NitroPC (2023) cannot find Samsung 970 SSD

NitroPad, NitroPC
1

I took a Samsung SSD hard drive (and some RAM) from a Librem 14 laptop, put it into the NitroPC (1) M.2 slot (the high one), and tried to boot. I get an EFI shell and no volumes appear. If I plug in a USB drive with a GNU/Linux OS, the EFI shell sees the USB drive and I can boot into it.

It makes sense that it doesn’t boot, because the drive does not have an EFI partition on it, however I don’t think it makes sense that it cannot see the drive at all.

Is this something that would be resolved by using the firmware at Release v2024-05-09 - NitroPC 1 firmware releases · Nitrokey/coreboot-builder · GitHub? I see update nitropc to cb 4.22 · Nitrokey/coreboot-builder@ae49a82 · GitHub updated coreboot and also had some changes around the PCI devices in the devicetree.

Or is it something that I can fix without having to flash firmware?

2

These PC are sold with different firmware options. You should name the one including release yours uses. The dasharo firmware, I believe from memory, has options to disallow new devices, the new M2 should show up in the menu.

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3

Invoice from 2024-08 (not 2023, my mistake) said this:

“NitroPC 1 (none, none, none, no wireless, sealed screws and sealed bag, Type B, North America) Operating System: none Option: I donate for firmware updates”

The UEFI shell says:

UEFI Interactive Shell v2.2

EDK II

UEFI v2.70 (EDK II, 0x00010000)

Then shows the USB device on the mapping table as FS0 with BLK0, BLK1.

When I exit, it says:

FW: 4.22-dirty 11/18/2023

Intel(R) Core™ i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz

65536 MB RAM

That must mean I already have the 2024-05-29 firmware release because it includes coreboot 4.22 and also my order was in 2024-08.

If I don’t have the bootable USB stick plugged in, I see nothing on the mapping table.

“Current Secure Boot State” is “Disabled” as well.

I am confident the Samsung SSD works because I can read from it using a USB enclosure on a separate computer.

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4

to make sure you are running 4.22

dmidecode --type bios

BIOS Information
	Vendor: coreboot
	Version: 4.22-dirty
	Release Date: 11/18/2023

If I don’t have the bootable USB stick plugged in, I see nothing on the mapping table.

Have you already installed an OS on your new nvme using a diffrent machine? Or is this your first attempt using nitropc

5

There is no dmidecode command in the EFI shell but from a live USB distribution I was able to run it. Yes, it shows

Vendor: coreboot
Version: 4.22-dirty
Release Date: 11/18/2023
ROM Size: 16 MB
Characteristics:
  PCI is supported
  PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
  BIOS is upgradeable
  Selectable boot is supported
  ACPI is supported
  Targeted content distribution is supported
BIOS Revision: 4.22
Firmware Revision: 0.0

Yes, it was the sole drive on the Purism Librem 14. I was able to use a USB enclosure to copy all the data off of it. I don’t see an EFI partition on it.

Oh, and yes, these are my first attempts to run anything on the NitroPC, I ordered it without RAM and without a hard drive.

Is it odd that it doesn’t show up in the mapping table at all? Or does it need an EFI partition in order to show up?