From time to time (at least once a month) I get mail from someone who's
trying to install Slackware, but is getting errors like "Disk series A
not found" right when the installation phase begins. This is almost always
a downloading error, and is caused by missing index files. These files
(which have names like diska1, diska2, etc) are needed for "setup" to
recognize a directory full of packages as being a Slackware software set.
In fact, there should be one of these in *this directory* with the name diska1.
If it (or any of the other index files in the other software directories) are
missing, you can expect to run into some problems.
From the reports I've received, this problem is most commonly caused by
downloading the files with DOS-based web browsers (some of which can corrupt
binary files in other ways as well) or by using a wildcard of *.* when
downloading. In the DOS world, *.* is often used to specify "all files", but
in the UNIX world * is the proper wildcard to use to match everything.
This file can also be caused by bad CD-ROM mastering software. Apparently
burning a Slackware disc under Windows can cause the 'diska1' files to appear
to Linux as 'diska1.' instead. This extra trailing period also messes things
up. Using iso9660 instead of Joliet may help make an installable CD-ROM, but
this will cut off some long filenames. The way to make a correct CD-ROM image
is to master it under Linux using mkisofs and Rockridge extensions.
Hope this well-placed mini-FAQ helps some people. :^)
