Upgrading to Slackware -current

I do not use -current, but since Slackware 14.0 is just around the corner I need to test my SlackBuilds on it. So, I booted my Slackware64 13.37 DVD and did a direct netinstall of -current on my desktop PC. All went flawlessly and the system is very stable. It was more tricky to install slackware32 -current in a virtual machine, where I check how my SlackBuilds work on the 32bit architecture. I tried the netinstall approach, but the network somehow stops from time to time in the guest machine. Very, very annoying — especially when doing an installation.

So, I installed a very minimal Slackware32 13.37 — just the A, AP, L and N series. After a reboot, I uncommented a -current mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and tried to search LQ for a good way of doing the upgrade. After viewing several posts, I finally came across a small tutorial by AlienBob. So in the end I did the following for my particular case:

slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade glibc
slackpkg upgrade findutils pkgtools slackpkg tar xz
slackpkg update

The last update step is repetitive, but necessary if slackpkg was upgraded. Continue:

slackpkg install a ap l n
slackpkg upgrade-all

I unselected kernel-* at the upgrade-all step. Now get the kernel:

slackpkg download kernel

The new versions will be in /var/cache/packages/slackware/a.

Now install the -current kernel-* alongside the old one. The kernel source got downloaded, too. Navigate there:

cd /var/cache/packages/slackware/a

Only the kernel-* were there, so:

installpkg *.txz

Now edit and run LILO to have both versions of the kernel:

nano /etc/lilo.conf
lilo -v

REBOOT! It boots fine, so time to remove unneeded:

slackpkg clean-system

REBOOT again and install the rest of the system:

slackpkg install d e k t tcl x xap xfce

Edit again lilo.conf to remove the old kernel entry and run:

nano /etc/lilo.conf
lilo -v

That’s it!