Arch Linux

E3LDDfrK

Member

Registered: 2019-10-24

Posts: 70

[SOLVED] Is /efi partition supposed to be empty after installation?

I tried to install Arch a few weeks ago on my Thinkpad T480s i5-8350U. Arch ISO was 2025.04.01. 

I tried using this partition scheme:

- /efi (/mnt/efi)
- [swap]
- / (/mnt root)

I did that because https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_sy … unt_points suggested /efi as one of the typical mount point. 

I followed the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide and I can chroot normally and mostly configure the system. But when I checked, I realized my /efi is empty, and stuff like initramfs-linux.img, vmlinuz-linux were inside /boot (/mnt/boot). So within the root partition not the EFI system partition /efi (/mnt/efi).

Ok, perhaps that's normal, and this way it won't overcrowd the EFI system partition /efi (/mnt/efi). But I then tried to configure booting from the EFI boot stub. The wiki page https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_bo … _boot_stub says that efibootmgr need the arguments with respect to the esp (EFI system partition). 
Their example was initrd=\EFI\arch\initramfs-linux.img for esp/EFI/arch/initramfs-linux.img.

I tried guessing the correct efibootmgr arguments but I failed to boot. I didn't have time back then so I decided to just mount the ESP as /boot and do it normally. It worked just fine.   

I'm not sure what to do, and it's hard to google.

I'm not sure if it's related but I also got these errors during installation:
1. The cloud-init "spam". It only happened once during the installation. Every time I boot the Arch ISO though. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=303999
2. When booting the ISO it hangs for a while. Like a few minutes. Before it lets me access the console. Something to do with systemd-resolved iirc but I lost my notes, I need to boot the Arch ISO again to find what it says back then. Anyways, I redownloaded the ISO and burned it to a different newly-bought USB drive, and it still happens. The hardware scan in bios and lenovo vantage says everything is ok.

Last edited by E3LDDfrK (2025-04-17 10:41:46)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,157

Re: [SOLVED] Is /efi partition supposed to be empty after installation?

The mkinitcpio hooks that generate the linux images to boot are generated into /boot by default, whether that is your ESP or a location on your root FS doesn't really matter and is determined by your choices.

If you want to do stub booting you will have less custom hassle by just mounting your ESP to /boot. E.g. on my system I mount the ESP to /efi , but that's because I'm using a bootloader that can load the kernel images off of my root FS and thus read /boot directly. So in my case the only EFI binary on the ESP is GRUB, which then reads vmlinuz-linux and initramfs-linux.img from /boot which is a normal directory on the root partition.

Last edited by V1del (2025-04-17 10:30:04)

E3LDDfrK

Member

Registered: 2019-10-24

Posts: 70

Re: [SOLVED] Is /efi partition supposed to be empty after installation?

Ok, thanks for the explanation. Basically:

1. If I want to do efistub booting with /efi ESP, then I need to change the mkinitcpio config, or possibly copy the boot files to /efi as https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_sy … unt_points suggests. 

2. Otherwise I need to use a bootloader that lives in ESP, like GRUB and possibly others. and it will (automagically) find my boot files in the root partition.

-----

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_sy … unt_points says:

> If you do not use one of the #Typical mount points, you will need to copy your boot files to ESP (referred to hereafter as esp).

The statement seems misleading, considering my 2 conclusions above. I could be wrong though.

Last edited by E3LDDfrK (2025-06-08 12:19:22)