Slackware14.1 UEFI/GPT installation on HP Slimline does not boot

jowa45 · 02-15-2015, 04:06 AM

In my case the installation DVD works fine.
This is my first experience of UEFI and the first time a Slackware installation would not boot for me.

The 64 bit installation disk recognised my machine as UEFI and gave no choice.
I partitioned with gdisk :-

sda1 100MB EFI
sda2 6GB swap
sda3 200GB Linux

This is the only hard disk in the machine.
I did not make any file system but left that to installation default ext4.

During installation I saw the message :-

Adding this information to your /etc/fstab

Quote:

/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat defaults 1 0

However mount does not accept it as vfat but ntfs.
Grub(2) will not recognise it at all :-

Quote:

Partition hd0,gpt1: No known filesystem detected

df tells me that 25MB of 100MB has been used.

I can run pkgtool/setup/elilo but no change.

What is my best move now?

John

Didier Spaier · 02-15-2015, 06:46 AM

We need to know which filesystem is actually set on /dev/sda1.

To gather that information, please boot off the installation DVD and after login as "root" issue following command:

Code:

lsblk -o name,size,fstype,mountpoint,model

You can redirect the output to a file in an USB key that you will have mounted before issuing the command.

Alternatively, you can start your installed system from the DVD's greeting screen as stated in it, then issue the command.

jowa45 · 02-17-2015, 01:56 AM

Thanks

The output was:-

Quote:

NAME SIZE FSTYPE MOUNTPOINT MODEL
sda 465.8G SAMSUNG HD502HJ
|-sda1 100M ntfs
|-sda2 6G swap
`-sda3 200G ext4
sdc 984M DataTraveler 2.0
`-sdc1 984M vfat /stick
sr0 2.3G iso9660 BDDVDRW CH20L

Identified as ntfs as did mount.
Interesting that the machine had W7 with ntfs previously.
It is vfat only in fstab.

John

Didier Spaier · 02-17-2015, 04:24 AM

Then, change the partition type of /dev/sda1 with gdisk or cgdisk to be EFI again (or at least check it's still EFI), then reinstall a filesystem there with mkfs.vfat.

jowa45 · 02-17-2015, 05:28 AM

Thanks

But then I have to write something to sda1.
Is that what elilo does?

This machine is at home and I am at work.
I will try it this evening.

John

gauchao · 02-17-2015, 07:49 AM

If you want to install GRUB2 as the default bootloader in sda1, boot the Slackware disk and

Quote:

#chroot /mnt
#grub-install --modules=part_gpt /dev/sda
#grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

#reboot

jowa45 · 02-17-2015, 09:00 AM

Yes this idea of chroot into the installation is one I have been concidering.

I would prefer first to try some similar code for elilo.
Elilo is not being developed since late last year but should work on my machine.

I was never much into GRUB2 because of the lack of support for alternative keyboards.

gauchao (or anyone)as I see in another post you have a UEFI/GPT working would you tell me what file system you have on your EFI partition. It is this that is confusing me.

If anyone has similar code for elilo working would they be as good as to post it.

John

colorpurple21859 · 02-17-2015, 09:20 AM

sda1 will have to be formatted as fat32, marked as efi partition, then mounted at sda3's /boot/efi, and possibley create a /boot/efi/EFI directory for grub-install to work.

gauchao · 02-17-2015, 09:29 AM

John, I have used ext2 for BOOT partition.

The only way I could make my UEFI mobo - ASUS Sabertooth FX 2.0 and a big HD (3 TiB partitioned with GPT) to work with Slack64 14.1 was with 3 partitions and GRUB2, as below

sda1 -> BOOT - 100 M - type ef02 (I know it's too much space, but I left it so)
sda2 -> SWAP - 4 G - type 8200 (big enough to compile source packages)
sda3 -> SLACKWARE - all the remaining disk

Quote:

# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1 (you can use ext2/3/4)
# swapon /dev/sda2
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 (EXT4 for linux slackware file system)

Checking...
#parted / print

I have tried other bootloaders, and specifically in my case, GRUB2 was the only one which worked well, though rfind also did the job.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...rd-4175529503/

Didier Spaier · 02-17-2015, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jowa45

Thanks

But then I have to write something to sda1.
Is that what elilo does?

This machine is at home and I am at work.
I will try it this evening.

John

When you will have done what I told you in post #4, just run pkgtool/setup then check ll.eliloconfig and "Accept".

Alternatively, you can run directly /usr/sbin/eliloconfig directly as in that case that's what pkgtool does.

