Boot Partition Remove

This process walks through an EFI RHEL based (RHEL, Centos, Rocky, Alma) distro that has a /boot partition that you want to remove. This commonly occurs because the /boot partition does not have enough space for the linux initramfs image to be create which breaks update.

Make sure that you have a backup of the system before preforming this opperation as it can leave it in an unbootable state.

Instructions

All the steps in the instructions assume the boot partition is located at /dev/vda3 and 4bc43a01-3597-4d21-95d1-31acd384f7c8 is the UUID of the root partition. Use the proper partition for your setup in any commands that reference it.

Disable /boot partition in the fstab config and grab the UUID of the root drive for future use

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Unmount /boot from the running system

sudo umount /boot/efi
sudo umount /boot

Reload the daemon after editing the fstab file

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Create the /boot/efi directory for mounting

sudo mkdir /boot/efi

Remount the efi partition so everything matches the fstab file

sudo mount -a

Temporarily mount the boot partition to copy the data replacing /dev/vda3 with the partition in question

sudo mount /dev/vda3 /mnt
sudo cp -R /mnt/* /boot/
sudo cp -R /mnt/.* /boot/
sudo umount /mnt

Delete the /boot partition

sudo fdisk /dev/vda
d # Delete partitions
3 # Delete the 3rd partition so it is /dev/vda3
w # Write changes

Update the following lines in the grub config with the UUID of the root partition and add "/boot" to the end of the set boot variable

sudo vi /boot/efi/EFI/rocky/grub.cfg

search --no-floppy --root-dev-only --fs-uuid --set=dev 4bc43a01-3597-4d21-95d1-31acd384f7c8
set prefix=($dev)/boot/grub2

Rebuild the grub config

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Update or reinstall kernel (only if current kernel broken)

sudo dnf update -y
#sudo dnf reinstall kernel* -y

Troubleshooting

Grub entries broken

The previous grub entries will be broken until the image is regenerated (either installing a new version or reinstalling). To manually force an entry to boot, add /boot to the path after ($root) for the linux and initrd lines.

Once you are booted back into the system, reinstall the current kernel

sudo dnf reinstall kernel* -y

GRUB Boots to command line

If grub boots to the command line with no menu options it likely was unable to load the configuration.

Run the set command to see the current configuration settings.

Use ls to see the available partitions

Update the root to your root partition

set root=(hd0,gpt4)

Attempt to load the config file

configfile (hd0,4)/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

If it is unable to find the device, the grub config was likely not regenerated and will need to have the device UUID swapped to the root partition. Once you are able to boot once sucessfully you will need to regenerate the config for the new version

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg