After that kernel boots normally and UART stops printing logs. Kernel, btw v6.18, can see and enumerate NMVe SSD, and mount root. $ lspci 0004:40:00.0 PCI bridge: Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd RK3588 (rev 01) 0004:41:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: MAXIO Technology (Hangzhou) Ltd. NVMe SSD Controller MAP1202 (DRAM-less) (rev 01) $ ls /dev/nvme* /dev/nvme0 /dev/nvme0n1 /dev/nvme0n1p1 /dev/nvme0n1p2 Not sure what firmware you are referring to. I have u-boot-rockchip-spi.bin flashed to SPI flash by armbian-config, while boot dir (including kernel, dtb, etc.) stays in SD card to workaround booting issue and whole rootfs at NVMe SSD. I still think this U-boot NVMe related issue. Apparently NVMe support in U-Boot is enabled but "nvme scan" failed enumeration.

@Dalibor Pospíšil I haven't tested if the pcie works, maybe others did? But it's a bsp driver so it should. If that works, and if the SATA device has a driver in Linux 6.18, simply enable it in menuconfig and you should be good to go. EDIT: Right, I don't have A7A so I didn't really touch the dts for A7A, there might be a little works needed for it to boot.

@alexc What about SATA support? The a7a board has m.2 pcie where the PentaHAT can be attached (I tested it with a custom sunxi kernel).

IMHO, OP wants to boot OS from NVME while the firmware is stored in the SPI flash, but he is using firmware in which the necessary support is not enabled.

@eli I think I’ve got KVM enabled, but as they discussed previously, it's not a Linux kernel issue, there's some specific u-boot firmware needed. Since I don't think the open source firmware is ready yet, I guess KVM likely is not feasible on A733 for now.