Thinkpad T14s - Slackware won't boot
 

I have a Thinkpad t14s on which I recently installed slackware current. The installation went smoothly. The problem is booting - when the computer turns on, it should recognize the OS and boot to it. Instead, I'm stuck in the select boot device screen. Choosing to boot Slackware only makes the screen flash and then reappear.

I already turned off secureboot. Any ideas on which settings I should try changing? I've already tried slackware 15 and both LILO/ELILO.

I'm new to this distro. All the guides I could find only say that I need to partition a swap and a /. But I'm used to making a /boot/efi as well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: I tried the KMS option during installation and now I can get to an ELILO 3.16 screen, but it stops after two lines. No luck with LILO

Since I see the Windows Logo under your user name. You trying to dualboot? Is Windows involved.

Maybe a Windows setting is stopping you. Might try a different kernel boot also.

I have 5.10 when 6.1 won't boot. But my IBM has no Windows and my gear is older than yours. You Might need a newer kernel than me.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/lapto...l)/len101t0014

Oh.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...re-4175735247/

For uefi mode a fat32 partition flagged esp/ef00 is needed. For lilo, csm needs to be enabled. If still having trouble with elilo, suggest using grub.

That laptop is newer model, it is almost certain to be uefi only. http://slackware.uk/slackware/slackw...EADME_UEFI.TXT

Nope, this is a different computer.

Is this possible to do with cfdisk? I don't see an option relating to esp/ef00

Yes, It may be called ef or efi

Welcome to Slackware! I think that https://slackware.uk/slackware/slack...EADME_UEFI.TXT will be useful reading material.

The machine is looking for elilo, so it does not surprise me that you have no luck with lilo.

Please post your /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/elilo.config file.

I'd also be interested in knowing what files are in /boot/efi/EFI/Slackware.

edit to what. What message(s) do those two lines contain?

UEFI-based computers can boot Linux either with GRUB or elilo. GRUB has drivers for various filesystems and can therefore find your kernel and initrd, whatever partition they live on. Elilo can only read FAT filesystems, so it requires both the kernel and the initrd to be on the same EFI system partition (ESP) as itself.

Also Slackware does not provide an initrd for you. Unless you are booting with the huge kernel, you have to build your own initrd image using the mkinitrd script and copy it over to the ESP. Did you do that?

If elilo can't find the kernel it was told to look for, or if you don't have a working initrd for that kernel alongside it on the ESP, it will flash back to the menu.

It's a long shot, but you might try booting to a Live CD/USB of something, mounting the Linux partition, and looking at the file, /var/log/boot.log. It may give you some hints as to where the boot process is failing.