Slax author's Blog (RSS)

Reintroducing cheatcode "from="

I didn't realize how important was this feature of Slax until I get many comments requesting it. What is it all about? When Slax starts, it searches for its boot device. A device is recognized as boot device if it contains a directory /slax/ and some .sb files inside. This way Slax can boot from any device, since it tries the search on all devices in given computer.

People sometimes want to run several distros from one device, and they complained they can't (for example) load Slax from /distros/slax7/ directory (while they have another distro in /distros/otherlinux/ as well). Now it is possible, simply pass following cheatcode (boot parameter) to Slax kernel commandline:
from=/distros/slax7/

This feature could be also used to speed up Slax loading if you have slow CD for example, you simply copy Slax data to your hard drive to c:\slax7\ directory and then boot from the CD and use cheatcode
from=slax7

How to use the cheatcode? (info for beginners): When Slax boots, you'll see a boot screen with logo and timer. You have actually 4 seconds to press Esc to cancel the timer and enter the boot menu. There, hit Tab. You'll see a commandline, so type the cheatcode at the end, don't forget to start with a blank character (space) as a separator.

Only the mentioned syntax is supported. In old Slax it was even possible to use from=/dev/sda1/slax/ but this is not supported at the moment since I don't think it would bring any advantage. If you really want to be sure to load Slax from a particular drive, then simply rename the directory to something unique, like /Slax007/ or such, and use from=/slax007/. It will work only if the given directory contains at least one compressed slax bundle (.sb)

Download test version (only TAR 64bit)

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