How to move EFI and boot partitions?

Question

I am in the midst of moving these two partitions from sda5 and sda6 to sda1 and sda2 respectively. This is to allow me to have a contiguous space for the root file system to grow. The following is what I have done so far:

• Create partition sda1 for EFI System with gdisk
• Create partition sda2 for boot with gdisk
• Copy content on sda5 to sda1 with dd
• Copy content on sda6 to sda2 with dd
• Remove boot flag on the old EFI System sda5 with parted

The following is what I have now (# parted -l):

Number  Start   End    Size    File system  Name                  Flags
 1      1049kB  211MB  210MB   fat16        EFI System            boot
 2      211MB   735MB  524MB   ext4         Microsoft basic data
 4      200GB   250GB  50GB
 5      250GB   250GB  210MB   fat16        EFI System Partition
 6      250GB   251GB  524MB   ext4
 7      251GB   481GB  230GB                                      lvm

Upon reboot, the boot menu that I was presented with is still tied to what is inside the old EFI System partition in sda5, despite turning off its boot flag. How to proceed further from here?

Answer 1

Just to share, this is what I have done:

There is no need to perform grub-install since all the files are already there. What needs to be done subsequently is to create a new boot option at the partition sda1 using the EFI boot manager and pointing to the shim.efi bootloader:

# efibootmgr -c -L Fedora -l \\EFI\\fedora\\shim.efi

Then check its boot position (refer to PARTUUID using blkid if not sure):

# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0004
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0004,0000,0002,0001
Boot0000* Fedora    HD(1,800,64000,<PARTUUID>)File(\EFI\fedora\shim.efi) <= NEW
...

and make sure that it is the first boot loader in the sequence:

# efibootmgr -o 0000,0002,0001,0004

For grub, what needs to be done is to change all instances of /boot location to point to the new partition:

# vi /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

....
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt6 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt6 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt6
....

Search and replace "gpt6" with "gpt2" (if /boot is moved from sda6 to sda2)

To prevent the OS from mounting the old /boot and /boot/efi partitions due to duplicate UUIDs, edit fstab:

# vi /etc/fstab

Replace the duplicate references of UUIDs with PARTUUID (if you are using GPT) or device node (e.g. /dev/sda1).

Reboot and you are done.

Answer 2

Use grub-install (most probably with no additional arguments) to add the new record; test that it's bootable; use efibootmgr -B to remove the old record (run with no args first to find the bootnum); Rod Smith's articles are much recommended.

Shameful plug: you might find my rescue image helpful in case something goes wrong.