Hi all -

I hate posting this, because I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be something stupid (or I'll post it and find the answer 3 minutes later and feel like an idiot).

First, let me say that every time I have to deal with the BIOS settings on a computer, I wind up feeling like part of my brain was removed with a runcible spoon. I'm not sure why this is.

Anyway. I have a cheapish laptop (Lenovo 11e) that had an install of Slack-current on it. I managed to screw this up in an abortive effort at replacing the hard drive, so have been trying to get Slack back on the machine.

Eventually I loaded Slackware Live Edition onto a DVD-ROM (one of the things I've never seemed to be able to make happen is for this laptop to boot off a thumb drive), and I've installed it.

When I boot up the machine, I duly get the BIOS "Boot Menu," and Slackware is the first entry. HOWEVER, as has been happening for what feels like epochs now, absolutely nothing happens when I highlight the entry and hit Enter. There's a flicker, and the menu pops back into view (the second entry in the menu is the machine's hard drive ... nothing happens when I try to boot from there, either). It's like the menu entries don't 'attach to' or 'point to' anything ... and I've tried this with Secure Boot enabled and with it disabled, both.

I followed the Slackware Live Edition instructions to install elilo (I'd been expecting grub, based on some of the docs I'd read, but whatever) to the /boot/efi volume.

Has anyone run into this before? I feel like it must be something stupid I've done in the BIOS settings, and I've Googled and Googled til my Googler is sore, but ...

Any hints will be appreciated.

Thx,

Glenn

Is Slackware the only OS on the machine and do you have only one drive?
Is this an EFI install? Did you select to install elilo during the Slackware installation?

If you run: ls /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware
do you see the expected efi files (elilo.conf, elilo.efi), vmlinuz and initrd there?

1 members found this post helpful.

I have -current running here on a Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga 11e. An install stick created with usbimg2disk.sh booted (UEFI only / no Secure Boot in the BIOS settings). Hammering F12 at boot gives the UEFI boot menu, and the Slackware entry works.

The first thing I did when I picked up this $50 cheapo was install Lenovo Vantage on the win10 and upgrade the BIOS. Perhaps an issue?

Anyway, I'd give a usbimg2disk.sh created stick a try. And before making the stick, use gdisk and "z" (zap) to make sure all traces of MBR/GPT/ISO9660 are wiped out.

1 members found this post helpful.

Slackware is the only OS & there is only one drive. It is an EFI install and I installed elilo during the Slackware install.

I can't run the ls command you list because I can't boot the system I installed. I'm stuck at a boot screen that doesn't boot anything. If there is a way around this, some way to force a boot into the system I installed ... I'd love to know it.

There's no Windows on this box. I am having daydreams of blowing away the BIOS and installing Coreboot (or something) but I don't know if that's possible from 'outside'.

I did make a usbimg2disk.sh stick. Yesterday I had no luck booting from it. I'll see if I can get it to ... help me somehow.

Whuff. My Slack box is back. For what it is worth, I followed the instructions here:

https://www.itkb.ro/kb/linux/slackwa...-grub-and-uefi

... so thanks to the author. This worked perfectly. I got a "no space left on device" error from the last cp step, but the copy seems to have completed okay, as the machine now boots fine.

Thanks to those who chimed in. I'd love to know why I was stuck with a non-functioning BIOS boot menu (it does not show up any longer) ... I must have done something wrong on the install elilo step of the Slackware Live Edition install.

G

This thread is marked <SOLVED>, is it? If not I suggest booting your install media and chrooting into your HDD system. From there run "efibootmgr" to confirm your BIOS entry and check your "/etc/elilo.conf". If you don't have that configuration file you may find "elilo.efi" that does a similar job. Check them for proper entries and syntax for root, boot. and efi.

OR you could just install rEFInd and edit "/boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf" or just let it auto detect. Refind is great for those who love the simplicity of LILO and elilo.

The software suggested in post 3 is only available for windows. That is a decision by the manufacturer. You may need an update of the BIOS firmware but there is no way for us to know as we don't know what you did. It is not likely that whatever you did when initially installing elilo is now preventing access to the BIOS. If you do that now and don't see any elilo files, you know that install did not work. Installing Grub in place of Lilo is always possible and a good idea for those more familiar with Grub.

As far as accessing the /boot/efi, you could chroot/mount the partition from the install DVD.

Thanks for the further posts, but this is solved.