I have a brand-new ASUS Vivabook laptop and I have attempted a slackware-current installation with an encrypted root partition. Slackware 15.0 would not boot this thing.

The laptop has a UEFI motherboard and I partitioned the HD as instructed on the README_UEFI. For a plain installation I have no issues to report. It went smooth. For LVM, setup mounts /dev/sda2 (sda being the installation USB drive) under /mnt/boot/efi/ . This is due to a bug in the SeTEFI script. One only needs to hardcode PREFERRED_EFI_PARTITION to /dev/nvme0n1p1 or mount manually under /mnt/boot/efi/ and then edit /mnt/etc/fstab after the installation. efibootmgr also fails unless it is run manually as shown here: https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sl...uefi_and_elilo

However I hit a brick for encrypted root partitions, both on LVM and also straight on the partition. I verified that mkinitrd.sh created the correct -C and -r arguments and all files on /mnt/boot/efi/ , but on boot up the laptop loads the kernel, initrd.gz and then plays dead. I cannot interact anymore and I have to switch off manually.

On Ubuntu 24.04, the installation on encrypted LVM was smooth, but I would prefer Slackware. However, I don’t feel safe without an encrypted root partition installation.

I am experienced on encrypted Slackware installations, and I can report that on Virtualbox, it went smooth even on UEFI motherboards.

I have been struggling for a week and I ran out of ideas. Any help would be appreciated.

I’m not an expert on encryption, however just a thought, have you tried without encryption to see if possibly you’re missing a kernel module in the initrd?

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Without encryption, the laptop boots but the monitor only kicks late in the booting process, at:

So I think that I need to load "some" firmware on initrd before crypsetup is called by the init script in initrd.gz.

1. In what order is the firmware loaded?
2. How could I possibly load (some or all) firmware in initrd before it calls cryptsetup?

If you are using grub add "insmod all_video" to the grub menuentry

1 members found this post helpful.

That's it. I just set-up grub as my bootloader and the problem has been resolved.

Thanks a lot @colourpurple21859