Armbian install on NVME drive

amouiche · March 15, 2025, 10:58am

Hello.
The radxa documentation gives information to install using rsetup to flash a bootloader on spinor.
But:

I which to control which bootloader is flased.
The rock5-itx board I received didn’t had any OS pre-flashed so I never get the rsetup tool
I would like to only use 100 % armbian stuff.
Here is some doc/tips:

amouiche/dev-blog/blob/master/Radxa_Rock5_ITX/armbian_install_on_nvme.md

# Goal 

- Install Armbian "Minimal / IOT image"  from https://www.armbian.com/radxa-rock-5-itx/
- I want something that will be maintained and upgradeable for years, so not based on a vendor kernel. 
- I don't care about HDMI output or GPU. No screen will be attached. I'm only using the serial port for the install
- the main system will installed on a NVME driver. Multiple SATA drives will be grouped as a raid volume

Notes:

- A [serial console](hardware_tweaks.md) is **highly recommended** for this process.  



# Install the image

Image comes from https://dl.armbian.com/rock-5-itx/Bookworm_vendor_minimal

=> `Armbian_24.11.1_Rock-5-itx_bookworm_vendor_6.1.75_minimal.img.xz`

There are 2 ways to install it on nvme:

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skandalfo · March 15, 2025, 8:51pm

I’m running the Armbian “rolling release” 25.04 “Plucky” from the very end of https://www.armbian.com/radxa-rock-5-itx/ on NVM and it’s been rock solid so far (at least after switching to the “edge” upstream kernel (currently 6.14.0-rc4).

I’m running a 256 GB Samsung NVME drive with the OS in the main m.2 socket, a 2-port SATA controller in the A/E m.2 socket, and running 2 SSDs and 4 HDDs on the resulting 6 SATA ports.

With the mainline kernel graphics support is very basic (FHD 60 Hz or 4K 30 Hz on only one HDMI output), and things like the NPU aren’t available AFAIU, but it works perfectly so far for my NAS + Home Assistant needs. With mainline I all the devices are seen in all the boots (no randomly disappearing SATA controller).

I installed the image on an micro-SD card and booted from it in order to install onto the NVME.

From the SD card boot environment I did the following:

Update the system on SD and switch it to the edge mainline kernel via armbian-config.
Copy the first 16 MB of the SD device to the SPI nor via dd so the bootloader is there.
Download the same armbian image again into the SD free space and dd it onto the NVME so armbian is installed there.
After removing the SD and rebooting to NVME, switched to mainline kernel there again via armbian-config.

I hope this helps.