Installer should detect small ESP in a dual boot

Bug #2064023 reported by Mario Limonciello
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
subiquity
New
Undecided
Unassigned
fwupd (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

If someone sets up Windows before Ubuntu, Windows will create an EFI system partition that gets reused by Ubuntu.

This is generally fine, but a major problem is that the EFI system partition is also where firmware updates are staged during a BIOS update.

If the ESP is too small, then the update won't be able to run. The command line fwupdmgr tool will show this type of message:

/boot/efi does not have sufficient space, required 93.2 MB, got 66.8 MB

This is a situation that should be handled at install time. If the ESP is too small to support updates later it should be resized or a new one created for Ubuntu to use.

Changed in fwupd (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Mario Limonciello (superm1) wrote :

And so it's clear how this size is determined by fwupd it's based on the size of the payload the system will be using (IE the SPI size):

https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd/blob/9713cead62e79da26d4c5637dd9682b21a9f0b21/plugins/uefi-capsule/fu-uefi-device.c#L635

The size is doubled because often the firmware updater will make a backup of the SPI to the ESP or will extract the payload while updating.

I think a reasonable default would be to ensure that there is 128MB of free space available to cover up to a 64Mb SPI part and a backup.

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