Yes, it tries to find UEFI partition and then you get a prompt if you want to skip lilo installation and go to elilo installation instead.

Installing GRUB works aswell but you have to do it yourself, the installation wizard does not prompt for it. You can do it by:

/dev/sda = the disk where you want bootloader installed, usually the first one or the one with your root partition/EFI partition on. I was using GRUB first because I had never used elilo before, but when I found out how it worked I think it was somewhat easier mostly cause it stays out of my way and it is included by default (:

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The good thing about grub is once it is setup in Slackware your done, no editing config files or copying kernels to /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware, or grub-mkconfig -o. When kernel updates happen just have to remember to run mkinitrd if you use the generic.

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What I see as not being said here is that from some POVs, including mine, GRUB is hugely automated and complicated to do such a simple job that, in most cases , needs to occur for less than a second, once a day. Now that might be fine for Single System boxen but for MultiBoot systems it is a royal pita. I despise OSProber and any time I'm forced to use GRUB2 I disable it which of course means I then have to make entries manually which is insanely more complicated than with LILO. Plus when we run /sbin/lilo it imediately informs us if we've been successful or not. AFAIK GRUB will leave us ignorant until it fails, requiring a far more arcane litany of items and syntax just to recover and boot. Even simpler than LILO for that chore is Syslinux. Why isn't anyone complaining about it's "lack of development"? Why? Because it just works and it is EZPZ to deploy and satisfy. That brings up a pregnant question - Will UEFI diminish or even ruin the viability of Syslinux? and if not now, ever? From my POV that would be a catastrophic loss and I will resist it for as long as I possibly can.

Oh yeah and what about that ancient design for loudspeakers still in use in essentially unchanged design over 100 years later? and don't even consider The Wheel, right? Unfortunately we have all been assaulted by the whole "New==Improved Mantra" and the simple fact is things are not good because they are new anymore than they are good because they are old. They are good or bad because they do a proper job or they don't. I am reminded that one of my favorite agencies is NASA who have accomplished world-changing things on a ridiculously low budget, yet they spent a LOT of money trying to develop a ball point pen or some replacement technology that would flow ink despite Zero G... until they were embarrassed to discover the Russian space agency simply used pencils.

Not only are PatV, Eric and all the terrific devs who assist in Slackware obviously not imbeciles but they also should be highly respected for making choices NOT just to prefer old stuff OR new stuff, but select that which works best AND keeps the power in the hands and brains of Owner/user/Admins. Large hard drives must necessarily force us to GPT and that seems to be a good thing but over complicating the simple boot process seems unnecessary and foolish. I see no reason for eLILO to be seen as some old toy fit for the junk dump. LILO will ultimately have to go but why must eLILO go with it? Am I missing something? How hard can it be to fix any issues it may have as long as it sticks to "doing one job and doing it well"? Hmmm wherever have I heard that before?

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Sounds like you got hyped on the partial story floating around the internet. This is is commonly posted, because it sounds just like what we expect from the government. Waste. But it is not the actual full story. NASA didn't develop the pen. NASA didn't even request the pen. It was developed by an outside manufacturer who put up $1M of the company's money for R&D. They then showed the pen to NASA and after extensive testing, NASA started using it in 1967, followed later by the Soviet Union. And they reportedly paid $2.39 per pen for buying in bulk (from the $3.98/pen retail price).

Why aren't pencils used in space? Well, back then, mechanical pencils were extremely expensive (NASA tried that and it went public and there was massive backlash) and wood pencils are quite flammable in a pure oxygen environment (see Apollo 1 for more details on flammability in pure oxygen environments). Plus, the graphite used in pencils will flake as they're being used and can break. And graphite is conductive, so you can see the potential problems with that.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ion-nasa-spen/

My only complaint with elilo is a lack of a graphical selection screen. And I don't think there's any plans to add one, so it makes it difficult if you want to multiboot or select between multiple kernels and/or boot options. I've heard rEFInd doesn't have those issues, but I've been too lazy to test it.

I still use elilo and am relatively happy with it. If that changes, I may decide to try other options, but I imagine grub will be on the bottom of that list unless it becomes the default bootloader in Slackware.

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Rant on. Lilo is for MBR/legacy boot ups. What you are missing is that the OP was asking about UEFI boot-up, for which lilo is useless. The problem with elilo on the other hand is that it is "a royal pita" (as you put it) for "MultiBoot systems". That is because with elilo you have to go through the UEFI boot menu to pick your boot options, which is a nuisance. It usually requires you to press some special key such as F2, F12 or Esc in a small window during boot-up to reach the menu. Much better is to use rEFInd in my opinion, or if not then grub.

Both rEFInd and grub also have the advantage that they can read the kernel image from any partition, not just EFI system partition. That means there is no need to run eliloconfig every time you update your kernel.

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Thank you for the clarification on the NASA story and hype surrounding it. I did buy into it because I have personally witnessed people overthinking issues and missing what's right in front of them. In fact, I do it sometimes. I suppose many do it as well or there wouldn't even be the term "KISS". We wouldn't need reminding if it was de rigeur. At polar odds with this is software where so much of it, especially in Enterprise and the proprietary world (a la MS et al), is commercial where income depends on getting clients to replace regularly and routinely. Planned Obsolescence is a virus in many cases. Few things are built to last anymore and that's likely a net gain except for real fundamentals.

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Thanks guys, I'll use elilo!

This is only needed with elilo to update elilo.conf to point to the new kernel. If you use the same names for kernels/initrds or manually edit elilo.conf to point to the new kernel/initrd, there's no need to do anything further.

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Took me a while to figure this out. If you don't change the kernel names you can just copy the kernel and the initrd to the proper place with the same name.

You are missing the point. You have to copy the kernel image into /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware, or run eliloconfig to do that for you. If you use rEFInd or grub, it can read /boot/vmlinuz directly, so there is no need to copy anything when you update the kernel.

I understood the first part of your message, I was just stating that eliloconfig itself is not required for when upgrading a kernel with elilo.

Well it wasn't obvious you understood it, because you suggested that you need "to update elilo.conf to point to the new kernel", and "if you use the same names for kernels/initrds or manually edit elilo.conf to point to the new kernel/initrd, there's no need to do anything further". You absolutely don't need to update or edit elilo.conf, or rename anything. You just need to run eliloconfig or copy the kernel image (and the initrd if using kernel-generic) into /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware.

Anyway, yes you can copy the kernel image and the initrd directly instead of running eliloconfig if you want. You don't need to do any of those things with rEFInd or grub.

Yes, I am aware how elilo functions. You stated you had to run eliloconfig, and I just wanted to make sure people knew that it wasn't required for elilo to function. I just didn't feel it warranted explaining how elilo functioned as I suspected those familiar with it would've understood what I meant.

Sorry for the confusion.

I think we can agree with this formula: lilo is a pain because after installing a new kernel you need to run liloconfig to put the address of the new image into the sector where you have installed lilo (normally the MBR) as a jump address. elilo is a pain because after installing a new kernel you need to copy the kernel image (and initrd if relevant) into the ESP because that is all elilo can read, either by invoking eliloconfig or doing it directly. rEFInd (UEFI only) and grub (MBR/BIOS and UEFI) are much better because they avoid all this hassle.

A script can automate the tasks. I normally just do everything manually because I don't know how to script in Linux. Its really NOT that bad. I use a text editor to replace all of the version numbers. I hit the tab on boot and get the option menu.

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