I had Ubuntu and Fedora installed in a UEFI dual-boot setup. I removed Ubuntu with GParted from a live USB and expanded Fedora into the freed space. Fedora still boots normally, but the GRUB menu no longer appears during startup. I checked the EFI system partition and it still contains Fedora's boot files, and `efibootmgr` shows Fedora's shim as the active boot entry. The EFI partition is mounted at `/boot/efi`, with Fedora's files under `/boot/efi/EFI/fedora` and fallback files under `/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT`. I also regenerated the GRUB configuration. How can I restore the visible GRUB menu?
2 Answers
The files in `/boot/loader/entries` show that Fedora still has valid kernel boot entries, and the fallback EFI files are present. That points more toward a hidden or nearly instant menu than a missing bootloader. You can also check whether Fedora is using GRUB's hidden-menu settings with `sudo grub2-editenv list`; if it reports a saved menu state, removing or resetting that state and rebuilding the configuration may help. Avoid deleting the EFI partition—your existing one is needed to start Fedora.
Your EFI partition does not appear to have been deleted. The disk layout shows a 600 MB FAT32 EFI partition, and the firmware is launching Fedora's `shim.efi`, so the bootloader itself is probably fine. Fedora commonly hides the GRUB menu when it detects only one operating system. Check `/etc/default/grub` and set the menu to display, for example: `GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu` and `GRUB_TIMEOUT=5`. Then regenerate the configuration with `sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2.cfg` and reboot. On some Fedora installations the configuration path may instead be `/boot/grub2/grub.cfg`.
The `efibootmgr` output also shows a one-second timeout, which makes the menu easy to miss. Hold Shift during a legacy-style boot or repeatedly press Esc immediately after powering on if you need to reveal it while testing.
If the menu still never appears after changing the timeout, enter the firmware boot settings and confirm that the Fedora entry is first. Also disable any firmware fast-boot option temporarily, since it can make the key window for showing the menu extremely short.