If you are not familiar with Slitaz, it is a light weight Linux distribution. The iso is about 30 Mb but do not let that fool you, it is packed with features. Post installation there is a reasonable repository and the iso can also be customized.
Many people ask how I install Slitaz, and thus this post.
Install Slitaz
Download, burn, and boot the Slitaz .iso . Select ‘us’ as the default keyboard.
Once Slitaz has finished booting, start gparted from the menu and make a few partitions.
- Made a 5 Gb ext4 partition for ‘root’ .
- Make a separate 3 Gb ext4 partition for a separate home directory.
- Made a 512 Mb swap partition.
Start the installer, when given the option to format the partitions select no.
My partition scheme was:
root = /dev/sda1
home = /dev/sda2
swa = /dev/sdb3
When asked if you want to format the partition to ext3 answer no (this keeps ext4).
As the installer finishes, when asked, install grub on /dev/sda
Install and configure grub2
Exit the installer, shutdown, and boot a live CD. In this example I used Ubuntu 10.04 (i386).
We now need to copy ( “install” ) grub2 to slitaz and install grub2 to the MBR.
To do this I will use a chroot.
Obtain a root shell and run the following commands as root
sudo -i
# Set up a chroot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/home
mount –bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount –bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount –bind /sys /mnt/sys
#Copy the grub2 files
mkdir /mnt/etc/default
cp /etc/default/grub /mnt/etc/default/
# Side note : Edit /mnt/etc/default/grub and change “echo Debian” to “echo Slitaz” (without quotes)
cp -R /etc/grub.d /mnt/etc
cp /usr/bin/grub* /mnt/usr/bin
mv /mnt/usr/lib/grub /mnt/usr/lib/grub-legacy
cp -R /usr/lib/grub /mnt/usr/lib
cp /usr/sbin/grub* /usr/sbin/update-grub /usr/sbin/upgrade-from-grub-legacy /mnt/usr/sbin
cp /lib/libdevmapper.so.1.02.1 /lib/libselinux.so.1 /mnt/lib
# Update grub
chroot /mnt /bin/sh
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
Note: You will get error messages when running update-grub.
Reboot
Reboot.
Slitaz will appear to hang (hidden menu), let it sit, it will boot
Alternate – To show the grub menu, hold the shift key as it boots.
Enjoy Slitaz =)