[SOLVED] UEFI installation problem

Hi Nille,

I've only tried Slackware64-current (up to date), as I thought that would have all the latest updates. Its also what I'm running on my desktop, with Eric's Plasma5.

I'll give liveslack a try and see what happens, but it won't be until this evening at the very earliest, and more likely, tomorrow. I may also try compiling my own kernel for the installer and see if that helps!

Thanks for the pointers!

--
Pete

Originally Posted by pchristy pci=noapic didn't work either! I've no real experience with grub. On the rare occasions I have used it, I've found it overly complex and difficult to eliminate once installed. Is there a guide to making a Slackware pendrive installer based on grub anywhere?

You can use the grub image and boot elements that are included in slackware64-current: slackware64-current comes with a EFI/BOOT directory and so is itself EFI bootable, and it uses grub to do so (slackware64current/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi is a grub EFI binary). First make your EFI system partition on your stick, VFAT formatted, encompassing the whole stick as a single partition and mount it. Then copy the whole of slackware64-current/* onto that partition.

However you will need a big stick to do that. A more refined approach is to prepare an EFI System Partition and a separate linux data partition in the way I indicated earlier, then copy slackware64-current/EFI/BOOT onto the EFI partition's mount point so that it appears as /EFI/BOOT on that partition (that is, it is a valid boot partition). grub-embedded.cfg (used to make the grub EFI binary) expects to find a file /kernels/huge.s/bzImage on the partition to calculate its root directory, so you also need to copy slackware64/kernels/huge.s/bzImage onto the EFI system partition so that it appears as /kernels/huge.s/bzImage. In addition, the supplied grub.cfg expects to find its initrd in /isolinux/initrd.img, so copy slackware64-current/isolinux/initrd.img as /isolinux/initrd.img on the partition. You can delete /EFI/BOOT/huge.s and /EFI/BOOT/initrd.img as they are not needed (their presence appears to be over-enthusiasm on the part of the slackware maintainer - as mentioned above, grub in fact looks for /kernels/huge.s/bzImage and /isolinux/initrd.img). Having done all that, you can then copy slackware64-current/slackware64 onto the linux data partition's mount point.

OK, I'm going to try liveslack first, as that appears to use grub anyway, and see if that works. If it doesn't, then the problem isn't grub vs elilo. Next step will be to try rolling my own huge.s kernel and see if there's anything in the configuration of that that might help.

Thanks to all for your input. I have to go out shortly, and will be out nearly all day. Tomorrow I have family visiting, so my time is somewhat restricted for the next couple of days. Don't think that because I'm not posting here, I've gone inactive! As soon as I've tried anything, I'll post the results!

--
Pete

"""To write the ISO image to a USB stick use a command such as this (replace
/dev/sdX with the device name for your USB stick):

dd if=/tmp/slackware-dvd.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=1M
"""

From the README.TXT in the isolinux directory

Originally Posted by pchristy OK, I'm going to try liveslack first, as that appears to use grub anyway, and see if that works. If it doesn't, then the problem isn't grub vs elilo. Next step will be to try rolling my own huge.s kernel and see if there's anything in the configuration of that that might help.

Each to their own. When something which should work doesn't, I operate on the basis that simplest is best. It doesn't get much simpler than creating a partition on a stick/drive, marking it of type EF00, formatting it VFAT and copying your grub or elilo boot files onto it (and in particular your /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI file with associated configuration file, kernel image and initrd). It is guaranteed to be EFI compliant without futzing around with ISO images, and eliminates one possible source of failure.

However, from your latest findings I agree it might well be something in the default slackware kernel that your system doesn't like and you may have to end up compiling a custom kernel.

pchristy: More recent Linux distros or Linux based utilities *do* load and run whereas older ones don't. It doesn't appear to be a case of elilo vs grub, though it may be. (For example Mageia 6 (grub based) doesn't load, whereas Mageia 7 does.)

Nille_kungen: I don't know anything about Mageia but wikipedia told me that Mageia 6 comes with kernel 4.9.35 and 6.1 comes with kernel 4.14.70 while Mageia 7 seems to use kernel 4.20.

If you consider building your own kernel best bet seems to go for a 4.20 version, as current -with 4.19- doesn't seem to work. I have had times with new hardware that a newer kernel than offered in Slackware was needed to get it all going. I think the grub/elilo difference is a red herring.

OK, at last I'm getting somewhere! I've just tried liveslack, at Nille's suggestion, and that boots perfectly! It looks as if it is an elilo issue after all!

Next step is to try and produce a bootable install usb using grub rather than elilo.

ChrisVV has given me some pointers for this, but it will be tomorrow before I get chance to give it a go!

Thanks all for your help and support!

--
Pete

Still no joy! I tried creating a usb install drive as described by ChrisVV and it still hangs in exactly the same way! I'm really beginning to tear my hair out now!

