Arch Linux

Philcov

Member

Registered: 2022-04-01

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Can't install boot loader: EPS full, cleaning GRUB manually

Hello everyone,
First time user here. I'm trying to install Arch Linux on my Windows laptop in dual boot, but I'm incurring in some problems. At the end of the day all is left to install is a bootloader, but apparently there is no room for that on my ESP.

The first attempt I made was to trying to install grub after mounting the already existing Windows EFI partition on /mnt/boot. At time of installing, grub-install would fail declaring that the /boot/grub/x86_64-efi folder/file doesn't exist. It turns out it doens't exists because there is no room to create it.

Indeed checking with

 df |grep /boot 

returned 100% usage. Checking with

 efibootmgr -v 

, GRUB doens't appear, so I let it be. Now the idea was to create an Extended Boot Loader partition and boot with systemd-boot. The problem is that the partition is 100% full, therefore off-loading the kernel doens't help and also bootctl fails in the same way.

The clear solution would be to extend the EFI partition, but the Windows protected partition locks it and I would like not to mess with it. On the other side, the EPS (now mounted on /efi/) contains some files, which to me don't look related to Windows (which I believe grub-install created) and could be deleted to leave some room for systemd-boot.

I would really appreciate if you could tell me if this idea is correct, and how to remove such files safely. I note that the folder /efi/grub is empty, as well as /efi/EFI/grub. Otherwise alternative strategies would be much appreciated.
Here are some outputs:

 
# efibootmgr -v 
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 2001,0003,2002,2003
Boot0000* USB HDD: SanDisk        PciRoot(0x0)/Pci.......... (this is the USB with arch iso)
Boot0002* Network Boot-IPV6
Boot0003* Windows Boot Manager    ........
Boot2001* EFI USB Device
Boot2002* EFI/CDROM RC
Boot2003* EFI Network RC

# ls /efi
.
..
EFI
'System Volume Information'
grub
initramfs-linux-fallback.img
initramfs-linux.img
vmlinuz-linux

Thank you for your time.

Philcov

Last edited by Philcov (2022-04-02 07:07:42)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,659

Re: [SOLVED] Can't install boot loader: EPS full, cleaning GRUB manually

Remove/move the vmlinuz-linux and initramfs* files to your extended boot partition (alternatively drop  the extended boot partition idea, stay on GRUB and rely on it's capability to read kernels off of a linux file system by moving those to /boot on your root partition and reinstalling GRUB into /efi and rerunning grub-mkconfig - this latter method might have some additional stipulations if your root resp. /boot is encrypted, if you are set on the extended boot partition idea then it doesn't strictly matter whether you use GRUB or systemd-boot both can read it)

Last edited by V1del (2022-04-01 10:41:35)

Philcov

Member

Registered: 2022-04-01

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Can't install boot loader: EPS full, cleaning GRUB manually

Thank you very much. I ended up using systemd-boot with the Extended Boot Loader, by moving the files. I already made the partition and the wiki was clear on how to use that). Anyway it worked perfectly, I should have written 7 hours ago). Thanks again.

Philcov

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,659

Re: [SOLVED] Can't install boot loader: EPS full, cleaning GRUB manually

Glad to hear please mark as [SOLVED] by editing the title in your first post, might have to shorten it a little, but just to notify people that there might be a solution here.