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pip1726
Asked: 2020-12-02 23:09:06 +0800 CST

grub-install error. failed to register the EFI boot entry: Operation not permitted. mount: /var/lib/grub/esp: mount point does not exist

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grub-install fails to reinstall grub with:

Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
grub-install: warning: Internal error.
grub-install: error: failed to register the EFI boot entry: Operation not permitted.

I noticed while performing an upgrade which tries to upgrade the package grub-efi-amd64-signed. This gives a more informative error message:

Installing grub to /boot/efi.
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
grub-install: warning: Internal error.
grub-install: error: failed to register the EFI boot entry: Operation not permitted.
mount: /var/lib/grub/esp: mount point does not exist.

The system is trying to find the EFI partition on /var/lib/grub/esp

This is strange since my fstab looks correct,

/dev/sda7 has the boot flag and /dev/sda2 has the esp flag. I don't know why grub-install goes to /var/lib to try to find the efi partition. The error still persists even if I explicitly pass the directories to grub-install.

grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi/ --boot-directory=/boot/

Yes, I tried running boot repair. Got the following out: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/THG9p4YQgQ/

boot dual-boot partitioning grub-efi

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After turning off Fast Boot UEFI settings, the grub-install problem vanished. I also turned off Fast Boot from withing Windows itself as advised by @oldfred. grub-install works. However, when I upgrade the grub-efi-amd64-signed package, I still get the same /var/lib/grub/esp error:

    Setting up grub-efi-amd64-signed (1.142.9+2.04-1ubuntu26.7) ...
Installing grub to /boot/efi.
Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
mount: /var/lib/grub/esp: mount point does not exist.
dpkg: error processing package grub-efi-amd64-signed (--configure):
 installed grub-efi-amd64-signed package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 32
Errors were encountered while processing:
 grub-efi-amd64-signed

    After that, purging grub and reinstalling grub by running the following commands solved the grub-efi-amd64-signed installation issue.

    sudo apt-get purge grub\*
sudo apt-get install grub-efi
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo update-grub
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