Actually have somewhat modern hardware now and its throwing me off here.

Turned off secureboot like usual, but here's my issue, bios seems to allow only allow external boot when in legacy and hdd only when in uefi mode.

So to book the slackware installer I have t be in leagcy so I'm prompted to install lilo. But in order to boot the hdd I have to switch back to UEFT as there is no hdd boot in legacy and so then it fails to boot lilo. catch 22 situation
Is there a trick I'm missing here?

Hardware is a Dell Latitude 7290 https://www.dell.com/p/latitude-12-7...n&s=bsd&~ck=mn

A trick? Isn't the slackbook description good enough for booting under uefi?

https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sl..._uefi_hardware

Put it into UEFI mode, insert your CD or USB stick, reboot and press F12 as soon as the Dell logo appears. You should get a boot menu which shows all bootable media. Then you can boot and install.

Leave secure boot off.

So the Slackdock seems to be a bit dated since it talks about creating bootable efi media and there is has been the script in extra to make a bootable usb for a while now but it doesn't give much details on the actual install. My other two systems would just get to the lilo portion and say "hey i see you have uefi, use using elilo instead" or something like that.

the first line in the doc "Slackware setup supports UEFI installs. To get Slackware to boot on UEFI machines, bypass the LILO installation and select ELILO installation when prompted during the install. "

I don't get an elilo prompt it goes straight to lilo

Secureboot is off.
If UEFI mode is enabled in bios f12 doesn't allow booting from usb and in the bios when you enable UEFI it tells you that it won't allow booting from USB. So its slightly different than earlier ones.

Does it have Windows on it?

If so, you could boot into Windows, assign a drive letter to the EFI partition using DiskPart and mount it. Then copy rEFInd onto it and use that to boot any media.

How did you put the iso onto the usb? Do you have the option to boot from file in bios/firmware boot menu?

No, I have already re-partitioned.

When UEFI is enabled I can specify a file to boot from. The problem I have is getting the Slackware setup script to skip lilo and install elilo while booted with uefi disabled to put the elilo files in the partition

let see if I have this right,
secure boot disabled, uefi enabled, legacy mode disabled, using a 64 bit iso,
able to boot from file the iso /efi/boot/bootx64.efi
drive type gpt, the efi partition formatted fat32, flagged esp, mounted at /boot/efi when setting up partitions
doesn't give the option to install elilo.

This laptop, if UEFI us enabled/legacy disabled it will not boot from USB, it doesn't have the option or allow it, no no, it can't boot from /efi/boot/bootx64.efi on the USB flash drive.
To boot from USB flash I have to disable UEFI/enable legacy and then I can boot from USB, partition and flash, run setup but it just wants to install lilo.

Thats where my issue is, it appears UEFI must be enabled for the installer to prompt elilo, but when uefi is enabled I can't boot off the usb to run the installer.

Ok, I guess I can boot legacy from USB, make the EFI partition, then manually copy the bootx64.efi to the EFI partition then go back in the bios and change to UEFI enabled and run setup and just skip lilo since I've alreayd manually put the efi file there.

At the lilo install screen, open a second terminal,
Mount the efi partition to /mnt/boot/efi if not mounted
Will get error about efivars. Exit out go back to setup screen finish configuration and reboot.
Use the boot from file function to boot efi/slackware/grubx64-efi. Reinstall/install grub/elilo
and/or use efibootmgr to register the efi/slackware/grubx64.efi with the bios/firmware

My laptop acts sorta like that.

When I change BIOS to boot EFI I get a README that explains that efi is considered experimental and they do not support it. I have tried every possible thing I have found on the NET (especially this Forum) and nothing works. With a gpt partition table and my BIOS set to boot efi there is an awkward silence followed by my Lilo screen and a normal legacy boot.
Not what I expected at all

I managed to get it
Manually create the efi partition and copied elilo to it.
Then in the bios setup re-enable UEFI and then point it to that file and reboot.
Then it will bring up the elilo boot menu and elilo allows choosing to boot from an external USB (so its after the bios boot selection which does not).
Was a pain, but works now.

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Yeah, that'll work. Rename elilo-x86_64.efi to bootx64.efi and put it under EFI/Boot on your EFI partition.

You can also copy the kernel and initrd into the same directory on the EFI partition and point eLILO to them. The files you need are 'huge.s' and 'initrd.img' from the EFI directory of the Slackware tree.

This elilo.conf will then boot the Slackware installer:
The installer will then allow you to choose a source for installation, and should offer to install elilo.