EFI System - partition problems

[tux4me]

I have a growing number of EFI-System patitions, and some free space in 2 places,
on a single 1 TB harddrive.

I have a Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 with Windows 8 as Dual boot.

I have installed Fedora 18 a couple of times, and now Fedora 19.
I have done clean installs from dvd every time.

It seems that both auto and manual partition, leaves a EFI-System partition behind.

Now i could need some help, to manually identify and remove the EFI-System partitions,
that is not used by either Windows or Fedora.

It came with 4 or 5 partitions from new, now i have 15 partitions, and 2 times "free space".

As i understand it, Fedora makes
/boot
/boot/efi
/
/home
swap

so i should have a max of 10 partitions, including Windows and Lenovo partitions.
(hope i make sense)

Here is some info from "parted print"

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  1050MB  1049MB  ntfs         Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 2      1050MB  1322MB  273MB   fat32        EFI system partition          boot, hidden
 3      1322MB  2371MB  1049MB  fat32        Basic data partition          hidden
 4      2371MB  2505MB  134MB                Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 5      2505MB  479GB   476GB   ntfs         Basic data partition
 8      479GB   479GB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot
 9      479GB   479GB   210MB   ext4
11      479GB   479GB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot
10      479GB   480GB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot
13      480GB   480GB   524MB   ext4
12      480GB   480GB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot
14      481GB   481GB   210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition          boot
15      481GB   952GB   471GB                                              lvm
 6      952GB   979GB   26.8GB  ntfs         Basic data partition
 7      979GB   1000GB  21.5GB  ntfs         Basic data partition          hidden, diag

Thanks

[srs5694]

I have done clean installs from dvd every time.

It seems that both auto and manual partition, leaves a EFI-System partition behind.

If that's really the installer's default behavior, then it's a bug.

Now i could need some help, to manually identify and remove the EFI-System partitions,
that is not used by either Windows or Fedora.

Check all of them for a directory called EFI/Microsoft. Any with such a directory is probably being used by Microsoft. Given that your /dev/sda2 is a FAT32 partition and the others in your list are all FAT16, it's likely that /dev/sda2 is used by Windows and the others were all created by Fedora. (Fedora's installer tends to create FAT16 ESPs by default, but the Windows installer creates a FAT32 ESP. Technically, the ESP must be FAT32, so the Linux ESPs aren't really valid.)

On the Linux side, check your current installation's /etc/fstab file. It will probably refer to the ESP by its serial number ("UUID" in /etc/fstab), as in:

$ grep efi /etc/fstab
UUID=6063-D3B6   /boot/efi   vfat   fmask=0133,dmask=0022,shortname=winnt 0 0

You need to identify the filesystem with that serial number. This is easily done with blkid and grep:

# blkid | grep 6063-D3B6
/dev/sda1: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="6063-D3B6" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="f9f7c892-87b9-42bc-a69d-d327f84180ab"

This identifies /dev/sda1 as the current ESP for Fedora. (This example was taken from my own system; it will of course be different for you.)

My own recommendation is to consolidate any and all of your Fedora ESPs into just one, which should be the same as your Windows ESP. The ESP is meant to be shared across OSes. Although the EFI spec is quite explicit that multiple ESPs are permissible, the Windows installer has the unfortunate habit of flaking out if it finds multiple ESPs. (Hence my reaction earlier -- creating new ESPs unnecessarily just creates problems.) To consolidate ESPs, you'll need to mount both of them and copy all its files from the one you intend to delete to the one you intend to keep. You'll then need to adjust /etc/fstab to refer to the one you intend to keep. Lastly, if you want to keep GRUB (or whatever boot manager you're using) as the primary boot manager, you'll need to use "efibootmgr" to tell your firmware to use it from its new location, as in:

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 2 -l '\EFI\fedora\shim.efi' -L Fedora

Note you may need to adjust these options; consult the efibootmgr man page for details. Also, if you've disabled Secure Boot, you may need to refer to grubx64.efi rather than shim.efi. If all this seems too scary, though, just drop down to two ESPs. If you need to re-install Windows, you can temporarily change your second ESP's type code to keep Windows from flaking out.

As i understand it, Fedora makes
/boot
/boot/efi
/
/home
swap

so i should have a max of 10 partitions, including Windows and Lenovo partitions.
(hope i make sense)

Actually, your setup uses LVM, so the root (/), /home, and swap are all logical volumes in one partition (your /dev/sda15). Your /dev/sda9 and /dev/sda13 look like they're probably /boot partitions from two installations. You can figure out which is current by examining /etc/fstab and using blkid, much as you did to identify the ESPs. I recommend examing both partitions' contents, though, and checking for their UUIDs and device filenames in /etc/fstab; it's conceivable that one of them has some other purpose.

Your system has four NTFS partitions, an ESP, an unidentified FAT32 partition (probably created by your computer manufacturer), and a Microsoft Reserved partition. That's seven for the system and Windows. Adding the LVM and /boot partitions makes nine.

GPT can handle up to 128 partitions by default, and that value can be raised, if necessary. Thus, you're nowhere near the technical limits of GPT. Of course, you probably don't want to sift through a list of 128 partitions to try to figure out what they all are, so keeping the number to something reasonable makes sense.

Once you delete your unneeded ESPs (and old /boot partition, if that's what the extra ext4 partition is), you'll have one or two blocks of free space. They won't amount to a lot of space, though -- a bit over 1GiB at most. You could create new partition(s) and add them to your LVM, or expand the LVM to cover that space. Either option can be a bit tricky, and especially expanding the LVM, if that's what you choose to do. Tools like system-config-lvm can help, but you should consult LVM documentation to learn what to do.

