Solved Slackware-15.0 installation does not boot – Is the elilo bootloader supported?

Holger · Mar 17, 2023

I am trying to create a vm-bhyve virtual machine with Slackware 15.0, using UEFI (see further down for the actual vm-template).

My partitions look as follows:

The installation media boots find and I can install the system. However, after a powercycle (power off / on) and removal of the installation media, I get the following error from the UEFI firmware:

Here is the vm-template that I use:

Code:

loader="uefi"
cpu=4
graphics="yes"
memory=8192M
network0_type="virtio-net"
network0_switch="public"
disk0_type="virtio-blk"
disk0_name="disk0.img"

I checked the EFI-partition on the virtual hard drive; Slackware created a directory EFI/Slackware with contents as follows:

It also created an UEFI-boot entry (“BOOT0005“ at the end of the list):

screenshot-slackware-15.0-efibootmgr.png

So, everything looks fine.

Which makes me wonder: Is the elilo bootloader supported at all?

Btw: The Slackware installation media uses grub as a bootloader, storing it as EFI/BOOT/BOOTX86.EFI, which works fine! But for some reason that choice is not made for the main system which actually gets installed.

covacat · Mar 17, 2023

afaik only efi, grub and freebsd loader are supported

yuripv79 · Mar 17, 2023

The numbers for entries seem to jump around, that non-working "misc device" is Boot0002 in efiboomgr output, and is Boot0001 in error message. I am not sure if boot menu would work with bhyve's efi "firmware", but try setting a non-0 timeout ( efibootmgr -t 5, or whatever value you like).

Holger · Mar 17, 2023

yuripv79 said:
The numbers for entries seem to jump around, that non-working "misc device" is Boot0002 in efiboomgr output, and is Boot0001 in error message. I am not sure if boot menu would work with bhyve's efi "firmware", but try setting a non-0 timeout ( efibootmgr -t 5, or whatever value you like).

I set the EFI-timeout to 10 seconds, but it has no effect: Although I connect at once with vncviewer, there is the same error message about this strange “misc device”.

Holger · Mar 17, 2023

covacat said:
afaik only efi, grub and freebsd loader are supported

My hope was that with UEFI I could use any other EFI-compatible bootloader down the bootloader-chain.

yuripv79 · Mar 17, 2023

Holger said:
I set the EFI-timeout to 10 seconds, but it has no effect: Although I connect at once with vncviewer, there is the same error message about this strange “misc device”.

May be set the "wait" option in bhyve settings (rfb device options) so it would not actually boot until you are connected with the vncviewer? Not saying that there actually must be something, but let's make sure.

Styrsven · Mar 17, 2023

When I had similar problems with debian and gentoo in bhyve, I created a directory named boot under EFI and copied the *.efi file to there with the name "bootx64.efi".
I found the info here:
https://www.davidschlachter.com/misc/freebsd-bhyve-uefi-shell

Holger · Mar 17, 2023

yuripv79 said:
May be set the "wait" option in bhyve settings (rfb device options) so it would not actually boot until you are connected with the vncviewer? Not saying that there actually must be something, but let's make sure.

I used the graphics_wait from vm but the error persists.

Holger · Mar 17, 2023

I managed to install grub in a way that it boots the system, simply dropping elilo.

I am thinking about writing this down as a tutorial.

Do you think there would be interest?

scottro · Mar 18, 2023

Yes, I for one, would be interested. I've only run bhyve, so far, with various RHEL versions and clones, and Windows, all of which have a default uefi template.

cracauer@ · Mar 18, 2023

Holger said:
I managed to install grub in a way that it boots the system, simply dropping elilo.

I am thinking about writing this down as a tutorial.

Do you think there would be interest?

Multiboot tutorials with new stuff are always appreciated.

Holger · Mar 18, 2023

cracauer@ said:
Multiboot tutorials with new stuff are always appreciated.

Here you go: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/howto-install-slackware-15-0-using-grub.88415/

Edit: Darn! I posted it in the wrong section. Should have gone into “Howto and FAQs”. Moderator, please help?

Ole · Mar 19, 2023

Just for clarity - this is not the problem of bhyve or Slackware. I checked Slackware in CBSD, which supports UEFI VARS by default and VM boots fine (GPT + EFI partition) with ELILO without any extra action.
You must enable UEFI VARS, but I don't know a specific parameter for `vm-bhyve`.

Holger · Mar 19, 2023

Ole said:
Just for clarity - this is not the problem of bhyve or Slackware. I checked Slackware in CBSD, which supports UEFI VARS by default and VM boots fine (GPT + EFI partition) with ELILO without any extra action.
You must enable UEFI VARS, but I don't know a specific parameter for `vm-bhyve`.

The relevant parameter for sysutils/vm-bhyve seems to be uefi_vars="yes", but when I do this, I cannot connect via VNC, because “the connections was reset by peer”. Will try raw bhyve when time permits.

Ole · Mar 20, 2023

Holger said:
seems to be uefi_vars="yes",

I'm pretty sure this setting should be enabled by default because the system isn't working as intended without VARS. You can check args, `keyword`: ... -l bootrom,<firmware>,<path-to-BHYVE_UEFI_VARS> ...

sko · Mar 20, 2023

I recently migrated some linux-VMs (RHEL, SUSE and ubuntu) from smartOS/KVM to FreeBSD/bhyve and I couldn't get any of them to boot via the default UEFI loader - all of them only booted with grub and hard-coded 'linux-X.Y.Z' and 'vmlinuz-X.Y.Z' values, so it will blow up on every upgrade just like grub usually did on bare-metal...
Not even the installer images e.g. for RHEL or SUSE Linux would boot with UEFI, only if jumpstarted with the grub loader - again, needing to hard-code the linux-X.Y.Z and vmlinuz-X.Y.Z files in the vm config (because the generic "linux" and "vmlinuz" files in /boot never actually worked).