Arch Linux

Hos813

Member

Registered: 2025-06-25

Posts: 1

GRUB can't detect the ssd arch installed on

I currently using debian as my main system, and installed arch on a NVMe ssd added to an old motherboard that doesn't have one using NVMe to PCIe adapter, the motherboard cannot detect the ssd but everywhere else it is working fine, after installation I ran "update-grub" in debian so that it can detect it and it did and added arch to boot menu, but when I select it I get this error :

error: no such device: 686E-80EC.
error: file '/vmlinuz-linux' not found.
error: you need to load the kernel first.

The UUID is for the /boot partition, when I press c and run "ls" in grub console I can't find the NVMe ssd, how can I fix GRUB so that it can detect the NVMe ssd?

ankabo

Member

Registered: 2025-07-14

Posts: 16

Re: GRUB can't detect the ssd arch installed on

Is the problem solved?
Otherwise post your grub.conf and output of blkid.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,153

Re: GRUB can't detect the ssd arch installed on

GRUB doesn't ship hardware drivers, you either need to get the drive visible to the BIOS or install the Arch kernel and initramfs (basically whatevers logically under /boot needs to land on the disk that can actually be loaded) into the working debian disk and load the rest from there.

Last edited by V1del (2025-07-14 12:01:54)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 2,112

Re: GRUB can't detect the ssd arch installed on

well - if the platforms firmware doesn't support nvme itself it's just another pci-e device - and hence grub would require its own nvme driver instead of relying on the uefi to provide it as storage
it's the same as back when we required boot floppies because very early systems were unable to directly boot from scsi / ide

possible solution: create a XBOOTLDR partition on the regular boot drive and mount that as /boot in your arch install - this way it's on the same drive grub starts from (or if there's enough space in the ESP you can use it directly instad of an additional xbootldr partition

TL;DR: without the bios/uefi supporting nvme directly to provide it as storage to a boitloader w/o additional drivers your board is not able to boot from it
the initrd should contain the required nvme driver to find it as /sysroot

/// edit: F5 - sniped

Last edited by cryptearth (2025-07-14 12:05:00)