Upgrade from 2.7.2 to 2.8.0 Failed and now /boot/efi/ empty

[Sinfonia97]

I was just trying to update to 2.8.0 from 2.7.2 and it failed at the very end. When trying to research the error of not enough diskspace, I came across several posts with this issue for people having problems going from 2.7.0 to 2.7.2. Thankfully I did not run into those when I did that upgrade. However, it now seems I have run into the issue with this upgrade. When I tried to troubleshoot using the methods in one forum post for the 2.7.2 upgrade, I started digging around to see if my /boot/efi/ survived. When use the Edit File tool, I find there is nothing in that directory:

If I go up one level, I see several .efi files there:

If I run df -hi /boot/efi from the command prompt I get the following and this does not look right to me, but I could be wrong:

Filesystem                                         Size    Used   Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/gptid/ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c    222G     18G    186G     9%     69k   30M    0%   /

At this point I am a bit afraid to try anything else without some guidance on what I should try next. I certainly do not want to reboot as it likely won't come back up from what I see.

Any and all help is appreciated and I am willing to provide anything else that may help in troubleshooting.

Thank you in advance.

[Sinfonia97]

UPDATE: Looks like the mount point for /boot/efi may not be present. After running the mount command all I see if the following:

Honestly I am not even certain where /boot/efi should be mounted and don't want to start changing things and make things worse.

I am not certain if this is in fact the issue, but I look forward to hearing from someone that knows more about the file system for PFSense then I do.

Really trying to avoid having to reinstall.

[Sinfonia97]

Another UPDATE: As I have been digging through forums, I keeps seeing a reference to /dev/msdosfs/EFISYS as to where /boot/efi should be mounted. Unfortunately I do not find this on my system. In /dev/msdosfs all I currently see is what appears to be an EFI file:

This file can't be openedwithin the GUI.

UPDATE: Just to add a little more information to this one. I ran a gpart show and I got the following. Not sure if this helps, but I did see it return efi (200M)

=>       40  488397088  ada0  GPT  (233G)
         40     409600     1  efi  (200M)
     409640  479838208     2  freebsd-ufs  (229G)
  480247848    8149279     3  freebsd-swap  (3.9G)
  488397127          1        - free -  (512B)

[Sinfonia97]

Yet Another UPDATE:
I think I may have made some progress. It appears that on my system instead of /dev/msdosfs/EFISYS I have /dev/msdosfs/EFI.

I was able to follow @jimp instructions partially from another post and was able to mount /boot/efi to /dev/msdosfs/EFI and copy files to a temp directory /tmp/efitmp.

Here are the modified commands I performed. They appear to have worked and I can browse the directories and files now in the /tmp/efitmp directory.

# mkdir -p /boot/efi
# mount_msdosfs /dev/msdosfs/EFI /boot/efi
# mkdir -p /tmp/efitmp
# cp -Rp /boot/efi/* /tmp/efitmp

What I am trying to figure out is if this is correct for my setup before I proceed and create more problems doing the following:

# umount /boot/efi
# newfs_msdos -F 32 -c 1 -L EFI /dev/msdosfs/EFI
# mount_msdosfs /dev/msdosfs/EFI /boot/efi
# cp -Rp /tmp/efitmp/* /boot/efi/

Again, thanks in advance for the help.

EDIT: I took a look at the contents of the file in the /tmp/efitmp/EFI/BOOT called STARTUP.NSH and it has one entry BOOTx64.efi. When I try to search for this file I do not find it on the system.

EDIT 2: Per another forum post that I found with @jimp involved I ran find /boot/efi and got the following reults that are different from what was seen in the posts from 2023:

/boot/efi
/boot/efi/EFI
/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/STARTUP.NSH

[SteveITS]

@Sinfonia97 I don’t have a direct answer for you but at some point it may be easier to just reinstall.

[Sinfonia97]

@SteveITS Thanks, unfortunately I am one of those types that wants to fix the problem before I break down and reinstall. Thankfully I took a backup before I attempted the update while everyone was taking naps. Now I just want to make sure if we have a power outage the system will come back up.

