unhelpful error message "grub-install: error: /boot/efi/ doesn't look like an EFI partition."

[Karl-Philipp Richter]

invoking `# LANG=C grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi/ /dev/sda` can cause the output

    Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
    grub-install: error: /boot/efi/ doesn't look like an EFI partition.

which should be

    Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
    grub-install: error: /boot/efi/ doesn't look like an EFI partition (fulfills criteria x, y, z, but not a).

That would make the application much more helpful and the implementation simply has to log what it already tested anyway. Critical errors should allways be very verbose (no matter which flags are specified, there's always the quiet flag which can be used or implemented).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: grub-efi 2.02~beta2-15
Uname: Linux 3.16.7-031607-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Nov 4 13:48:52 2014
SourcePackage: grub2
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Ｖ字龍(Vdragon) (vdragon)]

Last time I met this message is when I tried to made grub-install install file into /boot/efi but the directory is not a mountpoint(because the system is a template in VM and not ready to be deployed to physical system(may or may not use EFI BIOS))

Agreed the point that the error is not verbose enough to determine which particular cause could it be.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

This certainly would qualify as a "new feature" request. Setting to Wishlist.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This issue has sat incomplete for more than 60 days now. I'm going to close it as invalid. Please feel free re-open if this is still an issue for you. Thank you.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Further to above comment also closing Papercuts task.