I installed ClearOS 7.4 on a new system originally containing Windows7. Installation went fine but after restarting the system I found the Windows boot manager was still there, posessing a small /dev/sda1 that was mounted to /boot/efi.
ClearOS starts up fine but a "reboot" command from a remote terminal does not restart the system. I assume this has to do with the boot manager.
I think I do not need a Windows boot manager on a ClearOS system and would like to remove the partition /dev/sda1 and the folder /boot/efi.
Would that be safe to do? It would save me the time for re-installing the system and all updates, etc., which is not really a big deal.
ClearOS starts up fine but a "reboot" command from a remote terminal does not restart the system. I assume this has to do with the boot manager.
I think I do not need a Windows boot manager on a ClearOS system and would like to remove the partition /dev/sda1 and the folder /boot/efi.
Would that be safe to do? It would save me the time for re-installing the system and all updates, etc., which is not really a big deal.
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Accepted Answer
Speaking without knowledge here, but if you did that I'd assume you'd need to reinstall grub2 from the rescue disk as you'll be wiping the boot sector as well as the hidden partitions. I am not sure that it is safe anyway as doesn't EFI need a hidden FAT type of partition to boot anyway?
My suggestion would to get the latest config backup either through the webconfig or from /var/clearos/configuration_backup, completely wipe the disc and re-install then do a configuration restore.
My suggestion would to get the latest config backup either through the webconfig or from /var/clearos/configuration_backup, completely wipe the disc and re-install then do a configuration restore.
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Accepted Answer
Before re-installing I did a quick check. It should be enough to delete the hidden EFI partition (fdisk clearly shows it) and re-install the MBR using
/sbin/grub2-install /dev/sda
However, that didn't work. Grub2 knows there is (has been) an EFI-partition somewhere and expects a file /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi/modinfo.sh which doesn't exist.
I assume you can force grub2-install to avoid doing this via --modules=.... but not knowing the exact names of the modules I decided to re-install anyway.
That brings me to a point that may be worth some attention. The ClearOS installer shows a list of existing partitions on the disk that are eligable for deletion. Normally you select them all and automatically install the ClearOS partition. However, on the list of original partitions the hidden EFI partition is not shown and thus will not be deleted. After installation you will still end up with an EFI boot manager, causing problems in my case, i.e. the reboot command will shutdown but not restart the system.
EFI and grub2 together on the same system is therefore not a good idea and I think it would be wise for the ClearOS installer to check whether an EFI partition exists, while it will not be visible during the installation process.
One more point: The EFI partition is quite stubborn, it will not be deleted by fdisk | d although fdisk does't report that. Using fdisk you need to make an entirely new gpt table (g command). This will empty the disk. -
Accepted Answer
I agree, Nick. It's probably not safe to delete the EFI partition and it could lead to quite some hassle with grub2. Not worth the effort, so I will wipe the disk and re-install. It's not the first time I face EFI problems. EFI is probably great on an all-EFI system but if half of your system still relies on BIOS you're in for trouble. I'll stick with BIOS for a while. Thanks for your answer.
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