I write this from a barely configured system. I sincerely hope I don’t need to reinstall it, but we shall see. I wanted to document what happened, in case some other poor hacker had the same problem.

I wanted to install Slackware 12.2 on this newly rebuilt dual-core system. I hoped all would go well, but every machine has its own challenges. I got to the configuration part well enough, but it stopped displaying anything after it told me that it had to run fc-cache to update my fonts. This happened in the FONTCONFIG dialog. I thought, “Great, something I don’t even care about, and it locked up.” I started poking around, and actually discovered that the fc-cache ran fine, and it had proceeded to the boot disk part of the installation. This took hunting around in the
/usr/lib/setup and /mnt/var/log/setup directories and in the processes, but I found it! Let me digress by saying that I love vim! Anyways, I discovered that for some reason, running `rescan-scsi-bus -l` locked it up. I still don’t know why. I ran

# chmod -x /mnt/var/log/setup/setup.80.make-bootdisk

and this fixed the problem. Actually, it didn’t fix the problem, it just skipped that part of the installation. I figure as long as I have the dvd I have a boot disk. Good enough. I just wanted to get this down. I hope it benefits someone. I’ll have more later. I need meditation and rest.