OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: Greg Pringle on April 14, 2021, 02:13:39 pm

Title: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Greg Pringle on April 14, 2021, 02:13:39 pm
Does anyone know how to use the ArcaOs NVMe dirver for the boot device?
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Pete on April 14, 2021, 03:53:16 pm
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


Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on April 14, 2021, 03:58:59 pm
Does anyone know how to use the ArcaOs NVMe dirver for the boot device?
Just a little patience, a Wiki manual is in progress.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on April 14, 2021, 05:26:07 pm
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Dave Yeo on April 14, 2021, 05:36:49 pm
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Greg Pringle on April 14, 2021, 06:02:52 pm
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: David McKenna on April 14, 2021, 10:42:34 pm
 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,
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on April 15, 2021, 01:00:24 am
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/ (https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/multiple-disk-types/)
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Doug Bissett on April 15, 2021, 03:23:13 am
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: David McKenna on April 15, 2021, 05:26:42 am
 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,
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on April 15, 2021, 05:51:48 am
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Doug Bissett on April 15, 2021, 06:28:18 am
Quote
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).

Quote
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...
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Dave Yeo on April 15, 2021, 07:14:30 am
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Greg Pringle on April 15, 2021, 01:43:06 pm
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.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on April 15, 2021, 03:26:26 pm
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.




Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on April 20, 2021, 12:09:17 pm
Lewis' Wiki page (https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/special-installation-considerations/installing-arcaos-to-an-nvme-device/) is online.

The page for the NVMe driver is here (https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/nvme/).

See also this page (https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/special-installation-considerations/) for general driver addition and for saving Preboot menu settings.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: jailbird on April 20, 2021, 11:35:10 pm
For those playing around inside a VM, the easiest method (for me) was to just keep the .iso as-is, not bother with a virtual USB stick, and to just use the old method of a virtual floppy with just the NVME.* files and a blank BOOT_UPD.TXT.

That seemed to work just fine...
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Matt Walsh on April 26, 2021, 12:20:52 am
I got the NVME drive on my AS Rock B-450 and installed the NVME, and using a USB drive installed Arca5.0.6 with the NVME.add in the Config.sys following the wiki directions.  If I boot from another SSD I can see the NVME boot drive and files, but when I try to boot it nothing happens.  The BIOS sees it, but I just get a "_"  flickering on the screen and nothing happens. 
Any suggestions welcome.  I'm wondering if it's a bios setting, but since it's listed on the device list I have no other ideas, so any suggestions welcome.
Thanks
Matt
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on April 26, 2021, 05:13:43 am
I had the same flashing - at some point. I had to order the drives in BIOS so the NVMe drive was first. I had to install AirBoot on the NVMe drive. I had to make sure that the NVMe driver came before other disk drivers in Config.Sys. And I had to make sure that ACPI was not called with /VW.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: ivan on April 26, 2021, 05:55:04 pm
Hi Matt,

Although I don't have a NVMe on my MSI B550 (Ryzen third gen) I do have an M-2 SATA stick that I boot from and found out very early that I needed to set that M-2 slot as the first bootable drive in the bios.  If I didn't do that it would try and boot from any other drive on the system, all 5 plus the DVD, but never try the M-2 slot.

At some stage I will add an NVMe stick to the second M-2 on that board and see what happens - maybe use one as a fall back boot system.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Eugene Tucker on April 27, 2021, 03:55:33 pm
Just wonderig. How do I add the NVME driver to my Arca OS 5.06 ISO? or is there another wayto get it to install to a fresh NVME drive?
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: jailbird on April 28, 2021, 06:47:07 am
Adding it to the .ISO itself doesn't seem to work, as it seems to use ramdisk images on the ISO.  So you'd have to modify those and then reburn the ISO.

So the easiest solutions seem to be USB stick or floppy.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe
Post by: Matt Walsh on May 30, 2021, 10:17:35 pm
Back to my original post, I got my NVME SSD installed and seen by Arca 5.  I did the install as directed in the 20 point wiki document and Arca installed the base files, and then when I rebooted to get the rest of the install, the NVME disk won't boot.  I get a message:
"2001: Boot sector read error" which is better than my first attempts, but still not great. 
I can see the NVME disk and read data off it and even formated a data partition and can use it, but just can't get it to boot. Any further suggestions welcome.
Matt W.
Title: Re: Booting with NVMe - Success
Post by: Matt Walsh on June 21, 2021, 05:59:18 pm
I had a failure to boot on AS Rock AB350M-HDV Motherboard with NVME.  Got help from David Azarewicz and realized it was a BIOS issue.  I then switched to an ASUS Prime B450M-A motherboard and it boots fine, so the problem was just the original MB.
Thanks to Arca and David  Azarewicz for their great work.
Matt W.