Removing an EFI boot entry

Ephebopus

Hello, when I recently installed Solus I had to fix something using the efibootmgr application and took the opportunity to delete redundant entries of the ESP listed via sudo efibootmgr -b 0002 –B . As it stands they all disappeared from the firmware boot options currently presented when hitting f12 on startup, except for a Fedora entry. I've tried the above efibootmgr from my installed Solus as well as a live USB version and while it disappears from efibootmgr's list it reappears at the next reboot.

Since I dual boot win10 ( for the sake of one game and one old friendship ) I tried another bit of advice I found:
From an admin cmd: bcdedit /enum all and then with the Fedora boot entry UUID: bcdedit /delete { } and it disappears..but it still present when I reboot the machine and hit f12 for efi boot entries.

If it helps any then the output of bcdedit enum /all in windows calls both the "Linux Boot Manager" (solus) and "Fedora" entries "Firmware Application (address)" but they have different identifiers and different Paths: EFI/SYSTEMD/SYSTEMD-BOOTX64.EFI for Solus and /EFI/FEDORA/SHIM.EFI for the orphan Fedora entry. Those paths, as well as others of redundant boot entries are present on the file system of the ESP.

Any suggestions on how to get rid of the Fedora entry? : )

h3o

From your bios settings you should be able to delete the fedora entry from your boot list.

Ephebopus

h3o Hi, thanks for the suggestion. The BIOS boot options settings include a "boot priority" list from where the discussed entry can be removed. That's not helpful for the "f12 - show all detected boot entries including USB ones"-function however. That list cannot be affected from within the BIOS settings as far as I can tell. I don't think I've ever seen such an option either. And mentioned f12 menu is the Solus recommended way of choosing an OS to boot as far as I am aware.

h3o

Ephebopus no worries. Did you try to delete it from that list though? Pretty sure I've removed entries from there in the past so that they no longer show up on the F12 boot screen.

You can also try mounting your bootloader drive and remove the Fedora folder from the EFI directory, but i wouldn't think that would be necessary?

Ephebopus

h3o Hi, yes, I did. It's gone from the "Boot priority" list, which is the only editable list, and it does not affect the F12 list. In regards to mounting the ESP and deleting the folder..I have been tempted to "clean it out" this way, by deleting folders of dead (but not always gone : ) boot options but I wanted to make sure this issue wasn't something semi common first. So..is it advisable to try and physically delete folders that aren't in (or should be) in use on the ESP under /EFI/? (It "shouldn't" be necessary as there are other old system folders in the EFI folder that are not presented by efibootmgr or F12)

(My mainboard is a Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX)

(In addition: I realize this isn't strictly a Solus problem and I appreciate people trying to help anyway.)

h3o

Ephebopus I've done a lot of 'house-cleaning' on my boot partition before. That said, I'm not a sysadmin so can't say if I've been playing with fire or not. You could always just try 'moving' the Fedora EFI folder to another spot for now to see if it helps. I don't see how that would cause any issue with your current setup, but if so you could just as easily place it back to where it was.

Ephebopus

h3o Hi. Thanks, I tried it, and I also stumbled upon someone in a similar situation (immortal Fedora boot option) who had done the same thing: https://askubuntu.com/questions/348763/removing-entries-from-uefi-menu-with-efibootmgr , and it solved the issue : ) No more Fedora folder under /EFI/ on the ESP == no more Fedora boot entry at machine start. Fedora might be 'extra sticky' somehow, I don't know : )