Slax is now installed and its booting into the Linux ext2 filesystem on my usb stick. It boots up into a root user account which I will change later. The first thing I see the need for is wireless networking.

  The slax linux kernel provides the rt73 module thats required to wake up my wireless usb dongle with its Ralink chipset. 

  If I type iwconfig I can see that the wlan0 device is there using Linux wireless extensions. Your device may get a different name. It also means that by the presence of iwconfig that slax has the wireless-tools package installed. My router is set up to use wpa2 encryption so I need to install wpa_supplicant and make an /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file in order to connect to my router's wireless access point.

  What now? The first thing I had to do was get online without using wireless to download the necessary applications. I simply bypassed the router and hooked my cable modem directly into the computer via ethernet. This is ok for awhile but I do need my wireless! It was also necessary to figure out how to install wpa_supplicant as a slax module.