bootctl(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | GENERIC EFI FIRMWARE/BOOT LOADER COMMANDS | BOOT LOADER SPECIFICATION COMMANDS | SYSTEMD-BOOT COMMANDS | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON

BOOTCTL(1)                       bootctl                      BOOTCTL(1)

NAME         top

       bootctl - Control EFI firmware boot settings and manage boot
       loader

SYNOPSIS         top

       bootctl [OPTIONS...] {COMMAND}

DESCRIPTION         top

       bootctl can check the EFI firmware and boot loader status, list
       and manage available boot loaders and boot loader entries, and
       install, update, or remove the systemd-boot(7) boot loader on the
       current system.

GENERIC EFI FIRMWARE/BOOT LOADER COMMANDS         top

       These commands are available on any EFI system, regardless of the
       boot loader used.

       status
           Shows brief information about the system firmware, the boot
           loader that was used to boot the system, the boot loaders
           currently available in the ESP, the boot loaders listed in
           the firmware's list of boot loaders and the current default
           boot loader entry. If no command is specified, this is the
           implied default.

       reboot-to-firmware [BOOL]
           Query or set the "Reboot-Into-Firmware-Setup" flag of the EFI
           firmware. Takes a boolean argument which controls whether to
           show the firmware setup on next system reboot. If the
           argument is omitted shows the current status of the flag, or
           whether the flag is supported. This controls the same flag as
           systemctl reboot --firmware-setup, but is more low-level and
           allows setting the flag independently from actually
           requesting a reboot.

       systemd-efi-options [STRING]
           When called without the optional argument, prints the current
           value of the "SystemdOptions" EFI variable. When called with
           an argument, sets the variable to that value. See systemd(1)
           for the meaning of that variable.

BOOT LOADER SPECIFICATION COMMANDS         top

       These commands are available for all boot loaders that implement
       the Boot Loader Specification[1] and/or the Boot Loader
       Interface[2], such as systemd-boot.

       list
           Shows all available boot loader entries implementing the Boot
           Loader Specification[1], as well as any other entries
           discovered or automatically generated by a boot loader
           implementing the Boot Loader Interface[2].

       set-default ID, set-oneshot ID
           Sets the default boot loader entry. Takes a single boot
           loader entry ID string as argument. The set-oneshot command
           will set the default entry only for the next boot, the
           set-default will set it persistently for all future boots.
           Optionally, the boot loader entry ID may be specified as one
           of: @default, @oneshot or @current, which correspond to the
           current default boot loader entry for all future boots, the
           current default boot loader entry for the next boot, and the
           currently booted boot loader entry. These special IDs are
           resolved to the current values of the EFI variables
           LoaderEntryDefault, LoaderEntryOneShot and
           LoaderEntrySelected, see Boot Loader Specification[1] for
           details. These special IDs are primarily useful as a quick
           way to persistently make the currently booted boot loader
           entry the default choice, or to upgrade the default boot
           loader entry for the next boot to the default boot loader
           entry for all future boots, but may be used for other
           operations too. When an empty string ("") is specified as an
           ID, then the corresponding EFI variable will be unset.

SYSTEMD-BOOT COMMANDS         top

       These commands manage the systemd-boot EFI boot loader, and do
       not work in conjunction with other boot loaders.

       install
           Installs systemd-boot into the EFI system partition. A copy
           of systemd-boot will be stored as the EFI default/fallback
           loader at ESP/EFI/BOOT/BOOT*.EFI. The boot loader is then
           added to the top of the firmware's boot loader list.

       update
           Updates all installed versions of systemd-boot(7), if the
           available version is newer than the version installed in the
           EFI system partition. This also includes the EFI
           default/fallback loader at ESP/EFI/BOOT/BOOT*.EFI. The boot
           loader is then added to end of the firmware's boot loader
           list if missing.

       remove
           Removes all installed versions of systemd-boot from the EFI
           system partition and the firmware's boot loader list.

       is-installed
           Checks whether systemd-boot is installed in the ESP. Note
           that a single ESP might host multiple boot loaders; this
           hence checks whether systemd-boot is one (of possibly many)
           installed boot loaders — and neither whether it is the
           default nor whether it is registered in any EFI variables.

       random-seed
           Generates a random seed and stores it in the EFI System
           Partition, for use by the systemd-boot boot loader. Also,
           generates a random 'system token' and stores it persistently
           as an EFI variable, if one has not been set before. If the
           boot loader finds the random seed in the ESP and the system
           token in the EFI variable it will derive a random seed to
           pass to the OS and a new seed to store in the ESP from the
           combination of both. The random seed passed to the OS is
           credited to the kernel's entropy pool by the system manager
           during early boot, and permits userspace to boot up with an
           entropy pool fully initialized very early on. Also see
           systemd-boot-system-token.service(8).

