Pahvo-21.1.5-gnome - EFS partition Size minimun 300 MiB warning

Support
1

Hello,

I am trying to do a dual installation of manjaro on windows10 Lenovo Thinkpad.
The secure boot is turned off and trying to load the manjaro OS from the USB.

Got a warning on the installation step of creating partition stated as " the EFI filesystem should be atleast 300MiB in size and the system may fail to start if not done".

Can I ignore this warning and proceed or extend the /boot/EFI size ? please advise

current size of /boot/efi is 260MiB

2

You can ignore the warning. We’ve got members here at the forum with even smaller EFI system partitions than that.

It’s just that the official recommendation is 512 MiB, and that’s why you’re getting that warning.

3

Then why does the automated install option set efi partition to 300MiB? :thinking:

4

I guess because 300 MiB is more than enough ─ we’ve got members whose ESP is only 100 MiB, but the recommendation in the documentation is 512 MiB. :man_shrugging:

I guess that warning should really be dismissed. :thinking:

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5

With multiple distros and multiple OSes, even a small 64MB ESP can house the boot loaders. Lots of Windows 10 systems use a 100MB ESP.

The only reason I can think for such large sizes (300MB+) is if you want to use the ESP to also store your kernels and initamfs’es. This is a must for systemd-boot + encrypted root.

It can add up, especially if you have multiple kernel versions installed, such as linux-510, linux514, linux515, etc.

  • one or more vmlinuz
  • one or more initramfs (and even more with the default additional fallback initramfs)
  • Intel or AMD microcode

In conclusion, I recommend all new users to set their ESP to a minimum of 500GB, because you just never know when you’ll need the extra space. :smirk:

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6

I should also mention, and I have no idea why, but some motherboards will not scan for boot loaders if the EFI is smaller than a certain threshold. In the case for an HP laptop I am familiar with, anything smaller than 100MB gets skipped. :man_shrugging: The laptop is unbootable (from the internal drive), unless I use a live USB to redo the ESP to at least 100MB.

Same exact files, same boot loaders, proper FAT32 and flag, it cannot boot if it’s 64MB or 99MB, but for some reason requires 100MB minimum. Maybe its fixed on recent firmware updates.

1 Like
7

thanks @Aragorn , it works fine after skipping the warning

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8

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