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How I ended up with three ESP (EFI System Partition)...

My computer came with Windows-10 installed, and their correspondent ESP partition. So, I shrinked the windows-10 partition and installed a Fedora distro. Fedora created his own ESP, apart from that of windows-10. After that, I deleted Fedora's partitions (except the Fedora's ESP, where I only deleted the fedora loader files), and installed Ubuntu-20. While installing Ubuntu the partition tool told me to create a UEFI or BIOS partition. I do that (create new ESP with ubuntu's partition tool) thinking that the new ESP partition will be used for Ubuntu loaders. Instead of that, Ubuntu installer used the ESP partition with windows-10 loaders. All works fine: I can load Windows-10 and Ubuntu in UEFI mode, but... I ended up with three ESP in my system. The first one with the loaders for windows and Ubuntu, and other two that I suppose to be useless. Can I safely delete this two partitions or the could be used by the system in some way? My first ESP partition content:

# ls /boot/efi/EFI/
Boot  Microsoft  ubuntu

EDIT 1:

Additional info:

user@machine:~$ lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,fstype,uuid,partuuid | egrep -v "^loop"
NAME        MOUNTPOINT                   LABEL          SIZE FSTYPE   UUID                                 PARTUUID
sda                                                   931,5G                                               
├─sda1                                                   16M                                               288bddc0-a4c3-4452-a4e8-c3afa337d50f
├─sda2                                                443,2G ntfs     74DC8F50DC8F0C14                     5cc672f1-752d-41a5-8d5c-4a2c7067adf6
├─sda3      /home                                     279,4G ext4     654a19fd-cff2-49fc-9b3d-8834430c24d6 8fbb5a8d-d1a3-4313-bc8f-69f1a66c2e7c
└─sda4      /opt                                       93,1G ext4     c8a3a89e-f5e3-4d02-8c6a-c1c9c6a4561d 006d7f57-b8b0-4a95-80b2-ec0b2e717c80
sr0                                                    1024M                                               
nvme0n1                                               232,9G                                               
├─nvme0n1p1                              Recuperación   499M ntfs     DC8485A084857DB0                     d2ee9130-04af-4e33-ac93-bfc6224d7b60
├─nvme0n1p2 /boot/efi                                    99M vfat     4C86-9422                            bf02bc3c-fbf3-4e07-ae4a-f1f1737e710b
├─nvme0n1p3                                              16M                                               450c180c-8869-41ea-bb47-56eea5b7df23
├─nvme0n1p4                                           134,6G ntfs     0620890D20890541                     a9bd779f-b351-4478-9c00-cb4aec5319b2
├─nvme0n1p5                                             200M vfat     7667-538F                            4cb99bff-0f43-4bef-b5e4-2f3680ccba12
├─nvme0n1p6 [SWAP]                                     18,6G swap     9cb99492-88b9-4230-92d3-cda6ae11c908 818b8822-1f42-4ca2-99a0-13209ae96094
├─nvme0n1p7                                             191M vfat     14AD-9CF1                            740dc411-9350-477b-ab11-a571e2b73305
├─nvme0n1p8 /boot                                       954M ext4     ef523e1f-01f7-49f1-8079-cfbd6a3f62ac 180050c5-c759-4eda-8c86-9aee395f0333
└─nvme0n1p9 /                                          77,7G ext4     5b031908-ac26-4e9a-bf20-4e555cacef30 865bad0e-85c7-41ca-afeb-07be08fa8359
user@machine:~$ sudo efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0004
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0004,0003,0000,0007,0008,0001,0002,0005,0006,0009
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager  HD(2,GPT,bf02bc3c-fbf3-4e07-ae4a-f1f1737e710b,0xfa000,0x31800)/File(\EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI)WINDOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6.2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...r................
Boot0001* Hard Drive    BBS(HD,,0x0)..GO..NO........q.S.a.m.s.u.n.g. .S.S.D. .9.7.0. .E.V.O. .2.5.0.G.B....................A...........................%8T..z......4..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.S.4.6.5.N.B.0.K.4.4.3.8.8.5.A........BO..NO........u.S.T.1.0.0.0.D.M.0.1.0.-.2.E.P.1.0.2....................A.................................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L. . . . . . . . . . . . .9.Z.P.A.D.3.5.F........BO
Boot0002* CD/DVD Drive  BBS(CDROM,,0x0)..GO..NO........u.H.L.-.D.T.-.S.T. .D.V.D.R.A.M. .G.H.2.4.N.S.D.1....................A.................................>..Gd-.;.A..MQ..L.1.K.H.H.O.A.3.I.5.7. .8. . . . . . . . ........BO
Boot0003* Fedora    HD(5,GPT,4cb99bff-0f43-4bef-b5e4-2f3680ccba12,0x10e75800,0x64000)/File(\EFI\FEDORA\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0004* ubuntu    HD(2,GPT,bf02bc3c-fbf3-4e07-ae4a-f1f1737e710b,0xfa000,0x31800)/File(\EFI\UBUNTU\SHIMX64.EFI)
Boot0005* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive BBS(129,,0x0)
Boot0006* UEFI:Removable Device BBS(130,,0x0)
Boot0007* Fedora    HD(5,GPT,4cb99bff-0f43-4bef-b5e4-2f3680ccba12,0x10e75800,0x64000)/File(\EFI\FEDORA\SHIM.EFI)..BO
Boot0008* UEFI OS   HD(5,GPT,4cb99bff-0f43-4bef-b5e4-2f3680ccba12,0x10e75800,0x64000)/File(\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI)..BO
Boot0009* UEFI:Network Device   BBS(131,,0x0)
framontb
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    Post this: lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,fstype,uuid,partuuid | egrep -v "^loop" and sudo efibootmgr -v If just FAT32 partitions you can delete. You really only can have one ESP with boot, esp flags per device. But UEFI actually uses a very long GUID type code from the partition to know which is the ESP. The efiboot entries should be using GUID/partUUID of your ESP main ESP. – oldfred May 29 '20 at 13:27
  • @oldfred. I posted the info you are asking for. – framontb May 29 '20 at 15:32
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    The partUUID starting with bf02 is used by Windows & Ubuntu, so that is the ESP you need to keep. Your entries for Fedora & UEFI OS refer to p5 and then can be deleted. Use efibootmgr -b xxxx -B, see man efibootmgr and https://askubuntu.com/questions/1198221/cloning-ssd-also-cloned-boot-options/1198228#1198228 And no entries for p7. So if no data, delete partition also. With Ubuntu Desktop installs you generally do not need separate partitions for system partitions like /boot & /opt, but it is ok. You just then have more partitions to manage to make sure not full or have other issues. – oldfred May 29 '20 at 16:32

1 Answers1

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Folowing the instructions stated by @oldfred, I managed to clean my system in that way:

First, delete the bad boot entries in the UEFI Boot Manager: 3, 7 and 8

sudo efibootmgr -b 0003 -B
sudo efibootmgr -b 0007 -B
sudo efibootmgr -b 0008 -B

As oldfred said in his comment: "The partUUID starting with bf02 is used by Windows & Ubuntu, so that is the ESP you need to keep. Your entries for Fedora & UEFI OS refer to p5 and then can be deleted. Use efibootmgr -b xxxx -B, see man efibootmgr and askubuntu.com/questions/1198221/… And no entries for p7." (See EDIT 1 in the question for more info).

Second, I deleted the unused partitions. For that, I used the tool GParted from Ubuntu, because the partitions to delete were not in use.

That's it !

framontb
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