No elilo after first installation

Machine: ASUS X555BA-DS94 Notebook
Processor : AMD Dual Core A9-9410 2.9GHz
Memory: 4GB DDR4
Graphics: AMD Radeon R5 Graphics

I was able to install Slackware64-14.2 on this machine once only. The first time everything went ok and I was able to choose the elilo installation option after I skipped the lilo option.
Unfortunately, the machine lost power at one point, after which the UEFI / BIOS did not
present any disk devices except for the DVD. So I decided to reinstall Slackware.
Attempted to do this a number of times but each time the elilo option is not presented after I skip the lilo option in setup.

Therefore when I reboot, the UEFI/ BIOS still does not present any devices to boot from except for the DVD device. I even repartitioned the HD as follows:
using cgdisk but cannot get elilo option to come up after the lili in setup.

EFI partition 512 MiB code =ef00
/ partition - 2GiB Code = 8300
swap = 4GiB Code = 8200
/home = 100GiB Code =8300
/usr = all the rest Code 8300

Please help

Are your sure your booting in efi mode and not csm mode? If your booting in efi mode /sys/firmware/efi/ should exist.

>>>colorpurple21859
>>>Are your sure your booting in efi mode and not csm mode? If your booting in efi mode /sys/firmware/efi/ should exist.

Is /sys/firmware a dynamic directory which is created at boot time? If so I would not be able to see it since machine cannot bootup.
As far as efi vs cms, if I try to bootup with Fastboot on and CSM off then machine just goes straight into BIOS setup screen.
If I try booting up with CSM enabled and fastboot disabled then machine simply displays a message stating that no bootup device found and to enter a boot device name and waits.

My question is how can I reinstall elilo so that the BIOS sees the harddrive as a bootup device?
Thanks.

What happens if you boot with both fastboot and csm disabled?
You should see /sys/firmware/efi/ when booted into the slackware dvd installer if it is in efi mode.

>>>colorpurple21859
>>>What happens if you boot with both fastboot and csm disabled?
>>>You should see /sys/firmware/efi/ when booted into the slackware dvd installer if it is in efi mode.

I'll try that tonight - thanks.

Another way: when asked, install lilo. I won't hurt, will just be ignored if not in csm mode (but won't prevent booting in UEFI mode if you can solve the UEFI issue), and at least will allow you to boot Slackware in csm mode.

>>>Didier Spaier
>>>Another way: when asked, install lilo. I won't hurt, will just be ignored if not in csm mode (but won't prevent booting in UEFI mode if >>>you can solve the UEFI issue), and at least will allow you to boot Slackware in csm mode.

I actually did that the on the second time I reinstalled just to see what would happen. Then rebooted many times, changing options each time - but machine either went straight into BIOS set up or asked for a bootup device.

Since this is a friend's laptop I ended up installing Ubuntu 17.04 just to get her going - (yes work intrudes on playtime ;-)
But will retry to install Slackware this weekend. Chose to have Ubuntu use entire disk, so my partitions will have been wiped out and the EFI partition will have been recreated. When I install Slackware I will first simply install over Ubuntu, then if that works I'll repartition disk. Thanks.

Attempted to install Slackware x64 in VirtualBox VM with EFI enabled in the VM settings for this install.

Similarly to the initial poster, the installer asks about getting elilo installed to use with EFI boot, but the installer instead goes straight to asking about network setup.
Elli does appear to have installed as a package, though not sure how to access, and post-install, I can only boot to the EFI boot menu...

Originally Posted by dkupka2 Similarly to the initial poster, the installer asks about getting elilo installed to use with EFI boot, but the installer instead goes straight to asking about network setup.

This is an indication that the elilo installer script silently failed before completing the elilo installation. I think that the file system on your EFI partition wasn't formatted as a vfat file system. Similar thing happen to be on real hardware a while back, see here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...7/#post5810474

In addition I was able to recreate the failed elilo installation that you got on a VM (VirtualBox). After setting up the VM and before running the installer I partitioned the virtual drive into 3 partitions; one for the EFI partition, a swap partition, and one for the root file system. I then purposely format the EFI drive with the ext2 file system and then started the installer. In the early part of the installation process, when the installer is setting the various file systems, it did detect and present the /dev/sda1 as the EFI partition, but identified it as having a VFAT file system. This is because the script check for the partition type to determine if it is a EFI partition and checks to see if it is formated. If it is not formatted the installer then formats it as vfat. It doesn't check for which file system it is formatted as just if it formated or not. If it is formatted, then it sets it as the efi partition to install elilo on.
When the elilo installation script runs, after you answer that you want to install it, it then check which file system is formatted on the EFI partition. If it finds that its not formatted as vfat, it then silently exist the script without installing the efi files and moves on to the next step in the install process, which apparently is the network setup routine.

Originally Posted by laprjns This is an indication that the elilo installer script silently failed before completing the elilo installation. I think that the file system on your EFI partition wasn't setup correctly. Similar thing happen to be on real hardware a while back, see here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...7/#post5810474 In addition I was able to recreate it on a VM (VirtualBox). After setting up the VM and before running the installer I partitioned the virtual drive into 3 partitions; one for the EFI partition, a swap partition, and one for the root file system. I then purposely format the EFI drive with the ext2 file system and then started the installer. In the early part of the installation process, when the installer is setting the various file systems, it did detect and present the /dev/sda1 as the EFI partition, but identified it as having a VFAT file system. This is because the script check for the partition type to determine if it is a EFI partition and checks to see if it is formated. If it is not formatted the installer then formats it as vfat. It doesn't check for which file system it is formatted as just if it formated or not. If it is formatted, then it sets it as the efi partition to install elilo on. When the elilo installation script runs, after you answer that you want to install it, it then check which file system is formatted on the EFI partition. If it finds that its not formatted as vfat, it then silently exist the script without installing the efi files and moves on to the next step in the install process, which apparently is the network setup routine.

I had /dev/sda1 set up as 100MB EFI partition, /dev/sda2 set up as a 17GB ext4 partition for root, and /dev/sda3 as a 3GB swap partition

The EFI partition I think I also formatted as ext4? So, I should instead try formatting it as ext2 and start installer.

Will try this and let you know, thanks!

Originally Posted by dkupka2 The EFI partition I think I also formatted as ext4? So, I should instead try formatting it as ext2 and start installer.

No! format it as vfat:
mkfs-msdos -F 32 /dev/sda1

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier No! format it as vfat: mkfs-msdos -F 32 /dev/sda1

Thank you - I was only responding to that bit regarding laprjns' post that included the statement:

"I then purposely format the EFI drive with the ext2 file system and then started the installer."

To be clear, the UEFI specification states( § 13.3.1.1 File System Format):

The EFI firmware must support the FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 variant of the EFI file system

So, using a FAT file system guarantees that a compliant firmware will be able to find the boot loader in the ESP.

Sorry if I confuse you. I purposely formatted the partition with the wrong file system to demonstrate that the installer script has a bug in it and thereby recreating the error that you got.

I intend to propose in some weeks changes in the installer so that it better handle this case (i.e. a partition tagged as ESP but hosting a non-FAT file system).

Meanwhile, my advice to users is to not only tag the partition as EFI System but also wipe any preexisting file system in it, then install a FAT file system there, all this before running setup.