I have been unable to boot a bare metal UEFI install of current since Wed Jun 13 05:43:00 UTC 2018.
Has anyone been successful on bare metal? Am I just spinning my wheels?
I can boot from a bootstick
but not from the uefi menu
Thanks
AlleyTrotter

added or Newer to the title question

I have been installing -current on metal successfully, but I have seen a few issues with the installer.

1. Installer hangs on "Finished setting up Linux partitions".
Pressing enter twice forces it to continue.

2. Lilo installation not picking up any other OS installations.


EDIT:
I guess that I am installing on a UEFI PC, but switched to booting it legacy and HDD is formatted GPT. Forgot about that, sorry.

yes no problem with legacy boot here also
Also boots from UEFI bootstick
on the UEFI menu I select Slackware
I get a screen flash and back to UEFI menu
I can also boot from other UEFI devices with a elilo.conf stanza pointing to dev/sda which contains the bare metal install of current.
Thanks
AlleyTrotter

The last couple of times I've done a fresh installation from the, at the time, most recent -current .iso, I could do a legacy boot from the DVD and start the install, but it failed.
I had to press F8 to get a list of boot options via the BIOS and then pick the uefi selection and boot from the same DVD. Once done, the install worked as it should. During the installation I told it to install lilo anyway and afterwards used lilo as the boot manager.

Were the kernel and initrd copied properly to your EFI partition?

yes the kernel is in the efi partition of sda1, I am using huge so no initrd

@cwizardone I have no problem with the UEFI install DVD. The install proceeds and ends without error and an UEFI entry is created. Only on the the reboot does it fail.
As I stated above I can boot the install from a UEFI bootstick or from any of my other UEFI bootable devices. It only fails when trying to boot from the UEFI entry pointing to sda the fresh baremetal install.

Back to my original question
Has anyone been successful with a baremetal install?
Thanks
John

1 members found this post helpful.

I've seen this once before, when I was trying to boot a new kernel with an old version of eLILO. Switching to the latest elilo-x86_64.efi file fixed that problem.

I suspect that I may have a graphics card issue - but when I boot from a USB stick (with latest installer 'dd'ed onto it), I get garbage/gibberish characters on the screen - until it gets to the part where it wants to do the kemap - and then it's fine after that. Thereafter, booting from the new install just produces gibberish from the get-go. And the machine never goes onto the network - so I can't ssh in to check. But I'm going to try an install with another o/s - Centos - to see if it is the card. Funny thing is the machine was fine until I attempted the wipe and re-install - hence my 2c in this reply.

Update - it WAS a hardware error. Framebuffer had gone to a better place. Interestingly, after setting lilo to use simple vga and telling the kernel not to use a framebuffer, the machine came up fine, albeit in 80*25 text mode.

I'm using the elilo-3.16-x86_64-7.txz as installed by the current install DVD. Doing everything like a virgin system starting from scratch with the install DVD and an empty SSD. I will give it a go with a newer version of elilo.efi if I can find one.

Still no response with a successful baremetal install?

Thanks
AlleyTrotter

The elilo on the disc should be new enough. Is it possible that this file was corrupted somehow? You could try copying the one from /boot to your EFI partition.

You could also try copying the efi file from one of the other devices which are able to boot your new installation.

another question I have: How is the SSD being recognised? If it's an nvme drive, it may be shown as nvme0n1 instead of sda.

I have already tried another elilo.efi no cigar.

As I stated above the drive is recognized as /dev/sda. It is not nvme or spinning rust

Thanks
AlleyTrotter

I might add I have burnt a new DVD everytime Pat has posted an update since Jun 13.
Each time the install was not boot-able from the UEFI menu. Same as my original post.
Also 64-14.2 installs and works fine on the SSD on dev/sda

Successfully booted here. I used Alien Bob's mirror-slackware current script to download the latest tree and make an iso.

1 members found this post helpful.

Even the one from the UEFI boot stick which is able to boot your installation?

Please post the contents of the elilo.conf from your efi system partition.

Was it a bare metal install on UEFI system and EFI boot?

I have made no changes to the install and I have repeated it with a new DVD from aliens mirror script every time Pat has posted an update to Current since the 13th Each time with the exact results as posted.

Thanks
John