Comment 4 for bug 2026310

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 03:39:48PM -0000, Mate Kukri wrote:
> I am somewhat concerned of doing a delete+write on the UEFI variable
> storage on existing systems for a cosmetic change. (older firmwares with
> questionable variable implementations really don't like deletion).

My understanding is that all of these historical problems actually came down
to bugs in the Linux kernel's UEFI variable handling, from an incomplete
understanding of how garbage collection of deleted variables worked; and I
am not aware of any issues with this for about a decade.

Every time someone reinstalls Ubuntu, they get a new boot entry written.
And there are no reports I'm aware of that this potentially bricks a system.

You have pointed out that grub includes code to minimize unnecessary nvram
writes. This is worthwhile regardless: nvram can be implemented in a way
that it has a limited number of write cycles over its lifetime. But it
doesn't mean we should be shy about fixing a bug in the boot entry that we
own, even if it's cosmetic.