And yes, eliloconfig should work. elilo is just a package that mostly ships eliloconfig and the binary /boot/elilo-x86_64.efi that eliloconfig copies in /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware, renamed elilo.efi, alongside a kernel, a file elilo.conf that it writes and possibly an initrd.img (if found in /boot).

Bear in mind that elilo doesn't have to "install" a boot sector (as does lilo) because in case of EFI the firmware boots off a binary file (in our case /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/elilo.efi). to be complete, /usr/sbin/eliloconfig also runs the program efibootmgr (shipped in the efibootmgr package) that installs an entry for Slackware in the EFI boot menu. In other words it indicates to the firmware the path to the file elilo.efi, so it can pick it when the Slackware menu entry is chosen.

jowa45 · 02-18-2015, 03:10 AM

Thanks everyone.

Yesterday evening I went Didiers way and made a vfat file system on sda1.
Running gdisk -l /dev/sda still calls sda1 EFI.

Running pkgtool/setup/elilo did not put anything into sda1.
That is both directly or by chroot into the installed Slackware14.1.

This seams to be the problem. The elilo command did not run during installation
and so did not overwrite the original ntfs from W7.
There is no type of response from pkgtool/setup/elilo.

This evening I will try from the command line.

As regards grub2 I am holding that in reserve if elilo does not work.
I would like the default elilo to work even if it is no longer supported
and probably will not be included in future Slackware.
I always made a grub(legacy) boot partition with Slackware11.
It had a key swapping arrangement to cater for different keyboard layouts
but grub2 never did.

I was expecting to find a manual for elilo after I had chroot but nothing.

John

colorpurple21859 · 02-18-2015, 05:20 AM

Quote:

Running pkgtool/setup/elilo did not put anything into sda1.
That is both directly or by chroot into the installed Slackware14.1.

Did you first mount sda1 to /mnt/boot/efi? If so may have to add entry to /mnt/etc/fstab similar to this for things to work:

Code:

/dev/sda1		/boot/efi	vfat		noauto,noatime	1 2

jowa45 · 02-19-2015, 03:15 AM

There was no /usr/sbin/eliloconfig on my installation disk.
In fact /usr/sbin was an empty directory.
Which explains some of the problems.
Using the copy on the installation worked well.

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
/mnt/usr/sbin/eliloconfig

So I now have a kernel and a couple of other files in my EFI partition.
elilo.conf(130) elilo.efi(245K) vmlinuz(6.2M)

It did boot and gave me this interesting message:-

Quote:

ELILO v3.14 for EFI/x86_64
.
bzimage.c(line85):kernel header (2.12)suggests kernel start at address 0x100000
(non relocatable)

This address is not available, so an attempt is made to copy the kernel there later on.

BEWARE:this is unsupported and may not work.

Please update your kernel.

Loading kernel vmlinuz... done

Which way to go now?

John

Didier Spaier · 02-19-2015, 01:18 PM

/usr/sbin/eliloconfig is in the installed system, not in the installation disk (the same applies for most configuration scripts after installation of the packages, at the CONFIGURE step).

Just launch the installer again, choose the TARGET (but do not format the partition), when asked skip the INSTALLATION step (or just reinstall a few packages like the y series, it won't hurt anyway) then when asked install elilo (that will actually run eliloconfig from the installed system). Before you do that you could consider removing the files you have manually put in /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware.
By the way was it actually there (/boot/efi/EFI/Slackware) that you copied the file mentioned in your post #13?

jowa45 · 02-20-2015, 05:34 AM

The message in #13 was when I booted the machine without the installation disk.
I was trying to boot the installation.
I now have an entry in my BIOS (or GPT) called Slackware which was not there before.
This was made defaut so I had to change it to boot from the installation disk.
Before it booted from the installation disk if there was one, then searched for a hard disk then PXE. (no USB)

My sda1 was mounted at /boot/efi as #12 and as insisted on in the eliloconfig script.
When I ran eliloconf from the command line, as #10, it gave me the kind of thing I should have seen during installation, (eg pkgtool/setup/elilo), I accepted this and then efibootmanager and accepted that.

It put the following files into my sda1 EFI partition:-

EFI/Slackware/elilo.conf (130)
EFI/Slackware/elilo.efi (245K)
EFI/Slackware/vmlinuz (6.2M)

Then I did umount /dev/sda1 so the files are no longer in /boot/efi.
(As they were mounted and not copied they would vanish anyway on reboot)

I will try again to run eliloconf from the installation disk as #14 at the weekend and report back on Monday. It is worth knowing.

I am not an expert but only judging by that message I saw I should consider the kernel in some way.

John