# Why to mount /boot/efi by default when installing 13?



## Switch2BSD (Oct 16, 2021)

Hello,
I am curious about the reason in which bsdinstall mount /boot/efi (in fstab) by default, and for what to mount it?
Sometimes, I delete a line with this mounting in /etc/fstab, the system still runs normally; because EFI partion was read before this mounting.
Thank you for clarifying me.


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## zirias@ (Oct 16, 2021)

It's easier to update EFI bootcode that way. Unless you want to do that, there's not really a need to have it mounted. The old approach was to just update the entire EFI partition from a FAT image file, but that wasn't a good solution.


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## T-Daemon (Oct 16, 2021)

Detailed explanation here:





						src - FreeBSD source tree
					






					cgit.freebsd.org


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## Switch2BSD (Oct 16, 2021)

Nice thanks to both of you,
When I have zroot on 3-way or 4-way mirror, I've used to copy manually to EFI partitions on each of them:

```
# cp /boot/loader.efi /boot/efi/efi/boot/BOOTx64.efi
```
Still I need to let a sole /boot/efi mounted?


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## mer (Oct 16, 2021)

Do you need to have /boot/efi mounted automatically to run the system normally?
No.
If the installer is putting a line in /etc/fstab,  I would set the options to include "noauto" something like rw,noauto simply to make it trivial to later issue a mount command.
But that's just me.
There may be valid times when you want to automount it (say a service that automatically updates it), but you need to figure that out.


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