13.37/kernels/huge.s/bzImage /mnt/usb/syslinux/huge64.s

I call this huge64.s so that it doesn’t overwrite the 32-bit huge.s kernel already on the USB stick.

The initrd needs to be modified slightly to make the Slackware installer automatically mounts the USB stick and uses it as the default installation source. The following commands will extract the Slackware64 initrd.img, make the appropriate changes, and put the rebuilt copy onto your USB stick:

mkdir -p /tmp/initrd
cd /tmp/initrd
gunzip -cd /mnt/slackware64-13.37/isolinux/initrd.img | cpio -i -d -H newc --no-absolute-filenames
mkdir usbinstall
echo "mount -t vfat -o ro,shortname=mixed \$(/sbin/blkid -t LABEL=USBSLACKINS | cut -f1 -d:) /usbinstall 1>/dev/null 2&1" >> etc/rc.d/rc.S
sed -i -e 's# --menu# --default-item 6 --menu#' usr/lib/setup/SeTmedia
sed -i -e "s# 2> \$TMP/sourcedir# /usbinstall/slackware64-13.37/slackware64 2> \$TMP/sourcedir#" usr/lib/setup/INSdir
FIXF=$(find usr/lib/setup -name SeTp*media)
sed -i -e 's# --menu# --default-item 3 --menu#' $FIXF
chmod 0755 /tmp/initrd
find . |cpio -o -H newc |gzip > /mnt/usb/syslinux/initrd64.img
rm -rf /tmp/initrd

(This is heavily based on the usbimg2disk.sh script itself, so thanks go to Eric Hameleers.)

Next, copy the Slackware64 tree on to your USB stick, with a few exclusions to save space:

rsync -rpthDL --delete --exclude=source --exclude=extra/aspell-word-lists --exclude=isolinux --exclude=usb-and-pxe-installers --exclude=pasture /mnt/slackware64-13.37 /mnt/usb

Add the following lines to /mnt/usb/syslinux/syslinux.cfg to allow booting the 64-bit kernel and initrd:

label huge64.s
  kernel huge64.s
  append initrd=initrd64.img load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 SLACK_KERNEL=huge.s

Finally, unmount the USB stick and do some tidying up:

umount /mnt/{slackware{,64}-13.37,usb}
rmdir /mnt/{slackware{,64}-13.37,usb}

You should now be able to boot from your USB stick. At the syslinux boot prompt, either hit enter for the 32-bit installer, or enter huge64.s for the 64-bit installer. If you wish, you can edit the f2.txt and message.txt files in the syslinux directory to remind you of this.

If you’re a Slackware user, then you are probably aware of SlackBuilds.org. As the name suggests, it is a repository for SlackBuild scripts, which automate the process of compiling software from source and creating a Slackware package from the resulting binaries.

I regularly find myself searching this site for new software to install on my Slackware system, so I decided to create a search plugin for Firefox to speed up the process. Here’s what I came up with:

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
    <ShortName>SlackBuilds.org</ShortName>
    <Description>SlackBuilds.org Search</Description>
    <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
    <Image width="16" height="16">data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODdhEAAQALMPAAAAAIAAAACAAICAAAAAgIAAgACAgMDAwICAgP8AAAD/AP//AAAA//8A/wD//////yH5BAEAAAEALAAAAAAQABAAAwRQMMhJqw0g35r7nsARAp+ULVoJLGz4iUecXtlzPI9rwbg9UyLcLaej1Gy4DKKCWAwASOKByUL0DqjFUtJkDXorlnYyGLQ61e3kgBggYm11IAIAOw==</Image>
    <Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.slackbuilds.org/result/">
        <Param name="search" value="{searchTerms}"/>
        <Param name="sv" value="13.37"/>
    </Url>
    <SearchForm>http://www.slackbuilds.org/</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

If you’d like to use this yourself, simply copy the code above into a file (say slackbuilds.xml) and place this in the ~/.mozilla/firefox/p6mu31gg.default/searchplugins directory. (Your path will contain something other than p6mu31gg.default, and there may not be a searchplugins directory already, in which case you can just create it.) Restart Firefox, and you should now be able to search SlackBuilds.org directly from the search box in the top-right corner. You’ll need to select the SlackBuilds.org plugin by clicking on the down arrow to the left of the search box. It’s even got a cute little Tux logo!