Here is some info from "parted print"

In the future, please use code tags rather than quote tags when including the output from text-mode programs. Code tags preserve the monospace formatting of the original text, whereas quote tags don't. Quote tags therefore degrade legibility of things like parted output.

[tux4me]

Thanks for a detailed and fast answer, and sorry about using Quote tags, it was an error

I will try to identify the partitions when i get home, later today.

Since F19 i just move the partitions from old install to the new, and reformat everyone except /home,
but i cant say for sure if that left me with an unused ESP, too.

The Windows / Lenovo setup is using "one key recovery" since i dont have any Optical drive in the laptop, (using external for Fedora) i just press a key and Windows is restored, from all those partitions.

Secure boot seems to be disabled in F19, where i had to disable it manually in F18, but its on in the BIOS.
I guess i should treat secure boot as "disabled" when working in Fedora.

Thanks again, i will get back later tonight, when im home.

[tux4me]

I went for the easy solution, just to delete unused partitions.

First i ruled out partitions, based on labels and filesystem

Windows

/dev/sda1: LABEL="WINRE_DRV" 	UUID="E23A83513A832221" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="41068d9a-d3ea-4c3b-8091-4b2120188142" 
/dev/sda2: LABEL="SYSTEM_DRV" 	UUID="CE83-FFDC" TYPE="vfat" 	PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="4f11dd8b-e697-46d2-9396-8a5a7a05986f" 
/dev/sda3: LABEL="LRS_ESP" 	UUID="8C67-DBA3" TYPE="vfat" 	PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="e4b53d8a-6413-49be-ad39-a0252387e1c4" 
/dev/sda4: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="ab50b8e1-051a-4575-b296-a8c195547e02" 
/dev/sda5: LABEL="Windows8_OS" 	UUID="C48E87818E876B2E" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="5ff083a9-808e-4a87-b3e0-2b6f53dc5b2a" 
/dev/sda6: LABEL="LENOVO" 	UUID="9C926D1C926CFBE0" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="fb34a054-0ead-4776-b9c2-5d1042d446b4" 
/dev/sda7: LABEL="PBR_DRV" 	UUID="984E6E934E6E6A48" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="0b5bcd2a-d2a6-478a-8360-69c2ad009da8" 

Linux (fstab)

/dev/sda11: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="8514-251E" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="a45651ae-e200-4334-9e65-cbbe6d3fedcc" 
/dev/sda13: UUID="2e09cb4d-3134-4b34-95dc-c2b7b1302676" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="313d4035-a534-41bc-8c84-3f67c4f80981" 
/dev/sda15: UUID="igQXUC-lN3t-oYb9-lnQh-c6q7-Et4z-SyvfDN" TYPE="LVM2_member" PARTUUID="d8b95395-161a-4762-a6df-4a95512f4ef1"

Then i mounted the rest

ERROR wrong size ..... on the ext4 partition

/dev/sda9: UUID="6ce9c55d-2e9c-47db-8f57-ae830cb1dbc1" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="575df107-08ff-4217-aa83-d966b861a6e4" 

And the 4 remaining ESP partitions, had all "/EFI/fedora" 

/dev/sda8:  SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="E4E0-FC6F" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="07ca696e-0537-4047-9cc9-50267bb27a7c" 
/dev/sda10: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="5B89-8938" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="525f51aa-6687-4215-b859-a430fc244fd9" 
/dev/sda12: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="8B52-7E7E" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="85f879ec-4a28-4be3-8c2a-7bacb5c5decf" 
/dev/sda14: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="06FC-D1AB" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="dbb6ce99-67c9-47bd-887b-a20d2d284a63"

And desided to just delete them.
Windows 8 and Fedora 19 still works as normal

This has to be a bug in the installer, but i will pay attention to partitions, on next install

Thanks a lot for a nice detailed answer / help on this subject !

[srs5694]

FWIW, I did an install of Fedora 19 in VirtualBox, with a prepared FAT32 ESP. It did not try to create a duplicate ESP. Thus, I suspect there's something about the options you used that caused duplicate ESPs to be created. That's not to say it's your fault, just that the bug likely exists only in some situations; or it could be poor prompting that led you to make incorrect selections in the installer.

Anyhow, I'm glad you uncluttered your partition table a bit. Even though that space is now unallocated, it will now be a bit easier to use if/when you need to do so.

[tux4me]

Now i think of it, the first time i installed F18 on this notebook, it ended up messing with Win8 so i had to make a recovery of Win8, and then install F18 again, this time without problems.

Maybe the case is, when one got Windows 8, fedora dont work from Windows boot menu,
i have to start from a bios boot menu, and select boot menu->fedora. (fedora 18 ).
Maybe a 2nd ESP is created in that case, since Windows exists in fedora boot menu.
(and also dont work, F18)
Lucky me, that this notebook have a special button for that, other than the power button.

I went with "auto partition" the first few times, fedora 18, backing up /home, until fedora 19,
where i started to use the manual partition, 2 times, where i might have messed up the first time,
but im pretty sure, that i moved all partitions from old install, to new install tree, and did check
reformat options on all, but the /home partition.

So you are right, i cant really say it has to be a bug in the installer, but probably my own fault

Notebook, ESP, Secure boot, etc. is all news to me, so at least i learn it the hard way

btw. yes, i now have 3 times un-allocated space, which i just let be, unless there is a way to combine those 3 spaces into one free space, like moving partitions or something.
Seems like i need to do some reading, in gerneral
(human update)