[GTALUG] Booting linux from nvme disk?

[Giles Orr]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2021 at 21:09, Peter King via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> Anyone had success with getting linux to boot from an nvme disk?  I've
> been fighting with UEFI and Arch Linux all day now, trying to get a new
> computer to even recognize the nvme disk as a boot device.  (Last time I
> encountered this problem I gave up and installed an ordinary HD to boot
> from.)  For what it's worth, I have disabled Secure Boot, reformatted the
> nvme disk to have a new EFI partition without Windows, a swap partition,
> and a root partition; I'm trying to use efibootmgr (so no loading of a
> further bootloader), and, as far as I can tell, identified all the right
> partitions by device name or PARTUUID.  Still no go.  I even tried adding
> the parameter nvme_load=YES into the "root" part of the efibootmgr, and
> also adding nvme and vmd as modules in mkinitcpio.conf, all without any
> success.  If necessary I'll just punt and install a regular HD to boot
> from, but that rather takes away from having an nvme disk in the first
> place.
>
> (Over the years I've learning to approach installing Linux with fear and
> loathing, with almost all the problems being with the bootloader -- from
> LILO through GRUB and GRUB2 now down to UEFI.)
>
> Any suggestions welcome!  I didn't want to spend my weekend doing this.

Hi Peter.

I'm pretty sure I have Linux installed on an NVMe disk somewhere.  I
apologize that I'm not sure where: most of my machines are "older,"
but not all - however, I have enough of them that I'm not sure where
that NVMe disk is.  The point is: if it's in this house, I installed
Linux on it and it evidently wasn't a problem because I don't remember
it.

I would suggest downloading and installing a recent Fedora.  You've
chosen Arch: that's a hard row to hoe.  I'm not saying you should
change distros, but installing Fedora abstracts away a LOT of the
difficult work Arch insists you do by hand (I've installed both,
recently).  If installing Fedora works, A) you've proven this computer
can be made to work with Linux, and B) the hard drive may be formatted
in a useful way for another attempt at Arch.  Or you could (and I
think this might be wise initially) install Arch as a secondary OS to
Fedora.  With that in mind, you could use Fedora to format two 32G OS
partitions, and an all-the-rest-of-the-drive partition as /home/.

Just a thought.

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com