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#1 2021-03-26 10:50:45

CheeseCrustery
Member
Registered: 2021-03-26
Posts: 4

Mount the EFI partition to /efi or /boot/efi for installing GRUB?

I want to install Arch and dual boot with Windows 10. Windows has already created a EFI partition, so my goal is to simply install GRUB on that partition.

The GRUB Manual states "On EFI systems for fixed disk install you have to mount EFI System Partition. If you mount it at /boot/efi then you don’t need any special arguments". According to the Arch Wiki though, "/efi is a replacement for the previously popular ESP mountpoint /boot/efi".

So where should I mount the ESP (EFI system partition) before executing "grub-install"? Does it make any difference?

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#2 2021-03-26 17:34:14

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,425

Re: Mount the EFI partition to /efi or /boot/efi for installing GRUB?

No it doesn't matter. The only time you'd need to actively mount the ESP is if you want to run grub-install again to update the installed GRUB

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#3 2021-04-05 04:05:31

LiNkz
Banned
Registered: 2020-11-25
Posts: 12

Re: Mount the EFI partition to /efi or /boot/efi for installing GRUB?

V1del wrote:

No it doesn't matter. The only time you'd need to actively mount the ESP is if you want to run grub-install again to update the installed GRUB

So it is just a mount point and we could name anything?

The way I read the wiki page about it, the article seems to imply it has to be named(sry whatever it says there my memory is shot).

Not that I want to name it something weird but just curious.

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#4 2021-04-05 04:15:06

kermit63
Member
Registered: 2018-07-04
Posts: 171

Re: Mount the EFI partition to /efi or /boot/efi for installing GRUB?

As V1del said, you can name it anything, as long as it is not an existing mount point. Also, make sure you use that name as the argument for --efi-directory when running the grub-install command.

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#5 2021-04-05 19:01:03

eschwartz
Fellow
Registered: 2014-08-08
Posts: 4,097

Re: Mount the EFI partition to /efi or /boot/efi for installing GRUB?

I used /tmp/esp but it's never ever been mounted since I first installed Arch. The efi partition is needed by the pre-boot environment, its job is to load an EFI executable (in this case grubx64.efi) that then does other things, like mount / to pivot into a full-fledged grub environment, and from there, read boot/grub/grub.cfg to initialize the system based on files like e.g. the kernel located on this grub-mounted disk. Eventually, it pivots into the actual Linux kernel.

Guides that assume you're using systemd-boot often forget that grub does not care where your efi system partition is. So they recommend you mount it to /boot simply because they think you somehow need to install your kernel to the ESP.


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