Couldn't find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot or /efi

[stubbo66]

I have just finished converting my installation from grub to boot from EFI, and everything seems fine, I just have one niggling message that I can't seem to find the fix for.

Before I start, I should say I have a pair of zfs mirrored 500GB boot drives, both with BIOS Boot, EFI and ZFS partitions, so expecting proxmox to keep them both healthy and bootable if I lose one of them.

If I run

bootctl

I get the following output

Couldn't find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot or /efi.
Alternatively, use --esp-path= to specify path to mount point.
System:
      Firmware: UEFI 2.40 (American Megatrends 5.11)
 Firmware Arch: x64
   Secure Boot: disabled (disabled)
  TPM2 Support: yes
  Boot into FW: supported


Current Boot Loader:
      Product: systemd-boot 252.22-1~deb12u1
     Features: ✓ Boot counting
               ✓ Menu timeout control
               ✓ One-shot menu timeout control
               ✓ Default entry control
               ✓ One-shot entry control
               ✓ Support for XBOOTLDR partition
               ✓ Support for passing random seed to OS
               ✓ Load drop-in drivers
               ✓ Support Type #1 sort-key field
               ✓ Support @saved pseudo-entry
               ✓ Support Type #1 devicetree field
               ✓ Boot loader sets ESP information
          ESP: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/96473510-6563-4482-9c09-7cf8964116ad
         File: └─/EFI/SYSTEMD/SYSTEMD-BOOTX64.EFI


Random Seed:
 Passed to OS: no
 System Token: not set


Boot Loaders Listed in EFI Variables:
        Title: Linux Boot Manager
           ID: 0x0003
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/96473510-6563-4482-9c09-7cf8964116ad
         File: └─/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi


        Title: Linux Boot Manager
           ID: 0x0001
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/b6958877-8e93-428a-8c97-66cd0b4a65a4
         File: └─/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi


        Title: UEFI OS
           ID: 0x0004
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/b6958877-8e93-428a-8c97-66cd0b4a65a4
         File: └─/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI


        Title: UEFI OS
           ID: 0x0005
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/96473510-6563-4482-9c09-7cf8964116ad
         File: └─/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

The first line of which tells me it can't find the EFI system partition. Now clearly the system has booted and is running, but something has gone awry slightly.

running

efibootmgr -v

give the following

BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,0001,0004,0005,0000,0002,0006,0007
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager  VenHw(99e275e7-75a0-4b37-a2e6-c5385e6c00cb)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}....................
Boot0001* Linux Boot Manager    HD(2,GPT,b6958877-8e93-428a-8c97-66cd0b4a65a4,0x800,0x200000)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi)
Boot0002* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive     BBS(129,,0x0)
Boot0003* Linux Boot Manager    HD(2,GPT,96473510-6563-4482-9c09-7cf8964116ad,0x800,0x200000)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi)
Boot0004* UEFI OS       HD(2,GPT,b6958877-8e93-428a-8c97-66cd0b4a65a4,0x800,0x200000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI)..BO
Boot0005* UEFI OS       HD(2,GPT,96473510-6563-4482-9c09-7cf8964116ad,0x800,0x200000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI)..BO
Boot0006* UEFI:Removable Device BBS(130,,0x0)
Boot0007* UEFI:Network Device   BBS(131,,0x0)

Everything I think looks normal.

I've re-run

proxmox-boot-tool reinit

and

proxmox-boot-tool refresh

to see if that fixed it, but no change.

If I CD to the /boot folder and ls I get no contents.

But then I did system updates, it wrote a hole load of new files into that /boot folder including new efi and grub folders, which are of no use as that's just a folder on the file system and not one of the boot drives.

I had previously manually mounted one of the disks to /boot and the error disappears from bootctl, but manually mounting it is not the answer.

Is this fixable, or in a mirrored drive scenario is this normal?

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

The ESPs (efi system partitions) are not mounted on purpose:

The ESPs are not kept mounted during regular operation. This helps to prevent filesystem corruption to the vfat formatted ESPs in case of a system crash, and removes the need to manually adapt /etc/fstab in case the primary boot device fails.

from https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-sysadmin.html#sysboot_proxmox_boot_tool

I hope this helps!

 

[stubbo66]

Thanks.

I did an update through Proxmox and it did end up writing into that boot folder, except that was going to be completely ignored as obviously the real boot data is not mounted there.

Is it safe for me to clear out the /boot folder...here is what ended up in there..

-rw-r--r--  1 root root   280334 Apr  5 12:03 config-6.5.13-5-pve
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root        2 Mar 31 02:59 efi
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root        4 Apr 15 13:00 grub
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 68117320 Apr 15 13:05 initrd.img-6.5.13-5-pve
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   138712 Feb 11  2023 memtest86+ia32.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   139776 Feb 11  2023 memtest86+ia32.efi
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   144312 Feb 11  2023 memtest86+x64.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   145408 Feb 11  2023 memtest86+x64.efi
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root        6 Apr  9 20:40 pve
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  7978656 Apr  5 12:03 System.map-6.5.13-5-pve
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 13560936 Apr  5 12:03 vmlinuz-6.5.13-5-pve