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jeudi

Member

Registered: 2024-05-24

Posts: 22  

Can I brick my motherboard by formatting EFI partition ?

Hi,
@fsmithred mention on this thread https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=50528#p50528 that formatting EFI partition can brick some motherboards.

Then, I began to read the link he gave me, https://superuser.com/questions/1318593 … -dangerous, and I continued to read about it and I found some interesting stuffs. (See links at the end)

I now wonder if the systemd issue about bricking motherboards apply to Devuan and SysVinit on a UEFI-based computer. I do a lot of mess with my personnal device (trying to fix these OCD x)) and I have to say I'm a bit scared to brick my motherboard.

Do I need to take care at installation or while using some commands ?
For example, the Devuan expert installer (probably the same on Debian but didn't test) ask if I want to write and entry on NVRAM at the end to install Grub and be able to boot directly on Devuan. I always say yes but I wonder if it's safe now.

Care you share your thoughts about it ? I don't know so much on UEFI and low stuffs in computing and want to learn.

Thanks : )

Some interesting links
https://www.phoronix.com/news/UEFI-rm-root-directory
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402

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Devuan Daedalus 64bits - Ryzen 7 5700X - Radeon RX 7600 - 16Go RAM

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,171  

Re: Can I brick my motherboard by formatting EFI partition ?

I have had two motherboards with locked efi flash, no more way to write any new information. I guess it was because the kernel may use the efi flash to write crash dumps into there. There are some threads in this forum from me and others, and a way to avoid this happening.

Some background: the efi partition (ESR) on the disk holds entries for the operating systems that are on the PC. Here my travelling laptop dual boot Chimaera/Daedalus:

/boot/efi/EFI# ls -la
insgesamt 16
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 16. Sep 2022  .
drwx------ 4 root root 4096  1. Jan 1970  ..
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 29. Apr 2021  devuan4
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 16. Sep 2022  devuan5

Also there is a flash memory in the bios that can be accessed via the efibootmgr. That shows what the bios can address and is able to start. Here is what is present on my laptop:

# efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,2001,2002,2003
Boot0000* devuan4	HD(1,GPT,4a3fa84d-e7a5-4232-8341-02ef88af07d9,0x800,0xf3800)/File(\EFI\devuan4\grubx64.efi)
Boot0001* devuan5	HD(1,GPT,4a3fa84d-e7a5-4232-8341-02ef88af07d9,0x800,0xf3800)/File(\EFI\devuan5\grubx64.efi)
Boot2001* EFI USB Device	RC
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM	RC
Boot2003* EFI Network	RC

You see the two operating systems plus the system drives labelled Boot200x.

Its good practice to first remove the operatings systems before you delete the efi directory on the hard disk (HD, SSD or NVME).

jeudi

Member

Registered: 2024-05-24

Posts: 22  

Re: Can I brick my motherboard by formatting EFI partition ?

Also there is a flash memory in the bios that can be accessed via the efibootmgr. That shows what the bios can address and is able to start.

This is what I'm questionning myself about. The flash memory in the bios. If you mess up with the efibootmgr command, you can brick your motherboard ?
I know you can make your distro unables to boot by removing the wrong efi entry but I wonder if I can brick my device with efibootmgr or if SysVinit can brick it like systemd. This story about /sys/*efivars mounted with rw option.

Its good practice to first remove the operatings systems before you delete the efi directory on the hard disk (HD, SSD or NVME).

How do you remove an OS before deleting the efi directory ?
If you remove the OSes it's because you want to install something else, so, even if you format the efi directory it doesn't matter as you will install a new OS and then have the efi files in the efi directory.
Sorry, I'm trying to understand. x)

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Devuan Daedalus 64bits - Ryzen 7 5700X - Radeon RX 7600 - 16Go RAM

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,251  

Re: Can I brick my motherboard by formatting EFI partition ?

This link has some meaty stuff around that https://wiki.osdev.org/UEFI

jeudi

Member

Registered: 2024-05-24

Posts: 22  

Re: Can I brick my motherboard by formatting EFI partition ?

Thank you for the link. I'll read this.

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Devuan Daedalus 64bits - Ryzen 7 5700X - Radeon RX 7600 - 16Go RAM