Kernel Upgrade and EFI Partition Questions?

General Discussion
1

Is Clear Linux supposed to update to latest kernel after upgrade? This is what I observed until around a month ago.

I am now booting with 6.8.4-1422, which is the latest version displayed by the Boot Loader (dracut?).

root@dell-clr/usr/lib/kernel # uname -a
Linux dell-clr 6.8.4-1422.native #1 SMP Thu Apr  4 12:05:11 PDT 2024 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The latest kernel version on my system is 6.8.7-1429 (am I looking at the correct location?)

root@dell-clr/usr/lib/kernel # ls -l vmlinux-6.8.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77783544 Mar 27 05:43 vmlinux-6.8.2-1420.native
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77783504 Apr 17 06:22 vmlinux-6.8.4-1422.native
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77787624 Apr 17 06:50 vmlinux-6.8.6-1426.native
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77787824 Apr 20 07:45 vmlinux-6.8.7-1427.native
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77782568 Apr 24 07:40 vmlinux-6.8.7-1428.native
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77782568 Apr 27 07:33 vmlinux-6.8.7-1429.native

An issue possibly related, Clear Linux seems to be unable to mount the EFI partition (again, am I using the correct commands?)

root@dell-clr/usr/lib/kernel # bootctl list
Couldn't find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot or /efi.
Alternatively, use --esp-path= to specify path to mount point.
root@dell-clr/usr/lib/kernel # systemctl start boot.mount
Failed to start boot.mount: Unit boot.mount not found.

I can manually mount the partition, but need to make sure Clear Linux can mount it.

Are such info documented? I did not go through all Clear Linux documentation, but Google did not return good result. I got the above commands from old forum posts.

I am dual-booting with Win11. Understand this is not supported. But want to know the correct behaviour.

I don’t demand always switching to the latest kernel, and am happy to stay with what Clear Linux thinks is the best. Just want to make sure things are normal.

2

we manage the UEFI space with “clr-boot-manager”… which will mount /boot and manage it as part of its operation. It has a manpage to start reading about

3

$ ls -la /usr/lib/kernel/default-native
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 apr 21 01:01 /usr/lib/kernel/default-native → org.clearlinux.native.6.8.7-1428

that’s the default kernel we would WANT to boot. 'clr-boot-manager update" is supposed to “make it so”

if it’s not that’s a bug of sorts

4

Do you have any files in the /boot (mount point) directory?
If so, systemd-gpt-auto-generator will not create the boot.mount unit,
which will cause issues with clr-boot-manager amongst others.

$ sudo systemctl status boot.mount
â—‹ boot.mount - EFI System Partition Automount
     Loaded: loaded (/run/systemd/generator.late/boot.mount; generated)
     Active: inactive (dead)
      Where: /boot
       What: /dev/disk/by-diskseq/9-part2
       Docs: man:systemd-gpt-auto-generator(8)
$ sudo touch /boot/a_file
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl status boot.mount
Unit boot.mount could not be found.
1 Like
5

Thank you for pointing out clr-boot-manager. This immediately pinpointed the issue: my boot partition (150MB) is out of space. BTW, this seems to be the default size created by the installer (Default partition schema)

Luckily the boot partition is next to the swap partition. I can probably resize that with low risk of losing data.

6

More on this particular case here:

7

If boot.mount can start properly, then clr-boot-manager update should cleanup the old kernels and you shouldn’t be running out of space.