The liveslack install seems to have an extra 1MB fat16 partition as the first partition. It is marked as bios boot partition, with a type of "bios_grub" according to gparted. Gparted reports 20KB used - which could just be the file system, as there appears to be nothing in there!

Since liveslak works, I tried using the same iso2usb script to create a Slackware install disk, but the script appears to be hard-wired to liveslak and didn't work.

I had hoped that by now Pat or Eric would have jumped in with some comments or advice. I've emailed Pat, but no reply. Perhaps I'll try Eric next as I'm now completely out of ideas!

--
Pete

Digging around in my junk drawer, I found a USB DVD drive, so I downloaded Eric's -current.iso.

That crashed and burned as well!

--
Pete

Finally! Many thanks to Eric (AlienBob) - I've finally got Slackware installed! Still a lot of configuring to do, but it is up and running.

Basically, I had to install LiveSlack onto the hard drive. It took forever to install, but once done, I had a bootable slackware environment. One or two things are not quite where I expected them to be - presumably because of space restrictions for "live", but at least its up and running. Now I can get on with configuring and sorting out my applications.

I don't know what the significant difference is between liveslack's way of booting and Slackware's, but liveslack works on my system, where the classic slackware installer doesn't. This is something Slackware is going to have to address in the near future, I think! If you can't load it on to new hardware, that would seem to be a showstopper for 15!

Anyway, thanks to all for your help and support, and particularly to Eric for offering a solution!

Cheers,

--
Pete

Hi PCHRISTY,

I had to do that in order to install Slackware on an old iMac (theses iMacs has old EFI and it's a pain in the ...). I had the same issue, stucked in grub.
http://www.playwithtransistors.com/i...efi-boot-stick

Even if you managed to install your system, you should try to create this USB in case of future problem, it's a much more easier and faster method for reinstalling.
Let me know if it works for you.

Bye !

Apologies for the delayed reply - I've been pretty busy the last few days!

Huckansawyer: Finally got round to trying your suggestion, but no - it doesn't work! It does exactly the same as all the others, hanging immediately after the initrd is loaded.

So far none of the normal Slackware install methods will work on this machine. The only one that has worked is to load Eric's LiveSlak, install it to the HD, then update to -current with slackpkg+.

I don't know what Eric has done that is different to the standard Slackware installer, but his works, the standard one doesn't!

I do hope this gets addresses before 15 is released.....!

--
Pete

Hello there, I've just bought new laptop (14" Clevo from Tuxedocomputers.com) with NVME disk. And because I use Slackware many many years, I cleared the disk removing very modern looking but simply working Tuxedocomputer's Budgie and tried to install Slackware-current :-)

I created USB stick (dd iso to flashdisk) and booted up. It booted without problem so I regularly installed the system. I leave out now some bad decisions I did and two reinstalls :-) At long last I ended up with installed system but no record in EFI bootloader...

Maybe next first lines can help Patrick to update EFI install procedures?

I use GPT on disk and created first partition on the disk as EFI partition - 512G, type 1 (EFI system). Next partitions was standard linux partitions.

Slackware install scripts found EFI partition, found that it is empty and asked me if I want to initialize it. I agreed. I chose to install elilo and installer asked me some details and all seemed running okay. So installation finished and i rebooted the machine.

Well, I thought it was too simple. So I wasn't very surprised that I found nothing to boot :-) So I booted from usb stick again and choose to boot installed system (using huge kernel).

Later I found that EFI partition remain empty and unformatted. I don't know why and did not try to figure it out. Record about this partition in the fstab file was correct.

So I made vfat filesystem on this partition (mkfs.vfat /dev/nvme0n1p1), mount it to /boot/efi and create EFI subdirectory.

Next I ran eliloconfig. It asked me some simple questions and created record in EFI (I checked it using efibootmgr) so I could try to reboot. Well, elilo starts. But it wrote two rows on the screen and hung up...

Now I again leave out failed attempts to solve it I did. At last I downloaded kernel 5.3.2, quickly configured it (mostly defaults, only some changes, above all I checked if EFI options are selected and so - in-depth configuration has it's time in the future :-)). I configured kernel to have important parts compiled in so I can leave out initrd (not necessary but I don't like it :-)).

Compiled the kernel, installed modules, copied bzImage to the /boot/efi/EFI/slackware/ as vmlinuz-5.3.2, updated elilo.conf to use this image (and removed initrd) and voila - my new laptop finally booted to the Slackware-current :-)

Best regards to all

Originally Posted by pchristy Using the same technique on the laptop, the pendrive boots, the initrd image loads, and then everything just hangs - stops dead!

If the kernel & initrd load, then UEFI is not the problem.

Which version of the kernel are you trying to use? The huge.s kernel is designed to be used as a rescue (or fallback/emergency) kernel and should be used to install.

Originally Posted by pchristy I tried creating a pendrive from scratch using the information in the README_UEFI.txt file.

Pardon me for pumping up my own tyres:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...6/#post5409238