[Sinfonia97]

UPDATE: Found something that I am hoping can move things forward some more. It looks like potentially the BOOTx64.efi file can be replaced by copying the /boot/loader.efi to the /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT folder and rename it to BOOTx64.efi. If this is the case, I would like to hear from others.

[Sinfonia97]

UPDATE: Found the following in my /etc/fstab file and now I am even less sure where /boot/efi should be mounted . Per this post in Unable to upgrade from 2.7.1 to 2.7.2 I should see something like:

/dev/msdosfs/EFISYS       /boot/efi       msdosfs rw              2       2

but I see this:

/dev/gptid/ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c	/	ufs	rw	1	1
/dev/gptid/ac128803-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c	none	swap	sw	0	0

Just trying to provide as much info as possible in case anyone can help.

[Patch]

@Sinfonia97 Sounds like a corrupted install to me.
I would

• Save pfsense configuration

• Do a clean install from a recent installer to ensure partitions are consistent with more recent requirements (v2.7.2 or 2.8 or 2.81)

• Document what low level file structure is used with a good current install so you maybe able to guess what went wrong with the prior corruption (partitions sizes, hardware failure, edge case configuration, edge case update series)

[Sinfonia97]

@Patch Thanks, I am kind of hoping if I can figure out exactly where it needs to be mounted I can use the steps that were provided in other threads to fix the EFI. The steps used before clearly work and even help with the size of the EFI partition. My problem is figuring out where exactly /boot/efi should be mounted to create the backup of the files and the perform the rest of the steps. In what I have been finding, there possibly could be a few places to mount /boot/efi. I ran a geom -t just a bit ago and it pointed me to likely needing to mount it at /dev/ada0p1. The output of geom -t was:

Geom                                                 Class      Provider
ada0                                                 DISK       ada0
  ada0                                               DEV
  ada0                                               PART       ada0p1
    ada0p1                                           DEV
    msdosfs.ada0p1                                   VFS
  ada0                                               PART       ada0p2
    ada0p2                                           DEV
    ada0p2                                           LABEL      gptid/ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c
      gptid/ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c     DEV
      ffs.gptid/ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c VFS
  ada0                                               PART       ada0p3
    ada0p3                                           DEV
    ada0p3                                           LABEL      gptid/ac128803-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c
      gptid/ac128803-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c     DEV
      swap                                           SWAP

I see in that output in shows msdosfs.ada0p1, and the rest lines up with what is in /dev/gptid and /etc/fstab. It also lines up with the output of gpart list showing ada0p1 as type efi:

Geom name: ada0
modified: false
state: OK
fwheads: 16
fwsectors: 63
last: 488397127
first: 40
entries: 128
scheme: GPT
Providers:
1. Name: ada0p1
   Mediasize: 209715200 (200M)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 0
   Stripeoffset: 20480
   Mode: r1w1e2
   efimedia: HD(1,GPT,ac1172b7-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c,0x28,0x64000)
   rawuuid: ac1172b7-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c
   rawtype: c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
   label: (null)
   length: 209715200
   offset: 20480
   type: efi
   index: 1
   end: 409639
   start: 40
2. Name: ada0p2
   Mediasize: 245677162496 (229G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 0
   Stripeoffset: 209735680
   Mode: r1w1e2
   efimedia: HD(2,GPT,ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c,0x64028,0x1c99c000)
   rawuuid: ac11fbb1-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c
   rawtype: 516e7cb6-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
   label: (null)
   length: 245677162496
   offset: 209735680
   type: freebsd-ufs
   index: 2
   end: 480247847
   start: 409640
3. Name: ada0p3
   Mediasize: 4172430848 (3.9G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Stripesize: 0
   Stripeoffset: 245886898176
   Mode: r1w1e1
   efimedia: HD(3,GPT,ac128803-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c,0x1ca00028,0x7c591f)
   rawuuid: ac128803-5651-11e8-b5a2-00907fd0950c
   rawtype: 516e7cb5-6ecf-11d6-8ff8-00022d09712b
   label: (null)
   length: 4172430848
   offset: 245886898176
   type: freebsd-swap
   index: 3
   end: 488397126
   start: 480247848
Consumers:
1. Name: ada0
   Mediasize: 250059350016 (233G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r3w3e8