Numerous boot options in `efibootmgr`Is this normal?

Ask Fedora
1 
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0010,0011,0012,0013,0014,0015,0016,001A,001B,001C,001D,001E,001F,0020,0021,0022,0001
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,d2bbb8d4-dff2-486d-8ad8-9d539d462d03,0x800,0x32000)/\EFI\fedora\grubx64.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d0000004d000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0001* Linux-Firmware-Updater	HD(1,GPT,d2bbb8d4-dff2-486d-8ad8-9d539d462d03,0x800,0x32000)/\EFI\fedora\fwupdx64.efi
Boot0010  Setup	FvFile(721c8b66-426c-4e86-8e99-3457c46ab0b9)
Boot0011  Boot Menu	FvFile(126a762d-5758-4fca-8531-201a7f57f850)
Boot0012  Diagnostic Splash Screen	FvFile(a7d8d9a6-6ab0-4aeb-ad9d-163e59a7a380)
Boot0013  Lenovo Diagnostics	FvFile(3f7e615b-0d45-4f80-88dc-26b234958560)
Boot0014  Asset Information	FvFile(da465b87-a26f-4c12-b78a-0361428fa026)
Boot0015  Regulatory Information	FvFile(478c92a0-2622-42b7-a65d-5894169e4d24)
Boot0016  ThinkShield secure wipe	FvFile(3593a0d5-bd52-43a0-808e-cbff5ece2477)
Boot0017  Startup Interrupt Menu	FvFile(f46ee6f4-4785-43a3-923d-7f786c3c8479)
Boot0018  Rescue and Recovery	FvFile(665d3f60-ad3e-4cad-8e26-db46eee9f1b5)
Boot0019  MEBx Hot Key	FvFile(ac6fd56a-3d41-4efd-a1b9-870293811a28)
Boot001A* USB CD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,86701296aa5a7848b66cd49dd3ba6a55)
Boot001B* USB FDD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,6ff015a28830b543a8b8641009461e49)
Boot001C* NVMe0	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,001c199932d94c4eae9aa0b6e98eb8a400)
Boot001D* USB HDD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,33e821aaaf33bc4789bd419f88c50803)
Boot001E* PXE BOOT	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,78a84aaf2b2afc4ea79cf5cc8f3d3803)
Boot001F* LENOVO CLOUD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,ad38ccbbf7edf04d959cf42aa74d3650)/Uri(https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/cdeploy/efi/boot.efi)
Boot0020* ON-PREMISE	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,ad38ccbbf7edf04d959cf42aa74d3650)/Uri()
Boot0021  Other CD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,aea2090adfde214e8b3a5e471856a35400)
Boot0022  Other HDD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,91af625956449f41a7b91f4f892ab0f600)
Boot0023* IDER BOOT CDROM	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(11,1)
Boot0024* IDER BOOT Floppy	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(11,0)
Boot0025* ATA HDD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,91af625956449f41a7b91f4f892ab0f6)
Boot0026* ATAPI CD	VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,aea2090adfde214e8b3a5e471856a354)

I don’t know if these are called boot options. I got a ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 and I recently update its firmware using fwupdmgr update. Although before updating the firmware, I got an error from that command saying I have no space of /boot/efi. So, I moved the /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft to /home then rerun the command. Afterwards, I revert the efi partition through its default using mv /home/Microsoft /boot/efi/EFI, see full post here.

Also, I uninstall the grub-customizer due to other user’s bad feedback about the package’s incompatibility. So, I did reinstall my grub because through this doc and this fedora discussion.

I’m just curious if my efibootmgr is normal because some other outputs have only 1 or three boot options. Thank you so much to anyone who can shed some enlightenment.

2

I have not seen that many entries in anything I have used.

You would need another Lenova ThinkPad owner to report if this is normal for that vendor.

3

Yeah, it’s pretty strange with that output. I think because this thinkpad is 2nd hand, lol

4

You could use the BIOS reset procedure for the thinkpad to lose all the seemingly unnecessary entries. I assume it will have one to sort this sort of issue.

But beware that will require you to recover the windows boot entry use the microsoft procedure.

5

Reasons for excessive entries are many and varied.

As root, you may execute the command ‘efibootmgr -b X -B’, where ‘X’ corresponds to a ‘BootOrder’ entry displayed by the ‘efibootmgr’ command, to remove a single entry. After you have removed the last entry, a message will be displayed. Then reboot.

BIOS will enumerate boot partitions that it finds starting with those in the first drive and continuing for all drives including USB attached SSDs.

