Arch Linux

NUE2LAX

Member

Registered: 2016-05-01

Posts: 2

Can't install bootctl, says File system "/boot" is not a FAT ESP

Hi there,

This is my first time to install and configure Arch Linux from scratch on my SSD in UEFI. Probably I just missed something, but I have followed the beginner's guide several times and I get stuck at the same point all the time.

So I created and formatted my SSD to basically have a 512MB Fat32 ESP, which is mounted to /boot,
a 64 GB swap drive,
a 20 GB root ext4 partition,
the rest is /home, also ext4.

According to gdisk the code for the EFI partition is EF00.

This seems to be the correct value as stated in the beginner's guide.

Nevertheless, whenever I try to install bootctl I get an error message:
File system "/boot" is not a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) file system.

Any idea what I could possibly do wrong?

Thanks for your help!
Ben

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,609

Website

Re: Can't install bootctl, says File system "/boot" is not a FAT ESP

Post the output of 'mount' and 'wipefs /dev/sda /dev/sda1' (replace "/dev/sda1" with the identifier for your ESP, and "/dev/sda" with the disk that the ESP resides on).

Note that, although scary in name, wipefs doesn't wipe the filesystem unless you pass additional flags; without these flags, it tells you which filesystems the partition thinks it has on it. Check the man page for more information.

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Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,778

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Re: Can't install bootctl, says File system "/boot" is not a FAT ESP

So I created and formatted my SSD to basically have a 512MB Fat32 ESP, which is mounted to /boot,
a 64 GB swap drive,
a 20 GB root ext4 partition,
the rest is /home, also ext4.

According to gdisk the code for the EFI partition is EF00

Please post the full command output rather than vague descriptions of command output, for example:

# gdisk -l /dev/sda

whenever I try to install bootctl

Please post the exact command used rather than a vague description of the command used.

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

NUE2LAX

Member

Registered: 2016-05-01

Posts: 2

Re: Can't install bootctl, says File system "/boot" is not a FAT ESP

Thanks for the reply.

The mount output is quiet a lot to type. Anything specific I should look out for?

The wipefs output is:
offset: 0200
type: gpt [partition table]

offset: 0x52
type: vfat [filesystem]
UUID: CA45-E773

To create the partitions I used:
(parted) mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 513MiB
(parted) set 1 boot on

(parted) mkpart primary ext4 513MiB 20.5GiB
(parted) mkpart primary linux-swap 20.5GiB 84.5GiB
(parted) mkpart primary ext4 84.5GiB 100%

I used for the ESP
# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

And for root and home
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

For my swap drive I typed:
# mkswap /dev/sda3
# swapon /dev/sda3

Installing systemd-boot I typed:
# bootctl install

Which returned:
File system "/boot" is not a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) file system.

Hope this helps.

Thanks again.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 8,778

Website

Re: Can't install bootctl, says File system "/boot" is not a FAT ESP

The mount output is quiet a lot to type

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?ti … in_clients

Installing systemd-boot I typed:
# bootctl install

Which returned:
File system "/boot" is not a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) file system.

Immediately before running that command, look at the output of `lsblk` and check that /boot is mounted to /dev/sda1

EDIT: Also, please use code tags when posting terminal output.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-05-01 21:34:53)

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

netadmin

Member

Registered: 2016-04-28

Posts: 45

Re: Can't install bootctl, says File system "/boot" is not a FAT ESP

You may have already fixed this, but I had a similar issue with an m.2 ssd drive. It took me using gdisk/cgdisk to get pass the message you got. PARTED would not work for me on this particular setup. It always acted normal and failed at bootctl.

WARNING: These steps below are going to WIPE all data on the drive

# gdisk /dev/sda
# (gdisk) x for expert mode
# (gdisk) z to wipe
# (gdisk) Y to wipe MBR

# cgdisk /dev/sda
# cgdisk (NEW, default, 512MiB, EF00, boot)
# cgdisk (write/exit)

# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1

# mkdir /mnt/boot

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

I skipped all the sections of creating your other partitions and mounting and partitioning them.