Upgrade Leap 42.1 to 42.3 fails with 'No valid EFI partition'

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Upgrading Leap 42.1 to 42.3 on Novatech nspire laptop. Downloaded 42.3 to DVD then upgraded from there. Got 97% of way through then failed with msg:
‘Execution of cmd ““/usr/sbin/shim_install”,”-config-file=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg”]]” failed Exit code 1.
Error output: No valid EFI partition.’
Eventually decided to back off the change and restore 42.1.
This is the output from a df command in my 42.1 system:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 3.9G 260K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 3.9G 2.2M 3.9G 1% /run
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /.snapshots
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /srv
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/tmp
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/spool
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /usr/local
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/lib/mariadb
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/lib/named
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/lib/libvirt/images
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/lib/mysql
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/opt
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/lib/mailman
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/crash
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /opt
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/log
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /var/lib/pgsql
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /tmp
/dev/sda1 156M 4.6M 152M 3% /boot/efi
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi
/dev/sda3 41G 9.2G 31G 24% /boot/grub2/i386-pc
/dev/sda4 424G 26G 398G 7% /home

Shows existing system has /boot/efi partition.
How to prevent this error? Thanks.

2

Did you format EFI boot to FS other then FAT32??

GPT Disk partitioning??

Is the EFI boot partitioned marked as EFI boot or system boot?

Boot installer in EFI mode??

3

Thanks for quick reply.
I haven’t done any reformatting or editing of the partitions so the formats will be whatever the installer chooses as default. The EFI boot is FS FAT in 42.1.
It is GPT partitioning.
It is EFI boot (in 42.1).
Boot loader is GRUB2-EFI.

4

[QUOTE=Peter_UK;2837769]Downloaded 42.3 to DVD then upgraded from there.]/quote]
Did you upgrade offline or online? I.e. did you boot from DVD and selected update or added repository from DVD and used YaST or zypper under previous version?

‘Execution of cmd ““/usr/sbin/shim_install”,”-config-file=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg”]]” failed Exit code 1.
Error output: No valid EFI partition.’

The message is returned by shim-install if /boot/efi is not mounted. Where to look further depends on how you performed upgrade.

And please put computer output in code tags to make it readable.

5

[quote="“arvidjaar,post:4,topic:127712”]

I upgraded from the DVD and selected ‘update’. Other than selecting language (English UK) and a userid and password, I let the system choose everything else before starting the update process.

6

Are you absolutely sure that you booted in EFI mode? How initial screen looked like - with F1, F2 etc on the bottom or simple text menu without any additional decorations?

7

I don’t recall seeing any menu options at the bottom of the screen with the boot list on it. Due to having a touchpad on my laptop, I have to edit the kernel parms by hitting ‘E’ when the boot list appears. I add ‘i8042.noloop’ to the linuxefi parm. Because I’m seeing this efi parm and because my existing 42.1 system is using uefi, I’m assuming that the upgrade will boot in EFI mode. Also, when I upgraded from 13.2 to 42.1 there was no problem - it automatically used uefi. It sounds like you are about to tell me that I need to edit a bios parameter at startup?

8

You need to boot the installer in EFI mode not legacy.

9

Yes, it sounds like boot mode was correct. In this case it also sounds like installer bug. What would be interesting, is to switch to text terminal when this error appears (I think it is on tty2 - Ctrl-Alt-F2) and check current mounts. Unfortunately, I do not think I can realistically try to reproduce it any time soon.

As an option you could try online update.

Oh, and if you turn off Secure Boot (both in BIOS and in YaST) it should use grub2-install directly, which may work. You probably can turn them back on if desired later if update completes.

10

I went into BIOS and turned off secure boot and edited the dvd boot entry which gave an option with both ‘uefi’ and ‘dvd’ in the text description which I selected and then continued with the upgrade. This time it worked ok. On my machine, the bios boot entry only shows the option for uefi when the dvd is loaded in its tray. As bios menus are different on other systems, this is where some care is needed.