https://gslewis.id.au My assorted notes on Slackware and Linux in general. en-AU Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:25:40 +1100 https://gslewis.id.au/img/favicon-48.png https://gslewis.id.au 48 48 https://gslewis.id.au/tagfiles.html https://gslewis.id.au/tagfiles.html Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +1100 What are Slackware tagfiles? What purpose do they serve these days? Essentially tagfiles provide a list of all packages in a Slackware package series (a, ap, d, e, etc) and the installation priority (add, skip, recommended or optional) of each package. Tagfiles are used internally by the Slackware installer to manage the various prompting modes. User-made tagfiles can also be used to customise the installation. https://gslewis.id.au/qemu.html https://gslewis.id.au/qemu.html Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +1100 This is my basic guide for installing Slackware-current (x86_64) in a virtual environment using plain QEMU, covering various installation methods. I am using QEMU 10.1.2 (released October 2025) with the default user networking (SLIRP) and the default legacy BIOS. https://gslewis.id.au/ansible.html https://gslewis.id.au/ansible.html Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +1000 These are my notes on how to install the latest (or at least, more recent) Ansible on Slackware-current, as of September 2025. The SlackBuilds for the ansible and ansible-core packages still target Slackware-15.0 so a lot of the python3 dependencies are now included in Slackware-current. https://gslewis.id.au/raid.html https://gslewis.id.au/raid.html Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +1000 Every few years I have to mess with software RAID again by which time I have forgotten everything I had learnt so herein lies various notes about how to do the bare minimum of RAID "stuff" that I need. https://gslewis.id.au/package_sizes.html https://gslewis.id.au/package_sizes.html Tue, 03 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +1000 The Slackware repository includes the PACKAGES.TXT file which lists in alphabetic order all the packages in the distribution, their package set, description, and compressed and uncompressed sizes. By examining the "PACKAGE SIZE (uncompressed)" value we can get an idea of how much space the installed packages will use. https://gslewis.id.au/tagfiles_copy.html https://gslewis.id.au/tagfiles_copy.html Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 +1000 When working with Slackware tagfiles, you generally want to create a copy of just the tagfiles, make your modifications and then direct the installer to use your copy to determine which packages to install. This article looks at the various ways to copy the tagfiles from a local or remote Slackware repository. https://gslewis.id.au/eeepc.html https://gslewis.id.au/eeepc.html Thu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +1000 The Asus Eee PC 701 is one of the original netbook computers, released in 2007. Can you install and run Slackware Linux on the Eee PC 701 as of 2025? Yes, it can be done. Does it make sense? Not really, but that’s fine. Some of the material presented here might be useful for installing on other 32-bit hardware or on space-constrained systems. https://gslewis.id.au/bash_arrays.html https://gslewis.id.au/bash_arrays.html Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +1100 I imagine most people who have tried more than once to use arrays in bash have written up some syntax notes to refer back to when they inevitably forget how to use them. These are mine.