Arch Linux

dawnofman

Member

Registered: 2019-07-26

Posts: 140

[solved]installation guide conflicting info to mount boot in UEFI-mode

It seems there is conflicting information on the installation guide regarding to mounting the boot partition on UEFI systems:

- first: it states that you should create /whatever/efi/
- second: it states that you should mount on /whatever/boot/

From the installation guide:

Mount the file systems

Mount the root volume to /mnt. For example, if the root volume is /dev/root_partition:

# mount /dev/root_partition /mnt

Create any remaining mount points (such as /mnt/efi) using mkdir(1) and mount their corresponding volumes.

For UEFI systems, mount the EFI system partition:

# mount /dev/efi_system_partition /mnt/boot

I used to mount my EFI partition on /efi/ (not using /boot/ at all).

Now that I am in the process of installing a new system I wonder what is the latest fashion.

Last edited by dawnofman (2022-03-29 23:29:10)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: [solved]installation guide conflicting info to mount boot in UEFI-mode

It's completely up to you. Some people want to use the ESP as /boot in order to use simple boot managers like systemd-boot, others don't want their kernel and initramfs on FAT32 and are going to use a bootloader that has it's own filesystem drivers anyway to read other partitions.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,285

Re: [solved]installation guide conflicting info to mount boot in UEFI-mode

It doesn't matter to the operating system (from a "technical" perspective the ESP is only relevant during early boot and not touched for normal runtime operation) and depends on your needs/other decisions you'd be doing for the system.

It primarily boils down to whether you pick a boot loader that can load kernel images from a linux file system or not. So if you opt for systemd-boot or EFISTUB it leaves you with less other hassle to just mount it to /boot. if you decide to setup GRUB/REFIND which can load kernels from a linux file system you can keep the ESP on the smaller side and mount to an arbitrary different location. FWIW the foot note regarding the partitions mentions that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … le_layouts and you are somewhat expected to adapt examples you see in the guide towards your actual decision

dawnofman

Member

Registered: 2019-07-26

Posts: 140

Re: [solved]installation guide conflicting info to mount boot in UEFI-mode

It doesn't matter to the operating system (from a "technical" perspective the ESP is only relevant during early boot and not touched for normal runtime operation) and depends on your needs/other decisions you'd be doing for the system.

It primarily boils down to whether you pick a boot loader that can load kernel images from a linux file system or not. So if you opt for systemd-boot or EFISTUB it leaves you with less other hassle to just mount it to /boot. if you decide to setup GRUB/REFIND which can load kernels from a linux file system you can keep the ESP on the smaller side and mount to an arbitrary different location. FWIW the foot note regarding the partitions mentions that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Instal … le_layouts and you are somewhat expected to adapt examples you see in the guide towards your actual decision

Fine. My EFI volume looks like this:

ls -l --recursive /efi/;

drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 2019-07-15 15:57:38 EFI/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2022-02-11 18:35:56 loader/

./EFI:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2019-07-13 20:47:32 boot/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2022-02-11 18:23:14 boot-OS-arch-linux/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2019-07-15 15:57:38 boot-shells/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2019-07-13 21:16:18 Dell/

./EFI/boot:
total 288
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 97108 2019-07-13 20:47:32 bootx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 95530 2019-07-13 20:47:32 HashTool.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 96610 2019-07-13 20:47:32 loader.efi

./EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux:
total 51276
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 31534709 2022-01-25 19:29:06 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  9939021 2022-01-25 19:28:46 initramfs-linux.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    51200 2022-01-01 07:12:44 ucode-amd.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  4769792 2022-01-01 07:12:44 ucode-intel.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  6199680 2019-08-16 08:28:50 vmlinuz-linux
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      302 2019-07-13 22:25:22 vmlinuz-linux-about

./EFI/boot-shells:
total 1688
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 771136 2019-07-13 20:43:20 shellx64_v1.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 951744 2019-07-13 20:43:20 shellx64_v2.efi

./EFI/Dell:
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2019-07-13 21:16:18 BootOptionCache/

./EFI/Dell/BootOptionCache:
total 4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141 2019-07-13 21:16:18 BootOptionCache.dat

./loader:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2022-03-10 19:57:44 entries/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   91 2022-02-11 18:35:56 loader.conf

./loader/entries:
total 24
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 236 2022-03-10 00:00:00 OS-arch-linux-x86_64-without-processor-micro-code-updates.conf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 256 2022-03-10 00:00:00 OS-arch-linux-x86_64-without-processor-micro-code-updates.conf.fallback
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 281 2022-03-10 00:00:00 OS-arch-linux-x86_64-with-processor-micro-code-updates.conf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 301 2022-03-10 00:00:00 OS-arch-linux-x86_64-with-processor-micro-code-updates.conf.fallback
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  60 2019-07-15 15:59:02 shell-uEFI-1-x86_64.conf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  60 2019-07-15 15:59:16 shell-uEFI-2-x86_64.conf

With my /efi/loader/loader.conf as following:

default OS-arch-linux-x86_64-with-processor-micro-code-updates
console-mode max
timeout 10

And each entry somewhat as following:

title   arch-linux with processor micro-code updates
linux   /EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux/vmlinuz-linux
initrd  /EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux/ucode-intel.img
initrd  /EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux/initramfs-linux.img
options root=PARTUUID=9d944857-09cb-4984-a551-6f230f415838 ro ipv6.disable_ipv6=1

And my /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset as following:

# mkinitcpio preset file for the 'linux' package

ALL_config="/etc/mkinitcpio.conf"
ALL_kver="/efi/EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux/vmlinuz-linux"

PRESETS=('default' 'fallback')

#default_config="/etc/mkinitcpio.conf"
default_image="/efi/EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux/initramfs-linux.img"
#default_options=""

#fallback_config="/etc/mkinitcpio.conf"
fallback_image="/efi/EFI/boot-OS-arch-linux/initramfs-linux-fallback.img"
fallback_options="-S autodetect"

This is what I am using for a very long time and it suits me well.

When I rechecked the installation guide today I wondered whether I could run into trouble booting since for whatever reasons I did not upgrade my previous installation in almost two years so I decided to reinstall anew because pacman complained a lot when trying to download newer keys and after some hours of digging in the troubleshoot section of pacman-keys and some time in the forums it proved a waste of time to fix it.

So, thanks a lot for your quick clarification V1del !

dawnofman

Member

Registered: 2019-07-26

Posts: 140

Re: [solved]installation guide conflicting info to mount boot in UEFI-mode

It's completely up to you. Some people want to use the ESP as /boot in order to use simple boot managers like systemd-boot, others don't want their kernel and initramfs on FAT32 and are going to use a bootloader that has it's own filesystem drivers anyway to read other partitions.

Crystal-clear.

Thanks for your reply Scimmia !

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,285

Re: [solved]installation guide conflicting info to mount boot in UEFI-mode

Yes this is what I meant with "other hassle", but if that's something you decided for you to do then this is definitely a completely valid approach to doing it.