Slackware14.1 UEFI/GPT installation on HP Slimline does not boot
Slackware - InstallationThis forum is for the discussion of installation issues with Slackware.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
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.
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.
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.
Last edited by colorpurple21859; 02-17-2015 at 09:24 AM.
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.
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.
Last edited by Didier Spaier; 02-17-2015 at 02:02 PM.
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.
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.
/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?
Last edited by Didier Spaier; 02-19-2015 at 02:30 PM.
Reason: last sentence added.
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:-
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.