           See Random Seeds[3] for further information.

OPTIONS         top

       The following options are understood:

       --esp-path=
           Path to the EFI System Partition (ESP). If not specified,
           /efi/, /boot/, and /boot/efi/ are checked in turn. It is
           recommended to mount the ESP to /efi/, if possible.

       --boot-path=
           Path to the Extended Boot Loader partition, as defined in the
           Boot Loader Specification[1]. If not specified, /boot/ is
           checked. It is recommended to mount the Extended Boot Loader
           partition to /boot/, if possible.

       -p, --print-esp-path
           This option modifies the behaviour of status. Only prints the
           path to the EFI System Partition (ESP) to standard output and
           exits.

       -x, --print-boot-path
           This option modifies the behaviour of status. Only prints the
           path to the Extended Boot Loader partition if it exists, and
           the path to the ESP otherwise to standard output and exit.
           This command is useful to determine where to place boot
           loader entries, as they are preferably placed in the Extended
           Boot Loader partition if it exists and in the ESP otherwise.

           Boot Loader Specification Type #1 entries should generally be
           placed in the directory "$(bootctl -x)/loader/entries/".
           Existence of that directory may also be used as indication
           that boot loader entry support is available on the system.
           Similarly, Boot Loader Specification Type #2 entries should
           be placed in the directory "$(bootctl -x)/EFI/Linux/".

           Note that this option (similar to the --print-booth-path
           option mentioned above), is available independently from the
           boot loader used, i.e. also without systemd-boot being
           installed.

       --no-variables
           Do not touch the firmware's boot loader list stored in EFI
           variables.

       --graceful
           Ignore failure when the EFI System Partition cannot be found,
           when EFI variables cannot be written, or a different or newer
           boot loader is already installed. Currently only applies to
           random seed and update operations.

       --make-machine-id-directory=yes|no|auto
           Control creation and deletion of the top-level machine ID
           directory on the file system containing boot loader entries
           (i.e. beneath the file system returned by the
           --print-boot-path option, see above) during install and
           remove, respectively.  "auto" is equivalent to "yes" if
           /etc/machine-id resides on a filesystem other than tmpfs and
           "no" otherwise (in the latter case the machine ID is likely
           transient and hence should not be used persistently in the
           ESP). Defaults to "auto". See machine-id(5) for details about
           the machine ID concept and file.

           Overriding this may be desirable to hide the machine ID from
           the (unencrypted) ESP, configure a kernel-install(8) script,
           or, conversely, commit a transient machine ID.

           The top-level machine ID directory is useful to allow smooth
           multi-boot installations: each installed OS instance will
           have a different machine ID and thus a separate directory to
           place its boot-time resources in. If this feature is turned
           off with this option, care needs to be taken that multiple OS
           instances do not place conflicting files on the shared ESP
           and Extended Boot Loader Partitions, or that multiple OS
           instances are not possible.

       --no-pager
           Do not pipe output into a pager.

       -h, --help
           Print a short help text and exit.

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

EXIT STATUS         top

       On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       If $SYSTEMD_RELAX_ESP_CHECKS=1 is set the validation checks for
       the ESP are relaxed, and the path specified with --esp-path= may
       refer to any kind of file system on any kind of partition.

       Similarly, $SYSTEMD_RELAX_XBOOTLDR_CHECKS=1 turns off some
       validation checks for the Extended Boot Loader partition.

SEE ALSO         top

       systemd-boot(7), Boot Loader Specification[1], Boot Loader
       Interface[2], systemd-boot-system-token.service(8)

NOTES         top

        1. Boot Loader Specification
           https://systemd.io/BOOT_LOADER_SPECIFICATION

        2. Boot Loader Interface
           https://systemd.io/BOOT_LOADER_INTERFACE

        3. Random Seeds
           https://systemd.io/RANDOM_SEEDS

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2021-08-27.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 249                                                   BOOTCTL(1)

Pages that refer to this page: loader.conf(5)kernel-command-line(7)systemd-boot(7)systemd-boot-system-token.service(8)