Releases 130+ works now for me as well to boot from NVMe and without a SD card inserted. Below are my steps that I used.
Clear disk in case there are partitions already.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/nvme0n1 bs=1M count=1
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mtdblock0 bs=1M count=1
Create partitions, format them and set labels.
# create partitions
parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 mklabel gpt
parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 mkpart primary fat16 17m 285m
parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 name 1 '"bootfs"'
parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 set 1 bls_boot on
parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 mkpart primary ext4 285m 100%
parted -s /dev/nvme0n1 name 2 '" "'
# format partitions
mkfs.fat /dev/nvme0n1p1
mkfs.ext4 -F /dev/nvme0n1p2
# create labels
dosfslabel /dev/nvme0n1p1 armbi_boot
tune2fs -L armbi_root /dev/nvme0n1p2
Install the existing system onto the NVMe.
Select "Boot from MTD Flash, system on SATA, USB or NVMe"
Select the partition "/dev/nvme0n1p2" for rootfs and format as EXT4
Then it installs bootloader to SPI (mtdblock0)
Select "Exit" instead of "Power off"
Since the armbian-install command does not copy data to the dedicated /boot partition and also does not update all files, we prepare the bootfs manually.
mkdir /mnt/boot /mnt/root
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/root
rsync -av /boot/* /mnt/boot/
rsync -av /boot/* /mnt/root/boot/
# The set command is "fish" shell syntax
set UUID (blkid -o export /dev/nvme0n1p2 | grep -E '(^UUID=)' | cut -d '=' -f 2)
sed -i "s#rootdev=UUID=[A-Fa-f0-9-]*#rootdev=UUID=$UUID#" /mnt/boot/armbianEnv.txt
sed -i "s#rootdev=UUID=[A-Fa-f0-9-]*#rootdev=UUID=$UUID#" /mnt/root/boot/armbianEnv.txt
# not needed, installer updated to the correct UUID already
#sed -i "s#UUID=[A-Fa-f0-9-]* / ext4#UUID=$UUID / ext4#" /mnt/root/etc/fstab
# Works without the next 2 steps.
# /dev/nvme0n1p1 is not mounted as /boot partition and the armbian-install installed all /boot files into the /boot folder on the rootfs partition
# Not sure which way is better. With or without /boot partition
set UUID (blkid -o export /dev/nvme0n1p1 | grep -E '(^UUID=)' | cut -d '=' -f 2)
echo "UUID=$UUID /boot vfat defaults 0 2" >> /mnt/root/etc/fstab
Power off
Remove SD card
Boot from NVMe
Output after NVMe boot.
