Preseeding debian install - EFI

Question

The EFI partition is formatted in ext4 during the setup of debian.

I am trying to preseed the install of debian jessie and I can't get it working since the UEFI partition is formatted in ext4 (got information with blkid).

My preseed for partitionning is the following:

d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string                        \
 boot-root ::                                               \
         1 1 1 free                                      \
                 $gptonly{ }                             \
                 $primary{ }                             \
                 $bios_boot{ }                           \
                 method{ biosgrub }                      \
         .                                               \
         512 100 512 vfat                                \
                 $gptonly{ }                             \
                 $primary{ }                             \
                 method{ efi }                           \
                 format{ }                               \
                 $lvmignore{ }                           \
                 mountpoint{ /boot/efi }                 \
         .                                               \
         ...
         .

And I get the following error: "Failed to mount vfat filesystem on /boot/efi"

Of course, its an ext4 fs...!

Could anybody help?

Solution

I'm exactly at this point now, recording manual installation from PXE netboot to the UEFI VMWare system to extract right answers for preseed with debconf-get-selections --installer. What I see in the resulting file is:

partman-auto    partman-auto/choose_recipe      select  /lib/partman/recipes-amd64-efi/30atomic
partman-base    partman/default_filesystem      string  ext4

The content of which should give you the hint how to master your receipt:

partman-auto/text/atomic_scheme ::

538 538 1075 free
    $iflabel{ gpt }
    $reusemethod{ }
    method{ efi }
    format{ } .

128 512 256 ext2
    $defaultignore{ }
    method{ format }
    format{ }
    use_filesystem{ }
    filesystem{ ext2 }
    mountpoint{ /boot } .

500 10000 -1 $default_filesystem
    $lvmok{ }
    method{ format }
    format{ }
    use_filesystem{ }
    $default_filesystem{ }
    mountpoint{ / } .

100% 512 200% linux-swap
    $lvmok{ }
    $reusemethod{ }
    method{ swap }
    format{ } .

Based on that and as I'm using partman/early_command to generate appropriate layout for the given machine, I've scripted:

if [ -d "/sys/firmware/efi/" ]; then
    debconf-set "partman-auto/expert_recipe" "$(
        echo -n '600 600 1075 free $iflabel{ gpt } $reusemethod{ } method{ efi } format{ } . '
        echo -n '128 512 256 ext2 $defaultignore{ } method{ format } format{ } use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext2 } mountpoint{ /boot } . '
        echo -n '9216 2000 -1 $default_filesystem $lvmok{ } method{ format } format{ } use_filesystem{ } $default_filesystem{ } mountpoint{ / } .'
    )"
fi

And as a result got automagically:

# parted /dev/sda print free
Model: VMware Virtual disk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 10.7GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
        17.4kB  1049kB  1031kB  Free Space
 1      1049kB  600MB   599MB   fat32              boot, esp
 2      600MB   10.7GB  10.1GB  ext4
        10.7GB  10.7GB  1032kB  Free Space

Comments

[Michael Hampton]

/boot/efi is meant to be vfat, not ext4!

[Antho]

Well, I do know but I can't get it formatted in vfat... I just figured out that the mkfs.vfat is missing in the setup shell from debian. Any idea?

[Tombart]

apt install dosfstools then something like mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1