libcap is a library for getting and setting POSIX.1e (formerly POSIX 6) draft 15 capabilities. libcap v2 implements support for filesystem capabilities; however, the kernel shipped with Slackware 12.1 does not support this. # grep CAPABILITIES /boot/config CONFIG_SECURITY_CAPABILITIES=y # CONFIG_SECURITY_FILE_CAPABILITIES is not set To enable this support, recompile the kernel with this option set: Security options ---> Enable different security models Default Linux Capabilities File POSIX Capabilities (EXPERIMENTAL) Even if you don't use this, the actual lib should still be compatible with libcap v1 in the 12.0 repo. If, however, this happens to not actually be the case, the SlackBuild there should still work fine on 12.1. Additional URL pointers (besides the project homepage): POSIX file capabilities: Parceling the power of root by Serge E. Hallyn http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-posixcap.html?ca=dgr-lnxw06LinuxPOSIX Using Capabilities by Olaf Kirch http://www.lst.de/~okir/blackhats/node125.html POSIX 1e and 2c drafts: http://wt.xpilot.org/publications/posix.1e/download.html