How to make space in /boot/efi without resizing the partition?

I upgraded to 20.04 yesterday. I just noticed that in Ubuntu Software there is an update for Dell Inc. System Firmware, but my system does not have enough space to run the update.

Is there any way except by resizing the partition with gparted (or similar) to clean this location up from Ubuntu?

I want to keep the Windows partition.

With ls -alt /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/

total 4248
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     108 Mai  7 22:04 BOOTX64.CSV
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     117 Mai  7 22:04 grub.cfg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1677176 Mai  7 22:04 grubx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1269496 Mai  7 22:04 mmx64.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1334816 Mai  7 22:04 shimx64.efi
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root    1024 Feb 18 18:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    1024 Jan 15 19:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    1024 Jan 15 19:26 fw
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   61833 Nov 13 19:46 fwupdx64.efi

In the fw folder

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 11500365 Jan 15 19:26 fwupd-33773727-8ee7-4d81-9fa0-57e8d889e1fa.cap
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    57218 Jan 15 19:26 fwupd-3b8c8162-188c-46a4-aec9-be43f1d65697.cap

In the Dell folders

drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Feb 18 18:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 1024 Feb 18 18:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6144 Feb 18 18:45 logs
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Dez 10 11:55 Bios

ls -alt /boot/efi/EFI/Dell/Bios/

total 3
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Feb 18 18:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Dez 10 11:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Dez 10 11:55 Recovery

ls -alt /boot/efi/EFI/Dell/Bios/Recovery/

total 21288
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     1024 Dez 10 11:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     1024 Dez 10 11:55 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10874905 Dez 10 11:55 BIOS_CUR.RCV
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10920235 Jun  6  2019 BIOS_PRE.rcv

Solution 1:

Update:

I followed these steps and it's a better way of doing it than moving fonts manually.

apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
service fwupd start
fwupdmgr refresh
fwupdmgr update

Original comment: In my case I resolved it by simply finding some (probably) unimportant files and moving them to a backup folder outside of /boot/efi. For example, the boot-repair/log files came to around 3 MB, and some of the /EFI/Microsoft/Boot files had folders for languages I would probably never need. This allowed me just enough space to perform the update.

The only problem was that on power up it went straight to Windows, without giving me the grub menu after the BIOS screen. I resolved that, in Windows, by opening a command prompt as system admin, then running

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

But I'm sure you're aware of all the warnings, so be careful to do any backups before this.

Solution 2:

If you have both Windows and Ubuntu OSs, which is probably the case here then in Ubuntu

1. Open the terminal and go to power bash sudo bash
2. Move the Microsoft folder to another drive mv /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft /home
3. Run the upgrade and restart as required. It will have enough space now as Microsoft folder is about 14 MB +
4. Let's move back the Microsoft folder to efi, run sudo bash and mv /home/Microsoft /boot/efi/EFI
5. 😊 Upvote!