6

Looks perfectly ok to me - from my T470s:

steve@lilith:/var/home/steve$ efibootmgr 
BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0000,0001,0019,001A,001B,001C,0018,0017,001D,001E,0003
Boot0000* Fedora Linux  HD(1,GPT,35b34645-7654-4647-a24a-540e96842d1c,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager  HD(2,MBR,0xd4e944f7,0xeb30000,0x10000)/\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000002000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0002* Fedora        HD(1,GPT,aff1611f-5936-4f7f-a3ed-f44d16098ca6,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0003* Linux-Firmware-Updater        HD(1,GPT,aff1611f-5936-4f7f-a3ed-f44d16098ca6,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\fwupdx64.efi
Boot0010  Setup FvFile(721c8b66-426c-4e86-8e99-3457c46ab0b9)
Boot0011  Boot Menu     FvFile(126a762d-5758-4fca-8531-201a7f57f850)
Boot0012  Diagnostic Splash Screen      FvFile(a7d8d9a6-6ab0-4aeb-ad9d-163e59a7a380)
Boot0013  Lenovo Diagnostics    FvFile(3f7e615b-0d45-4f80-88dc-26b234958560)
Boot0014  Startup Interrupt Menu        FvFile(f46ee6f4-4785-43a3-923d-7f786c3c8479)
Boot0015  Rescue and Recovery   FvFile(665d3f60-ad3e-4cad-8e26-db46eee9f1b5)
Boot0016  MEBx Hot Key  FvFile(ac6fd56a-3d41-4efd-a1b9-870293811a28)
Boot0017  USB CD        VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,86701296aa5a7848b66cd49dd3ba6a55)
Boot0018  USB FDD       VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,6ff015a28830b543a8b8641009461e49)
Boot0019* NVMe0 VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,001c199932d94c4eae9aa0b6e98eb8a400)
Boot001A* ATA HDD0      VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,91af625956449f41a7b91f4f892ab0f600)
Boot001B* USB HDD       VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,33e821aaaf33bc4789bd419f88c50803)
Boot001C* PCI LAN       VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,78a84aaf2b2afc4ea79cf5cc8f3d3803)
Boot001D  Other CD      VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,aea2090adfde214e8b3a5e471856a35406)
Boot001E  Other HDD     VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,91af625956449f41a7b91f4f892ab0f606)
Boot001F* IDER BOOT CDROM       PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(11,1)
Boot0020* IDER BOOT Floppy      PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(11,0)
Boot0021* ATA HDD       VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,91af625956449f41a7b91f4f892ab0f6)
Boot0022* ATAPI CD      VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,aea2090adfde214e8b3a5e471856a354)
Boot0023* PCI LAN       VenMsg(bc7838d2-0f82-4d60-8316-c068ee79d25b,78a84aaf2b2afc4ea79cf5cc8f3d3803)
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7

“USB FDD” (Floppy Disk Drive)? “Other CD”? It looks like a mess to me. Unfortunately, my experience with Lenovo systems is that it will just re-add things on the next boot if you try to remove them. IMO, the firmware should let you disable/unlist most of these entries (they should be disabled by default).

2 Likes
8

Thank God! I’m not the only one

9

I never see them, so they don’t matter to me.

I specifically had to run efibootmgr to even know this lot existed on this laptop.

As you can tell much of it is for baked in stuff like system diagnostics, recovery and reset; those FVFile and Vendor Message entries will “come back” because they are for utilities baked into the firmware; run a ram test, test the speakers, test the screen, etc).

Remove the Vendor Message entries and the built-in utilities and you have this:

Boot0000* Fedora Linux  HD(1,GPT,35b34645-7654-4647-a24a-540e96842d1c,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager  HD(2,MBR,0xd4e944f7,0xeb30000,0x10000)/\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d00000002000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0002* Fedora        HD(1,GPT,aff1611f-5936-4f7f-a3ed-f44d16098ca6,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi
Boot0003* Linux-Firmware-Updater        HD(1,GPT,aff1611f-5936-4f7f-a3ed-f44d16098ca6,0x800,0x12c000)/\EFI\fedora\fwupdx64.efi
Boot001F* IDER BOOT CDROM       PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(11,1)
Boot0020* IDER BOOT Floppy      PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(11,0)

Pretty straightforward I’d say.

10

Most of them are utilities which can be called directly from the UEFI BIOS. Trim them out and you have a couple of physical devices and that’s about it.

11

@anothermindbomb Apologies for the late reply. So, this sample of yours is the preferable boot options lists?

12

Not really - the large list is the same as yours, give or take - it’s a list of all the software you can run directly from the UEFI screens on your Lenovo laptop - memtest, keyboard test, screen and sound tests and so on - those VenMsg and FvFile entries are the software that Lenovo bake in to their UEFI.

If you remove all of that Vendor stuff from the efibootMgr list, you end up with the actual devices you can boot from - Fedora, Firmware updater, a Windows entry as we both had Windows previously installed and so on. That’s a much smaller list and boils down to some GPT entries and CDROM/Floppy boot options - pretty much what you’d expect.

@glb was horrified at the number of entries, and thus I was merely presenting the fact that when you trim out all the Vendor utilities, you’re left with a perfectly normal list of boot options.

13

@anothermindbomb Not a tech geek. So to clarify, I just need to remove the FvFile’s and VenMsg’s from the efibootmgr manually right?

14

You don’t need to do anything. You can just leave stuff as it is, and you will still have access to all the utilities Lenovo provides to help diagnose issues with your laptop.

You can delete the FVFile and VenMsg entries if you like - I’ve no idea if they will be replaced by whatever other software Lenovo have baked into their UEFI set-up. If they don’t, you’ll lose the ability to run “Lenovo Diagnostics” or run “Rescue and Recovery” for example and you’ll have gained nothing apart from a few hundred Kilobytes of space in the EFI area.

Ergo, I’m not sure why you’d bother.

1 Like
15

Alright, I’ll just no do anything. Thanks for the insight!