Booting with NVMe

[Greg Pringle]

Does anyone know how to use the ArcaOs NVMe dirver for the boot device?

[Pete]

Hi Greg

My guess is that it needs to be before ahci and/or danis506 - that is the "traditional" method eg:-

  BASEDEV=NVME.ADD
  BASEDEV=OS2AHCI.ADD
  BASEDEV=DANIS506.ADD

If that does not work you will need to explore the options. Let us know how you get on  :-)


Regards

Pete

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

Does anyone know how to use the ArcaOs NVMe dirver for the boot device?

Just a little patience, a Wiki manual is in progress.

[Neil Waldhauer]

I have now done it using the ArcaOS 5.0.6 USB stick. I'm sure a Wiki entry from Arca Noae will come soon, as I have reported the result to the tester's list.

You'll need to edit the Config.Sys in the pre-boot menu to comply with what it says in the NVMe readme. The PSD line needs to NOT have /VW

If you install, you need to edit Config.Sys at the end of Phase 1 with the same changes the pre-boot menu got. After that, it should work.

[Dave Yeo]

Niel's actually talking about installing ArcaOS on a NVMe device. Editing config.sys as Pete mentioned, making sure that you are using the SMP kernel and ACPI without parameters such as /VW should be enough to boot on most hardware. It is only supported on 5.06 or newer.

[Greg Pringle]

I had tried the USB stick method and there was a hang after leaving the config.sys editor after the end on the manual install F10. I will some variations.

[David McKenna]

 I've also been struggling to get this to work. I put NVME.ADD in the root of the USB ArcaOS 5.0.6 install boot drive. Booted from it, choose boot with own values, add the NVME driver on the drives page, checked config.sys - the driver is listed as BASEDEV=NVME.ADD, hit F10, the boot continues, then hangs at the ArcaOS logo (needs a hard reboot). Tried different orders of disk drivers, but all hang.

 The driver works fine booted from my SATA drive, and I have created a volume on the NVME drive and formatted it and copied files back and forth with no issues. Just can't seem to boot with it loaded on the USB boot stick...

Regards,

[Neil Waldhauer]

If you want to boot from NVMe drive, and you use AirBoot, how are you going to install AirBoot on NVMe drive? That's why you need to boot from the installer USB stick.

If you have another drive besides NVMe one, better read this page from the Arca Noae wiki.

https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/multiple-disk-types/

[Doug Bissett]

I got a Vantec PCIe adapter, and installed a 250 GB Samsung 980 PRO (PCIe 4.0 NVMe M,2). It works well, after the driver loads, but I cannot boot from it. The problem is that it is mounted on a plug in card, that the BIOS doesn't know about, so it won't boot from it (because it doesn't know it is there). Air Boot also cannot "see" it, because BIOS doesn't know about it. Most (if not all) machines cannot boot from a plug in card, if the BIOS doesn't know about it. This is true for USB too.

If you have a machine, that knows about the adapter, it should boot from it.

Then again, it really doesn't make much sense to waste one of those things for boot code, unless you boot 14 times a day, or it is your only choice. I am still thinking about how to use it effectively. At least it is non volatile, so it remembers what was put on it, unlike what the RAMDISK does.

[David McKenna]

 Neil,

 I don't use Air-boot. The problem was I couldn't boot the install USB stick with the NVME driver added (it worked without NVME), but it turns out somehow unexpectedly /VW was being added to the ACPI.PSD line in CONFIG.SYS only if I choose to add NVME - no idea why - so I removed the /VW and now can boot the USB install stick with NVME. Now to try installing...

Regards,

[Neil Waldhauer]

I got a Vantec PCIe adapter, and installed a 250 GB Samsung 980 PRO (PCIe 4.0 NVMe M,2). It works well, after the driver loads, but I cannot boot from it. The problem is that it is mounted on a plug in card, that the BIOS doesn't know about, so it won't boot from it (because it doesn't know it is there). Air Boot also cannot "see" it, because BIOS doesn't know about it. Most (if not all) machines cannot boot from a plug in card, if the BIOS doesn't know about it. This is true for USB too.

If you have a machine, that knows about the adapter, it should boot from it.

Then again, it really doesn't make much sense to waste one of those things for boot code, unless you boot 14 times a day, or it is your only choice. I am still thinking about how to use it effectively. At least it is non volatile, so it remembers what was put on it, unlike what the RAMDISK does.

I'm booting just fine from a Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 with a StarTech PCIe-4x NVMe card. It's easily twice as fast as a SATA SSD. As far as being a waste, new machines only have this type of drive, so we need booting support.

[Doug Bissett]

I'm booting just fine from a Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 with a StarTech PCIe-4x NVMe card

Does that card attach to the BIOS? Mine doesn't.

I have a StarTech PCI SATA /RAID card, that I can boot from. It is in an old Asus P4VP that I use as a NAS box. It does add itself to the BIOS, so I should be able to boot from it (but I never tried).

As far as being a waste, new machines only have this type of drive, so we need booting support.

That is what I meant by "or it is your only choice".

Many people think that a fast boot is a good thing, but they only boot once in a while. Other things are used all of the time, and fast access helps out. Meanwhile, the boot code is just taking up space that might be better used for other things (it depends on the size of the drive). I would think that some (but not all) of the UNIX support would be good to have on a NVMe drive. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to separate the often used parts, from the never used parts. I have been using the RAMDISK for temporary files. My RAMDISK is big enough for most things, and it doesn't matter if it survives a reboot (in fact, it is a good thing that it gets cleared at every boot). Now, I can use the NVMe drive for temporary files that are too big for the RAMDISK (large ZIP files, for example). It is, in fact, a little faster than the RAMDISK (according to the DFSEE speed test). However, it seems that the NVMe drive needs TRIM sometimes, and it is probably not good to keep reusing the same area. I am not too sure how that will work out.

Time will tell the tale...

[Dave Yeo]

I just reboot to Linux periodically, mount the JFS partitions on my SSD and do "sudo fstrim -av" to trim my SSD. Seems to work fine, at least with Mint and presumably most all Ubuntu derived distros, which seem to be smart enough to correctly mount OS/2 JFS volumes.

[Greg Pringle]

I am still thinking about how to use it effectively.

I was running in Linux an application with a raid 5 setup on a AMD Epyc system. The application was so heavy on the disks it killed off the Btrfs file system. I then changed machines and went to an new Epyc system with U.2 drives only (U.2 = NVMe). The application is now running very smoothly without any disk thrashing. Speed matters. I have had to transition applications from OS/2 due to speed issues.

[Rene Hvidsoe]

Hi all,

Have installed ArcaOS 5.06 on my NVME  WD 500 GB on my desktop that also has a SATA drive where ArcaOS and Linux is installed in dualboot .

As a test I did disable the SATA controller to install  ArcaOS on the NVME drive. I must admit it is running quite well.

I normally use the NVME drive to test different Linux Distros.

I did use dfsee to convert from gpt to mbr. Then added the driver to my ArcaOS install stick.

So far no issues found. Well done Arca Noae.