elilo problems and 5.19.x kernels
 

anyone else having problems booting in -current?

has elilo gone EOL for practical purposes?

I know there was a thread in here about this, it was a kernel bug that was supposed to be fixed approx 2 5.19.x kernels ago.

5.18.x kernels boot without issues in -current

Believe or not, it was NOT a kernel bug, BUT an ELILO bug. Or, rather ELILO needed to be patched to work with the modern kernels.

Let's do not blame the kernels because some rotten code abandoned since 2014 by its authors. ;)

Anyway, it's not enough to just upgrade the ELILO package, but you need also to update the binary in your UEFI ESP partition. Manually.

replacing the binary was the step I missed.

After upgrading elilo with the package from Aug 5th, under -Current tree, you can run eliloconfig again (or manually copy the binary to EFI):

Job done.

No, thankfully it has been patched.

I'm spared from learning how GRUB works after >20 years of using (e)LILO.

:D

Hi, like you I used lilo/elilo until linux 5.19. I switched to grub in 5 minutes. Now lilo/elilo has gone forever on my computers.

Me too, the learning I feared all these years barely took a few minutes and I'm no longer relying on code everyone has long forgotten about.

My switch to GRUB2 a few years ago was due to FS errors I was occasionally getting due repeatedly writing to the EFI partition. With current, and multiple kernels, using eLILO was pretty hard on that small partition. Microsoft's FAT FS isn't exactly robust. I grew tired of fixing that partition every month or so, so I switched to GRUB2. Problem solved, no more hammering the EFI partition, it just gets read.

A kernel change affecting user space IS a kernel bug. Recompiling ELILO with a changed option is a work around.

Code that has been working since 2014 and then stops working IS to be blamed on the kernel changes. The code is not rotten. The endeavour to implement new features in the kernel is flawed.

Gott in himmel! Fancy needing to understand the boot process enough that undertaking a manual intervention is a chore. Geez, that is so old hat that I might as well run Slackware. If the automation in GRUB is so great, why does the Newbie forum get constant threads about boot problems?

This has been concluded before and agreed upon by the kernel devs, but has it been reported upstream via the official channels?

"We do not change user space" :study:

The catch is that the bootloaders aren't "user space" , but (like I read somewhere in this forum), they are rather "god space" .

Um, what?

There shall NOT be any progress on kernels, trying to respect the quirks of some bootloaders abandoned long time ago?

The software world does NOT frozen in AD 2014, you know... ;)

Instead to looking on the others garden, you aren't astonished that the Slackware forum is full of booting failures, when we we represent, being told with great enthusiasm, somewhere around 0.1% of the Linux users?

Compared with the overall number of users, is obviously that Slackware have an extremely high number of boot failures. We should do nothing about this?

I do not think that the bootloaders are user space.

No user space software have an absolute control over hardware system like a bootloader.

Actually the only way to isolate VM client from hypervisor is to run type 1. Everything else is a waste of time.
SEV-SNP is undone already (as is SGX).
In other words, SEV-SNP should be optional available for people who are willing to compile custom kernels. Not to mention that most (Slackware?) users are not affected by VM issues.

..and I think that one needs AMD EPYC 7003 "Milan" processor. How many users have it?
If this is the case (CPU requirement), then this option can be disabled for most of the uses.

I don't know. What I know is that since Sunday 6 September 2020 in the distribution I maintain kernel upgrades are handled automatically, which includes building an initrd for the new kernel and updating the GRUB config file accordingly, with no issue reported with respect to this change.

shrug, and I have 5.19.x kernel that never had an issue with elilo (in fact I never upgraded elilo). The fact that you do not have issues with GRUB, does not mean that users don't complain about it.