How can I flash SPI so that I can boot from NVMe?

[calinb]

I think I may try this firmware on eMMC, that way I can at least boot NVMe directly. This way I dont regrest flashing my SPI. If I do have problems, I can always disable the eMMC and boot off SD card. 

Thanks!

Yes. Also, given that I'm finding my eMMC to be a good place to store /boot and / backup images from NVMe SSD while I tinker with my kernel on NVME, I decided to wait before attempting to flash my SPI. I have the same functionality and no risk by simply using the NVMe-enabled Manjaro boot loader on my eMMC.


As long as I preserve the Manjaro U-boot loader on eMMC (the 32.0MB before the first partition), I suspect the Manjaro U-boot loader will work with other distros installed to my NVMe SSD too, but I've not tried anything but Manjaro on my NVMe SSD so far.

Code:

$ sudo parted -l
...
Model: MMC DA4064 (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/mmcblk2: 62.5GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:  

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
1      32.0MB  256MB   224MB   primary  fat16        lba
2      256MB   62.5GB  62.3GB  primary  ext4

You might already know about this thread, but here's more info:



https://forum.manjaro.org/t/nvme-support...04-1/63774


My Manjaro U-boot seems to have the functionality of Nadia's patch and I don't recall if pcm720's code requires it (I read that long thread over a month ago).


Also, be sure to check to see if you're are really booting from NVMe (/boot and / are reported by lsblk as mounted on my Manjaro system, though I guess boot might not be mounted on other systems after boot so maybe boot logs or dmesg would reveal where they booted from):

Code:

$ lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
mmcblk2      179:0    0  58.2G  0 disk  
├─mmcblk2p1  179:1    0 213.6M  0 part  
└─mmcblk2p2  179:2    0    58G  0 part  
mmcblk2boot0 179:32   0     4M  1 disk  
mmcblk2boot1 179:64   0     4M  1 disk  
zram0        252:0    0   5.7G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme0n1      259:0    0 931.5G  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1  259:1    0 213.6M  0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p2  259:2    0 931.3G  0 part /

Please let us know how things go for you!