Subj : Re: Pi 5 and NVMe SSD
To   : Richard Kettlewell
From : The Natural Philosopher
Date : Wed May 22 2024 09:59:44

On 21/05/2024 22:26, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> In February I mentioned getting an Argon NEO 5 NVMe case for my Pi 5.
>
> It was slightly fiddly to put it all together, but not really outside
> expectations. Linux was able to see my SSD without any trouble.
>
> However I have not been able to get the Pi to boot directly from the
> SSD. It can see there’s something there but can’t interpret it properly;
> the diagnostic output (copy-typed) is:
>
>    NVME on 0
>    Trying partition: 0
>    Unable to read partition as FAT
>    type: 32 lba: 0 '' '            ' clusters 0 (0)
>    Trying partition: 0
>    Unable to read partition as FAT
>    type: 32 lba: 0 '' '            ' clusters 0 (0)
>    NVME off
>    Timeout 00000000 3c303020 00000000 00000000
>    nvme: error 8
>    Failed to open device: 'nvme'
>
> (Why is there ASCII ‘ 00<’ in the timeout message?)
>
> My solution was to boot from the SD card but to configure it (via
> cmdline.txt and /etc/fstab) to mount the root system from the SSD. This
> works (and it’s not like the performance & capacity of the firmware
> partition is very important) though there are now two points of failure.
>
> My interpretation of all this is that the hardware is connecting the SSD
> perfectly well, and the Linux kernel talks to it correctly, but the boot
> loader is failing to communicate properly with the SSD.
>
> Based on forum posts there are many compatibility issues between the Pi
> 5 and NVMe devices, so anyone planning to buy one should do their
> research first.
>
> In my case the SSD is a Crucial CT1000P5SSD8; I had it left over from a
> decommissioned PC.
>

Indeed. Recent pi hardware and the new bookworm release have some rough
edges.
In this case it looks like it (the bootloader) cant find the FAT
partition. Now that could be that it is making some unwarranted
assumptions about where on the disk that actually is.

And the disk has it either elsewhere, or mapped internally to elsewhere.

I note that it is trying partition 0..
is that actually where the FAT volume resides?

I mean could it be simply a case of reformatting the NVME to put the FAT
partition where the firmware 'expects' it to be.

I had similar issues doing all usb boot...but stumbed on a config that
worked using my tame team of random monkeys....

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
-- Yogi Berra

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