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Add NVMe boot guide (untested) to README

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Documents the dd + EEPROM configuration approach for booting Talos
from NVMe on RPi5/CM5. Includes BOOT_ORDER, PCIE_PROBE settings,
and optional PCIe Gen 3 configuration.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Mathias Beaulieu-Duncan 2026-02-13 20:00:16 -05:00
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@ -90,6 +90,50 @@ This project targets production-ready Talos clusters on RPi5/CM5 hardware.
| Untested | **Serial console fix** | Use correct debug UART (`ttyAMA10`) with `earlycon` for early boot output. |
| Untested | **NVMe boot support** | `dd` image to NVMe + set EEPROM `BOOT_ORDER=0xf416` and `PCIE_PROBE=1`. Kernel has `CONFIG_BLK_DEV_NVME=y` built-in. |
## NVMe boot (untested)
The kernel has NVMe built-in (`CONFIG_BLK_DEV_NVME=y`), so booting from NVMe should work by flashing the disk image directly and configuring the RPi5/CM5 EEPROM.
### 1. Flash the image to NVMe
Connect the NVMe drive via a USB adapter and flash:
```bash
zstd -d metal-arm64.raw.zst | sudo dd of=/dev/<nvme-device> bs=4M status=progress
sync
```
### 2. Configure EEPROM boot order
Boot into Raspberry Pi OS on an SD card and run:
```bash
sudo rpi-eeprom-config --edit
```
Set these values:
```ini
BOOT_ORDER=0xf416
PCIE_PROBE=1
```
`BOOT_ORDER` is read right-to-left: try NVMe (`6`) first, then SD (`1`), then USB (`4`), then restart (`f`). `PCIE_PROBE=1` is required for non-HAT+ NVMe adapters (Compute Blade, most M.2 carrier boards).
### 3. Boot from NVMe
Remove the SD card and power on. The RPi firmware should find the boot partition on NVMe, load U-Boot, and boot Talos.
### Optional: enable PCIe Gen 3
Add to your `configTxtAppend` overlay option or directly to `config.txt` on the boot partition:
```ini
dtparam=pciex1_gen=3
```
This doubles throughput (~400 MB/s Gen 2 to ~800 MB/s Gen 3). Not officially certified by Raspberry Pi but works on most NVMe drives.
## Building
For local builds, CI/CD setup, runner configuration, and project structure, see [TECHNICAL.md](TECHNICAL.md).