UEFI Problems
 

I have been trying for months to get Slackware on my desktop computer, which uses a new-ish ASUS motherboard with an Intel chip. All I can really say is that I hate UEFI.

So here's the problem.

I found the install instructions from the Slack Docs site, which is quite limited at the moment. (I plan on adding my two cents to it if I ever figure this out) Those instructions simply say to skip LILO installation and use ELILO. Easy right? Well, not so much.

Let's back up. Yes, I did make a 100M EFI partition. Everything is according to the instructions I have gleaned from various sites. However, when I reboot after doing it the ELILO way, it boots to GRUB for some reason. Now, I don't have much knowledge of GRUB because other distros figures all that out for me and I have almost never had to interact with the GRUB BASH-like environment.

So! After failing to install almost every week for the past 6 weeks, trying different things each time, I am at my wit's end. I am about to install something like PureOS and just grit my teeth until something fries my computer and I can justify throwing it out.

If you can't tell, I am extremely frustrated.

Any help would be wonderful!

was there another Linux system installed at one time and/or are there two efi partitions on this drive or is there more than one drive on this system? Post the output of and

It cannot find /sys/firmware/efi

I am in the installation shell.

Also, check your UEFI firmware to see if legacy mode/compatibility support/CSM is enabled. If so, disable it (if you want UEFI to work like it's really supposed to). That feature allows the firmware to still boot from MBR (in theory), so if there IS something in the MBR, it will see it and attempt to boot it instead of the EFI System Partition, thus completely screwing up UEFI.

If you don't like GRUB (and I don't like it either), why not install elilo, then uninstall GRUB? Afterwards you can use the eliloconfig script to set up your boot.

I would love to just use ELILO. How do I get rid of GRUB? Do I do it before I restart after install?

That depends on whether your GRUB actually gets you into Slackware or dumps you at a GRUB shell. And on whether you are in native UEFI mode or legacy/csm. GRUB will work in both systems if correctly installed for that system but elilo only works in native mode.

The first thing I would do is use the "magic key" to get into your UEFI at boot time and explore it. Find out what boot mode it is using.

Which motherboard have you got?

Are you installing 14.2 or current? 14.2 does not support installing to NVMe.

Edit: This post (Didier Spaier) has a solution that worked for me on a new Dell. (if you are trying to install 14.2).

@ poetgrant - I know that sooner or later I will be forced into dealing with UEFI but, like you, my attempts to learn it now have been extremely frustrating and I hate it, too. In my case my solution is to go Legacy Mode (CSM) and just use good ol' LILO on my main Slackware install of 14.2. Then I have another partition on this machine with Current as well as a testbed separate PC to workout the whole UEFI thing among a few other issues that are in flux.

Is there some reason you desire or are forced to use UEFI mode right now on this box?

As SpacePlod alluded, the genuine Slackware installer version 14.2 doesn't handle NVMe devices.

You have to get the installer to recognize your EFI partition and make it prompt you to skip LILO and install ELILO, if it doesnt something is wrong.

There are a few BIOS settings like fast boot, secure boot, legacy vs uefi boot and the way you partition your drive.

You can make the slackware installation disk recognize your nVME drive's if you have those either with patching or using slacklive usb, if you have that I can give you a link to the patches if you want to.

Did you use 32 or 64 bit iso? For efi mode need to use 64bit iso.

No need to hate uefi. It's only not so straightforward to get it all right;
is an indicator that something is not properly set up.

Apart from the mentioned requirements (1. Efi partition? 2. correctly formatted?; -and mounted in fstab as /boot/efi?- 3. nvme-hack as developed by Didier Spanier mentioned above; 4. the turning off of anything 'legacy boot' in the 'bios' as well as 'secure boot') did you set the nvme card (with gdisk) to 5. a GPT type partition table ('with protective MBR')?

Did your 'fdisk -l' output mention "Disklabel type: gpt" in the blurb before the partition table you showed us?

Chicken and the egg.

You have to boot via UEFI for the /sys/firmware/efi directory to show up. I did that by using the 14.2 install DVD with the motherboard set to boot via UEFI; you'll pretty much act as if your boot was fouled up and you are performing an emergency boot with the installation DVD.