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chrisdb

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 155

/efi mounted in XFCE

Hello,

My system is running on UEFI.
Yesterday, while the system was shutting down, I got the following message:

A stop job is running for umount /efi

Now I was wondering, is it necessary for the efi system partition to be mounted when the Desktop Environment is started?
I thought this was only necessary for the system to startup.

Below some extra info.

lsblk output:

sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   260M  0 part /efi
├─sda2   8:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0 306.7G  0 part 
├─sda4   8:4    0   412G  0 part /
├─sda5   8:5    0    12G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda6   8:6    0 200.6G  0 part 

/etc/fstab

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/sda4
UUID=d4037c62-b86c-4045-b103-701faa1660a4	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime	0 1

# /dev/sda1
UUID=7333-C077      	/efi      	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# /dev/sda5
UUID=ae13866e-7f9d-4e25-a231-54af3504c47f	none      	swap      	defaults  	0 0

If I set the /efi partition to 'noauto' in fstab, will my system still start?

thx

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A.E.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,425

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

Yes, as I assume you are using GRUB or refind, the only time you'd have to actively mount it would be if you intended to update GRUB or change GRUB configuration.

The EFI partition is only there to give your firmware an accessible spot to get EFI executables. Once that EFI executable is executed and can do it's job, the partition doesn't matter anymore. If one were to not use GRUB (or refind) or any other boot loader that does not support loading the kernel from a linux file system,  you'd have some more incentive to keep it mounted, as kernel updates and the resulting initramfs have to be generated on to the EFI partition to be accessible.

Last edited by V1del (2019-04-03 20:04:50)

chrisdb

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 155

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

Thx for your answer V1del.
Indeed, I use GRUB.

This entry was probably created during installation.
So if I understand correctly, this entry isn't even necessary in the /etc/fstab file?

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Failure is success in progress.
A.E.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,425

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

Yes, once the system gets to a point where it would read your fstab, whatever needs to happen with regards to the EFI partition has already happened.

However you can of course keep it with noauto added, that way when you actually want to change something on the EFI partition you can just call mount /efi (without having to specify the partition/filesystem)

Last edited by V1del (2019-04-04 13:39:39)

mmdamin

Member

From: Iran

Registered: 2019-02-19

Posts: 205

Website

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

keep your /efi in fstab without noauto, it's required while you are upgrading your system.
I've added noauto to my fstab, then I forgot to mount /efi before upgrade, then new kernel modules installed, and the kernel itself not, and I wasn't able to boot system.
I've reinstalled kernel when /efi is mounted.

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V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,425

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

it is not required, this situation occurs if your ESP is on /boot...

Last edited by V1del (2019-04-04 21:04:53)

chrisdb

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 155

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

Yes, once the system gets to a point where it would read your fstab, whatever needs to happen with regards to the EFI partition has already happened.

However you can of course keep it with noauto added, that way when you actually want to change something on the EFI partition you can just call mount /efi (without having to specify the partition/filesystem)

Is there any way to add this 'noauto' option during creation of /'etc/fstab' with the 'genfstab' tool?

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Failure is success in progress.
A.E.

mmdamin

Member

From: Iran

Registered: 2019-02-19

Posts: 205

Website

Re: /efi mounted in XFCE

You should add it by hand. just open /etc/fstab by any editor and append noauto to its options.
you can pipe genfstab with 'sed' and use RegExp to append noauto, also.

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