I'm aware this is a corner case and there may not be a solution, but maybe someone here can shed some light on this problem. I have an install of a slackware system on an external usb disk. Because of my hardware, this computer has some special requirements:

1. Since this is apple hardware, the disk needs to be partitioned with a GUID partition table. The slackware installer would not install to such a disk, but I could install to a spare old hard disk I had and copy everything back to this GPT disk.
2. Boot must be via EFI, so there is no BIOS.
3. For the graphic card to work, I need kernel >= 3.2 (there was some problem with radeon kms in older kernels).

So: I have installed the system. I have compiled a new kernel, starting from the configuration of the kernel that was installed by default. I can boot it with the "old" kernel when I boot off the CD and then let the CD boot into the root on the hard disk. But I cannot boot off the external disk directly. When grub2 has loaded the kernel and the initrd, nothing happens, the screen remains blank. I assume this must be some missing option in the kernel configuration - I have other linux distributions on the same hard disk that boot just fine, it's just slackware that's giving problems. But I have no clue where to start and which additional options to set. Does anybody have an idea what slackware needs to boot in these circumstances?

Thanks for your patience

pindar

Which version of Slackware? I've installed 13.37 to GUID disk successfully (even a huge one with 60 partitions that caused Ubuntu to fail).

For the display issue, maybe the kernel needs to be started in frame buffer mode?

Sorry, but I have zero experience with Apple Hardware, so the best I can offer is speculation on possibilities.

There is an old thread that addresses this issue. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...13-1-a-811426/
The kernel in slackware-current is 3.2.7. If you feel you really need a kernel >=3.2 then work with slackware-current using the huge kernel at first. You can switch to the generic kernel with an initrd or a custom kernel later on.
Troubleshooting Slackware is best done using the release kernels. Using the config for the 2.6.37.6 kernel as a starting point for your custom build is problematic.
If you are using a generic kernel with an initrd, then you will need support for USB devices in the initrd.

I had the blank screen issue also and found out the machine was actually booting but the frame buffer for the nVidia card was set incorrectly, ssh'd to the box from another machine, installed the nVidia proprietary drivers and voila no more blank screen. you can also try to login without screen

login: root
password: <whatever your pass is>
startx

see if it boots to desktop, you will need to address the video issue first thing

what does the grub entry look like? if you could post this and what video the mac has might help us to help you

Rasta420