efibootmgr help

[Paul Cartwright]

On 08/28/2015 06:40 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> Due to many things, including UEFI, and GRUB being overly complicated,
> and each distro forking GRUB, and also not always keeping it up to
> date with upstream, there are many variations in GRUB behavior
> possible. So it's not necessarily the case a given grub.cfg contains
> menu entries for all kernels/distros on the system. It might contain
> only entries for a particular distribution.
well, I know when I installed fedora, grub had entries for windows 10
and 3 fedora kernels.
when I installed ubuntu after that, ubuntu became the default, and grub
had 3 entries for fedora, plus windows 10, plus ubuntu.
when I rebooted into fedora, and installed the latest kernel, THEN I had
issues with grub, because I didn't know how to update the grub that was
installed, and I didn't know how to update the fedora grub & have the
system use that to boot from.
>
> In my view, the concept of grub.cfg containing entries for other
> distros is fraught with peril, not least of which is that the wrong
> /etc/grub/default is read to create the entries for other distros.
> Also, kernel upgrades only cause one grub.cfg to get updated. So I
> really wish this whole automatic creation of other distro menu entries
> would go away and instead create a forwarding entry to all other
> grub.cfg's. That way the proper menu entry for a particular
> kernel+distro is always used.
every time you boot into a specific distro, update the system, and
install a new kernel, well, then grub needs to be updated. MY problem
is, I want to keep ubuntu updated, but I always want fedora grub to be
the default.. I don't think they thought about all these situations when
they created grub...
>
> And this explanation is courtesy of how overly complicated it is. How
> it actually works at a code level, just look at grub.cfg - it reads
> like a bash script. It's not just a boot configuration file anymore.
> It's simultaneously impressive and annoying.
yes, I've edited the grub when I boot, to change an entry to a newer
kernel that grub didn't know about. It isn't fun.
>
>>> >>
>>> >> UEFI loads and runs shim.efi, which is identified in the UEFI boot
>>> >> list.  shim.efi loads and runs grubx64.efi.  grubx64.efi loads its
>>> >> configuration file, then loads and runs a Linux kernel (or Windows).
>>> >> The kernel runs /sbin/init on its root filesystem.
>>> >>
>>>> >>>   , whatever they are.. except there
>>>> >>> is no shimx64.efi ...
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> -rwx------ 1 root root 1293304 Feb 17  2015 shim.efi
>>>> >>> -rwx------ 1 root root 1287032 Feb 17  2015 shim-fedora.efi
>>> >>
>>> >> The full path relative to the system partition is
>>> >> "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi".  It's in a different directory than the
>>> >> Fedora-installed shim.efi.
>> > I just mounted my ubuntu "/" partition and.... /boot/efi was... empty.
>> > I'm pretty sure it was there when I booted ubuntu.. oh wait... /boot/efi
>> > is a separate partition..  but it is already mounted, and it is fedora,
>> > not ubuntu... arg....
> Yet another absurdity is this OCD on Linux with persistently mounting
> shit that doesn't need to be mounted. No other OS does this with the
> EFI System partition. In my opinion it's sloppiness+laziness that we
> do this instead of mounting it dynamically on demand only when it's
> necessary and then promptly umount it - which should be rather rare.
this is beyond my ...current knowledge:)
>
> In a previous email some information you posted indicated the EFI
> System partition was sda8, which makes me wonder if there's more than
> one ESP on this drive. On an out of the box Windows 8.1 system I had,
> it was sda2 and Fedora reused that rather than making a new ESP. More
> than one ESP can also be confusing for the user, and might trigger
> bugs even though it's permitted in the UEFI spec.
I thought I had my partitions written down, so I would know what I had
where... but this /boot/efi and /EFI/fedora & /EFI/ubuntu has totally
screwed my mind up.
I am running fedora, but I mounted my ubuntu partition to look at the
EFI/ubuntu folder but.... it wasn't there.

-- 
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux User #367800 and new counter #561587