AMENDMENT Ubuntu 24.04 cannot install onto NVMe, at all, no matter what.

I tried it with a non-switched PCIe adapter, & it still couldn’t work.

Sorry I got it wrong, before.

Now I’m working to discover if 25.10 can install to NVMe ( in spite of Lubuntu’s broken build-essential package, & the idiocy of Lubuntu telling us to file bug-reports in the Ubuntu One ( or whatever ) system, but that system not allowing that Lubuntu is a tracked project, so there’s NO bug-reporting place for it. Idiocy. ).

I’ll update this again whether it works or not, so you don’t have to do these stupid experiments to discover the fundamentals.

The performance-difference is sooo spectacular, that the engineers who wouldn’t include NVMe on the board-itself … cannot be considered loyal to the potential of the devices they’re engineering, tbh: they essentially “Celeron’d” the things by making them use microSDXC, which … not my values )

TL;DR:

IF you use Geerling’s rpi-clone tool, THEN DON’T name your new root partition, let it do all the config by UUID,

AND if you have NVMe on a dual-device board, through a PCIe-switch chip, then your ONLY option is to boot from RasPi OS, because Ubuntu 24.04 LTS simply won’t work through that: they configured the kernel to not be capable of it.

( didn’t bother trying 25.10, because on the destop, Lubuntu 25.10 CAN’T INSTALL build-essential PACKAGE, so that breaks EVERYthing for my learning-programming machine, & I need both to be using the same OS, version-included, so I don’t get driven mad by UX-inconsistencies : )

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This took waaay too long to figure-out, so I’m putting it here for others, so you don’t have to bash your brain against the damn wall, like I did.

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Geerling’s rpi-clone tool, available from geerlingguy’s github,

# Install rpi-clone.
git clone https://github.com/geerlingguy/rpi-clone.git
cd rpi-clone
sudo cp rpi-clone rpi-clone-setup /usr/local/sbin

# Clone to the NVMe drive (usually nvme0n1, but check with `lsblk`).
sudo rpi-clone nvme0n1

has a gotcha: if you name the new root-partition, then it won’t be able to mount it, in my experience.

Once named, that root-partition can’t be mounted when booting from NVMe, by /dev/nvme0n1p2, not by LABEL=whatever. ( didn’t try UUID mount )

You need to have it identical in your linux-kernel cmdline.txt ( which is in your /boot/firmware/ dir, aka your 1st-partition ) and in your /etc/fstab ( which is in your 2nd partition ).

That took ages to learn, too.

Let the rpi-clone util have NO name for the new root partition, & then it’ll correctly give UUID identifiers to both of those files, for your new root.

Then it’ll work in Raspberry Pi OS.

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However, nothing one does can get Ubuntu’s 24.04 LTS to boot from dual-device/PCIe-switched NVMe adapter/“hat”: apparently Ubuntu pruned-out the kernel’s ability to work through a PCIe-switch, breaking all dual-NVMe-adapter-boards from being able to work.

( updated-system is current @ 2026-04-02, in case they update it in the future )

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I’d wanted to someday switch to BTRFS raid1, but … that’s impossible, unless remaining in RasPi OS, which I don’t want to do, because too many things consider Ubuntu to be the only default-config.

As Torvalds identified: it’s hell to make an app work with multiple distros, due to too-little being standard between them all, hence the “just do Ubuntu” paradigm that’s substituting for app-developer’s standard…

( & snaps/flatpaks are usually x86_64 only, ttbomk, so that doesn’t help, either )

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Yeah, I know, Arch’s got a Rpi4 ( or greater ) version, & yes, I’ve tried it,

but I really want to stop doing sysadmin, & just do learning Haskell, THE programming-language for developing one’s ability to think & to prevent-bugs in programs, if done correctly.

( no side-effects-distributed-throughout-the-entire-codebase, pure-functional, & type-level programming all contribute to that )

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May you not hit all the damn corner-cases in the world,

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