grub-install: error: failed to register the EFI boot entry: No space left on device.

[dahabakuk]

hi,
my grub works and i can boot my system just fine but since some time now, it looks like grub cannot update the bootloader:
i run debian buster and currently i get this everytime theres a grub update:

Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
grub-install: warning: Cannot set EFI variable Boot0008.
grub-install: warning: efivarfs_set_variable: writing to fd 7 failed: No space left on device.
grub-install: warning: _efi_set_variable_mode: ops->set_variable() failed: No space left on device.
grub-install: error: failed to register the EFI boot entry: No space left on device.
Failed: grub-install --target=x86_64-efi
WARNING: Bootloader is not properly installed, system may not be bootable
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background image: .background_cache.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-4-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-4-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-2-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-2-amd64
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda1@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done

there is more than enough space in /boot/efi and its alos mounted rw

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 496M 56M 441M 12% /boot/efi

bash# cat /proc/mounts |grep efi
efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars efivarfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0077,dmask=0077,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0

anyone has any idea - i think thats xps specific. if no one encouters this i guess i have to create a bugreport for debian :)

[timwienk]

Note it's an error generated by efivarfs_set_variable.

I don't really know about the internals of grub, but I doubt it has anything to do with /boot/efi, but rather with the efivarfs that's generally mounted at /sys/firmware/efi/efivars.

Perhaps there is a problem in that area, like the efivarfs filesystem not mounting at all, or maybe some other kind of problem that's present in a specific version in Buster. Either way, I haven't experienced the problem yet (using Debian Stretch, targeting stretch-backports).

[Czechball]

I have the same issue.

[dannyob]

I switched from shim-signed to shim-unsigned, and this problem went away.

[hawaltie]

I installed Debian Buster on my NVME drive and UEFI BIOS, and It seems that I am running in similar problems. During the install I was not able to install the grub dummy package. And when I perform a grub-install I get similiar error messages as reported above. How do I switch form shim-signed to shim unsigned as mentioned by @dannyob?

[findmyname666]

Hi @hawaltie, I did dist-upgrade from stretch to buster and I encountered it as well.
I found advices that you should remove some entries in efi boot order see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=234954 but i wasnt able to delete anything due to no space :) so you can try ...
Therefore i rebooted a server and it didnt booted - so i did following procedure:

• I rebooted it into live debian on my USB stick
• Decrypted root partion and mount root, boot, efi partition + plus other such /run, /dev, etc.
• I did chroot into mounted root partion
• I upgraded initramfs
• Server booted up

FYI - My issue doesnt have anything in common with xps13.

[hawaltie]

Hi @findmyname666 ,

I recently solved the problem by deleting several dump files in the efisys folder. Due to the dump files, there was no space left for updating grub. Removing the dumpfiles and running update-grub solved the issue.