Boot parameters in Slax

What are the boot parameters

Boot parameters (also known as cheatcodes) are used to affect the booting process of Slax. Some of them are common for all Linuxes, others are specific for Slax only. You can use them to disable desired kind of hardware detection, to start Slax from harddisk, to skip the login prompt and start GUI, etc.

How to use boot parameters

Reboot your computer and wait several seconds until a nice graphical Slax logo appears with a boot menu (it's there usually for less then 9 seconds). Choose your desired menu entry and hit Tab key, which will allow you to edit the command line. Write your desired boot argument at the end of command line.

List of boot parameters

acpi=off
nohotplug
nopcmcia
noagp

... disable specified hardware autodetection in the case of hangups. Your hardware won't be detected at all, you'll have to use "pcimodules" command after logging into Slax and you'll have to try to modprobe all needed modules from the list manually.

nodma

... disable DMA for all CD-ROMs and disks

noauto

... list harddisks in fstab with 'noauto', so you have to mount every disk manually in order to access it

nohd

... don't mount any harddisks at all

nocd

... don't mount any cdroms at all during the boot process. This may be useful if you have to wait very long time during Slax startup, when empty CDROMs keeps spinning for many minutes and don't return the NO MEDIA error immediately.

nosound

... mute sound instead of raising volume to 77%

from=/dev/hda1/Slax.iso
from=path/to/Slax.iso
from=/dev/hda1
from=path/to/Slax/

... load Slax data from different place instead of the boot device. First example will search for Slax.iso, only on hda1. Second example will search for 'path/to/Slax.iso' on all devices; the first device containing the path/file is used. Third example expects that the ISO is unpacked to hda1. Fourth example searches through all disks for a directory 'path/to/Slax' and expects content of unpacked ISO inthere.

passwd=somepass
passwd=ask

... set root's password to "somepass", or ask (with =ask) for a new password during the boot, before starting Slax (don't worry, the new password won't be shown at the login screen)

changes=/dev/device
changes=/dev/device/file.dat
changes=/path/
changes=/path/file.dat
changes=/dev/device/path/

... all changes you made in Slax are kept in memory until you reboot. But with this boot parameter, you tell Slax to use different device (or a file or directory) than the memory for storing changes. You can, for example, format your disk partition /dev/hda1 with some Linux filesystem (eg. xfs) and then use changes=/dev/hda1 to store all changes to that disk (it will be stored in 'changes' directory on that disk. This way you won't loose your changes after reboot. If you use a file name instead of device, and the file contains valid filesystem, Slax will mount it as a loop device and will store changes to it. Moreover if you don't specify the device where the file is stored, Slax will try to find it on all your partitions. If you use a directory, Slax will save changes to it (it will make a 'changes' subdirectory inthere). You don't even need a Linux filesystem on that disk, as the directory will be overlayed by posixovl. This way, you can save your changes even to VFAT or NTFS.

toram
copy2ram

... copy all files (all required and optional modules) to RAM. You'll need at least 320MB of RAM to do this and boot Slax properly. This will slow down the boot phase but it will speed up Slax!

load=module

... load optional modules from /optional/ directory on the CD. You can use full module name (module.lzm) or you can skip the extension

noload=module
noload=module[1];module[n]

... disable loading of any modules specified. This affects all the modules on Slax CD, including /base and /modules, so using noload=kde will disable loading of all modules with 'kde' in the name. It is useful with copy2ram cheatcode, because any un-used module is not copied to ram.

debug

... enable debug mode (and start bash several times during the boot) hit Ctrl+D to continue booting

autoexec=...
autoexec=startx
autoexec=xconf;startx
autoexec=xconf;startx;reboot

... execute specified command(s) instead of Slax login. In this example, skip Slax login prompt and automatically start XWindow system. Use semicolon (;) as command separator. Slax will not reboot automatically after the command(s) finish, so if you'd like to restart, specify 'reboot' or 'poweroff' as the last command. If you need to use spaces in the commandline, replace them by ~. For example, autoexec=echo~Shutting~power;poweroff will do just like that.