Debian - Move root partition to NVMe and keep boot partition

VisionFive 2 （English Forum)
21

Hi @_eric,

Yes, and it is quite straight forward, really. Mainly, all i did, was:

  • plugin, partition and format the NVMe. (mine is a WD Blue SN570, 500GB).
  • mount and debootstrap a Debian root file system onto it.
  • did a minimum on standard configuration (see below).
  • entered the new partition in /boot/boot/extlinux.conf.

For the configuration of the new file system:

  • chroot into it
  • set a root passwd so that you can log in later.
  • apt-get and configure locales and ntpsec.
  • apt-get openssh
  • apt-get install debian-keyring, debian-ports-archive-keyring
  • leave the chroot
  • copy and adjust /etc/fstab
  • copy and adjust /etc/network/interfaces
  • copy /root/.ssh to preserve the authorized_keys

Then reboot with a terminal attached to be able to select the new partition during the boot dialog. When everything comes out fine, set the default in extlinux.conf.

During that, I ran in to the following issues / made the following choices:

  • i use the stock debian-ports, not the snapshot.
  • one has some fun with the keyrings during debootstrap and later.
  • i found the interfaces renamed from ‘eth*’ to ‘end*’ and needed to activate the iface line in /etc/network/interfaces to get the dhcp requested.
  • /dev/ttyUSB0 and screen were sometimes dropping characters (wrong baud rate somewhere?). No issue once the ssh connection is going.

Later, i saw some NVMe I/O timeouts, but did not take care of them, yet.

Hmm, to mention a very silly problem, too, i had no suiting screw to fix the NVMe. The Quick Start Guide could be improved mentioning screw or thread spec. If you know the right diameter, please drop a line. For now, i fixed the device with a piece of tesa strip.

As good as i understand the boot process so far, the extlinux layer can be skipped, as the u-boot is placed in an mtd device, but might need some fixes (u-boot env, /boot/boot, …). So better preserve the SD until then. I don’t think, the two extra partitions in the beginning of the current image are actually really needed. Also no need to adjust the boot switches, which to my current understanding are mainly needed for other purposes.

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