On Tue, 2023-09-19 at 20:40 -0400, Bill Cunningham wrote:
I had to reinstall my windows system which is fine it takes care of itself. But, I have to install my entire fedora system from scratch. Is there a way to simply reinstall the boot loader code without having to install from scratch with a UEFI system? I'm sure there is but I don't know about it. There's also a command called "efibootmgr" is this what I am looking for? AFAIK fedora doesn't install more partitions but just code in the /boot/efi partition. How can I reinstall or repair boot loader code without touching the system? Without having to reinstalling from scratch?
If Fedora has fully installed, it ought to do this for you. But nonetheless, it probably has installed everything, just hasn't set an entry in the bootlist for itself, or something else boots first without any timeout period for you to choose otherwise. The efibootmgr should let you set one.
You can run the command as an ordinary user, and it'll show you a list of boot options. On this PC, mine shows this:
[tim@rocky ~]$ efibootmgr BootCurrent: 0000 Timeout: 1 seconds BootOrder: 0000,0003,0005,0004 Boot0000* CentOS Boot0003* CD/DVD Drive Boot0004 Hard Drive Boot0005* USB
I don't recall why mine skips 0001 and 0002, I probably removed some stupid or duplicate options that I found in there.
As a root user (e.g. via sudo), you can also change the order, and add and remove entries. Essentially it's editing some data in the non- volatile RAM.
If Fedora is in there somewhere it can be a boot option in the firmware as your PC boots up, no having to delve into it and change settings. If you have a decent UEFI, you can get a list of clickable things to boot from.
I'd suggest look at its man file, show us your details, and grill us about what you can't work out.
Alternatively, Windows should have a similar equivalent editing function. You could see if it lists Fedora, and if it gives you any obvious ways to change the settings to your liking.