Slackware 12.1 will not boot

[ecanton]

I've installed Slackware 12.1 on an ext3 partition on my MacBook, and select to boot to Linux using rEFIt. When I do this, the screen only displays 'GRUB _" and nothing else happens. I've tried installing LiLo in my root directory, as I imagine it will cause all sorts of problems with rEFIt and OS X if I installed LILO into my MBR. I've also tried editing /etc/lilo.conf a bit to see if I could be more specific with the presets and have a successful boot (or even have anything happen besides "GRUB _") Thinking that maybe, for whatever reason, this partition REALLY wanted to use GRUB (I previously had ubuntu installed on this partition) I tried booting a live CD of ubuntu and using the chroot command on my mounted Slackware partition, and then running grub-install on the Slackware partition, and still it only displays "GRUB _".

All the files are present and intact on the Slackware partition, and I can even boot the partition using Slackware 12.1 install disk 1. Any ideas for getting Slackware to boot without the disk?

[St Konqueror]

Boot your Slackware GNU/Linux with the DVD then give me the output of #fdisk -l

[ecanton]

Boot Start End Blocks Type
/dev/sda1 1 26 204819+ ee EFI GPT
/dev/sda2 26 16897 135516307 af Unknown
/dev/sda3 * 16897 19458 20569336 83 Linux

...where /dev/sda2 is my OS X hfs+ partition.

Not sure if this is relevant, but while using my disk booted Slackware, I received a message from the kernel saying it was disabling IRQ #18, after which input from the keyboard was severely lagging.

[St Konqueror]

Not sure if this is relevant, but while using my disk booted Slackware, I received a message from the kernel saying it was disabling IRQ #18, after which input from the keyboard was severely lagging.

Maybe it's just a hardware problems and has no relation to your boot problem, so we don't have to care about that now.

Boot Start End Blocks Type
/dev/sda1 1 26 204819+ ee EFI GPT
/dev/sda2 26 16897 135516307 af Unknown
/dev/sda3 * 16897 19458 20569336 83 Linux

Does rEFIt still work well with Mac OS X? Anyway, you said that you use rEFIt to boot Slackware GNU/Linux then the message "GRUB_" appears on the screen. But how can you start rEFIt as bootloader while the boot flag had been already set on the Linux partition (/dev/sda3)?

#Regards
#St.Konqueror

[ecanton]

rEFIt still works fine for choosing which drive I want to boot to (either HD partition, CD/DVD, USB etc.) however it seems like it gets really confused about how Linux is setup on my hard drive. It always displays the option to "Boot Linux from HD", but additionally when I install and set boot flags on sda3 it displays a second "Boot Linux from Partition 3". Neither Linux option works properly, and both seem to point to the same broken loader.

If I don't set the boot flag on sda3 using fdisk, then I get the message "No bootable devices found, please insert a boot disk and press any key" which is really just a freeze; I can insert a variety of boot disks for GNU/Linuxes, the USB boot stick created during Slackware installation, or also a SLAX boot stick, and it never recognizes any drives.

I'm beginning to think that Slackware is too fundamental a distribution to install on a MacBook (the only distro I've had any luck at all with is ubuntu because it includes a ridiculous amount of additional drivers and compatibility files), which is really upsetting because from my understanding of Slackware specifications, it's skeletal style of GNU/Linux is very appealing (I'd prefer to be given an OS with the basic applications I need to do what I need and to add things manually later without a lot of alert or having the OS try to hold my hand).

[ladlers]

I suggest you reinstall and copy lilo to your sda3 partition.