I have had a boot problem that I have just solved (just my stupid mistake) but by the way I tried Boot Repair which did not help (nor harm) but generated an interesting report:
boot-repair-4ppa129 [20210409_1530]
============================== Boot Info Summary ===============================
=> No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.
sda1: __________________________________________________________________________
File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Unknown
Boot sector info: According to the info in the boot sector, sda1 starts
at sector 0. But according to the info from fdisk,
sda1 starts at sector 40.
Another interesting bit:
============================= Drive/Partition Info =============================
Disks info: ____________________________________________________________________
sda : is-GPT, no-BIOSboot, has---ESP, not-usb, not-mmc, has-os, 40 sectors * 512 bytes
I have found some posts containing this message, of course related to boot problems.
One useful conclusion of my case is that the reported mismatch does not prevent booting, even though sda1 is the EFI system partition.
Nevertheless, I would like to know its cause, its possible (bad) consequences, if it needs to repaired and how to, please.
Edit after oldfred's comment
% sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda
[sudo] password for alba:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.5
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Model: Samsung SSD 860
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): B5CA7AB4-D564-49A1-A43B-D9125D4DCBAB
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 265597 sectors (129.7 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition
2 409640 975368439 464.9 GiB AF00 MacOS_El_Capitan
3 975630584 976900119 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD
4 976902144 1953523711 465.7 GiB 8300 Ubuntu
And one more bit of Boot Repair report:
======================== Unknown MBRs/Boot Sectors/etc =========================
Unknown BootLoader on sda1
00000000 eb 58 90 42 53 44 20 20 34 2e 34 00 02 01 20 00 |.X.BSD 4.4... .|
00000010 02 00 00 00 00 f0 00 00 20 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 |........ .......|
00000020 00 40 06 00 4f 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 |[email protected]...........|
00000030 01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000040 00 00 29 ed 17 e3 67 45 46 49 20 20 20 20 20 20 |..)...gEFI |
00000050 20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 fa 31 c0 8e d0 bc | FAT32 .1....|
00000060 00 7c fb 8e d8 e8 00 00 5e 83 c6 19 bb 07 00 fc |.|......^.......|
00000070 ac 84 c0 74 06 b4 0e cd 10 eb f5 30 e4 cd 16 cd |...t.......0....|
00000080 19 0d 0a 4e 6f 6e 2d 73 79 73 74 65 6d 20 64 69 |...Non-system di|
00000090 73 6b 0d 0a 50 72 65 73 73 20 61 6e 79 20 6b 65 |sk..Press any ke|
000000a0 79 20 74 6f 20 72 65 62 6f 6f 74 0d 0a 00 00 00 |y to reboot.....|
000000b0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|
00000200
sudo dosfsck -V /dev/sda1
finds nothing special. (I do not have Windows.)