[SOLVED] Armbian 25.2.1 NVMe SPI flash boot issues

[Jacob Olness]

EDIT: I tried using ext4 rather than btrfs and.. somehow that solved it? I don't understand how the SSD file system would change how the bootloader is flashed because if properly flashed, the SD card shouldn't work at all, unless something has changed. 

Hey all, 
I wanted to move to the newest version of armbian (25.2.1) and for whatever reason neither `apt update && apt upgrade` nor `armbian-upgrade` (as a sanity check) worked so I wiped the SPI flash using `mtdtools` as prescribed in the forum post linked on the support page. 
1) Booted from SD, installed Armbian and the bootloader. 
2) Shut down, removed SD and turned on. Machine hung and never booted from NVMe. 
3) Thought somehow I did something wrong or there was an error and used MaskROM mode and `rkdeveloptool` to revert it to boot from SD. 
4) Repeated step 2
5) Still won't boot from NVMe but boots from SD (should have tried this first)
6) Tried reinstalling the bootloader to SPI flash, get this message: 
 

Processing blocks: 394/394 (100%)
diff blocks: 0
Done

Which reads like the flash is identical to what would is contained in the installer itself so it isn't overwritten.
Wiped again and tried to install bootloader again. Still won't boot from NVMe but boots from SD card normally. 
Also, forgot to include this in my steps: I formatted the NVMe 3 times total and installed/reinstalled Armbian from the `armbian-install` script as a sanity check. 

Have had no issues in the past with any of this (I think I was on 24.11 most recently) so my first thought was a bug in the installer but am not seeing anyone else having this issue so figured I would ask here just to be sure. 

My questions are: 
1) Has anyone else tried to use the installer on 25.2? I can't imagine there were any (much less breaking) changes but I am perplexed at this point. 
2) Is the bootloader file available separately so I can flash it from `rkdeveloptools`
Worst case I can image 24.11 on to the SD and try to install the bootloader that way but again, id be surprised if there were major changes. 

Thanks in advance!

Edited February 26 by Jacob Olness

[royk]

The boot directory is on the nvme, so likely the btrfs file system is not supported by the bootloader.

Please put in your title that you've solved it

Edited February 26 by royk

[Jacob Olness]

@royk Done, I was trying to figure out if there was a way to mark the thread as solved or closed, putting it in the title seems obvious now that you say that. 
The part that was throwing me off is that it was still booting from the SD card. My understanding was that with the NVMe bootloader flashed it will not, under any circumstances, boot from the SD card although this could be outdated or just incorrect. 

[royk]

@Jacob Olness The SD-card has priority, otherwise it would be difficult to recover.