I've been doing some distro hopping lately. It's interesting to see what's out there.
Now I want to return to Slackware but when I do an install and set it up to boot from elilo, once the install is done and I reboot I get a grub prompt.
I can't figure out how to fix this. Is it something in the /boot directory or, hopefully not, something I need to change in the BIOS.
I have several entries in the BIOS for Slackware (probably since I bounced around so much). I've tried each one but I keep getting the grub prompt and of course I haven't installed grub yet. I do normally change to grub after an install. I just can't figure out how to get my system to boot Slackware.

Thanks in advance for any help I can get.

You need to use efibootmgr (as root) to see and edit the list of boot entries your UEFI has stored in nvram. If you have a well-behaved UEFI, and you put elilo at the head of the queue, it will boot that. If you have a bloody-minded UEFI like mine, you might need to remove the GRUB entry altogether.

You can also use F12 to get a boot menu.

The words I converted to italics make this sound like it is a UEFI installation, and none of the entries in NVRAM point to a valid location for the existing Slack installation. Do you have an ESP partition? If yes, what does output from efibootmgr -v tell you? Anything matching by UUID and/or LABEL to what currently exists? What does tree /boot/efi/ show? Were you using MBR previously and as a follow-up to all the bouncing switched to using UEFI?

A grub prompt typically results because Grub can't find a grub.cfg file, but often that's because it isn't setup to enable loading the filesystem that contains grub.cfg. If you have a backup of an old one you can read, you may be able to run the commands it contains from the grub> prompt, with any appropriate editing required as a consequence of changed partition/filesystem layout, to get booted using Grub.

Thanks for your replies.
I've tried a couple of things of note: I deleted the efi partition and recreated it since Slackware was telling me I don't have a valid efi partition. Then I tried to install Slackware and a couple of things aren't right.

1) When asked if I wanted to install lilo I replied no. I was never asked about installing elilo. I seem to remember this from the past, I could be wrong or maybe something has changed.

2) When I look in the /boot/efi directory it's empty as is /boot/grub.

I have kernels in /boot and I also have an efi-86_64.efi file. I'm not sure if there's an easy fix from there. I'm not sure what is supposed to go where.

Also of note: I can install other distros. I don't know what could be causing this.

I'm hoping I'm not stuck for good on this.

Check posts #11 #12 #15 here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...3/#post6479777

Thanks Petri.

I've seen that thread and even tried #9. No luck it says I don't have a valid efi partition.

Did you check whether directory /sys/firmware/efi exists?

Yes it does.

Did you set the partition code EF00?

Yes.

I want to thank everyone for their help on this. I do have to start working so I need an OS right now.
I've installed debian and it installed and booted. For now I'm running again.

I'll give this another shot some day but for now I can't spend anymore time on this.

Thanks again everyone for your help.

Well I've returned to Slackware.

I never did figure this out. Other distros would install and boot but sometimes complained that there was another entry in the efi partition. I just forced the install and it always worked.

My fix was one I've been dreading to try for several years. I scrubbed the drive. Deleted all the partitions and redid everything.

Thankfully all of my backups got me back up and running.

BTW I can't believe how much faster Slackware is to install than ALL of the other distros I've tried. Strange since it's ISO is the largest of the bunch and I install everything.

I'm super pumped to be back and I'm marking this as solved even though I didn't find an easy fix.