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I have a 14.04.3 LTS system that won't boot after upgrading to 4.4.0-24 kernel (xenial kernel image packages). It has an NVME SSD, and with the 4.4 series kernel, it can't seem to see the NVME. The NVME was encrypted at install time with defaults. The SATA disks were added later and set up as encrypted disk, automounting with keys.

Here's what happens:

After selecting the 4.4 kernel in grub, it displays:

  • Reading all physical volumes. this may take a while
  • no volume groups found
  • no volume groups found

After a few minutes it drops to a busybox shell.

From the busybox shell, I can see SATA disks present (/dev/sda and /dev/sdb) but there is no /dev/nvme.

Looking in /dev/disks/by-uuid/ there are only the two SATA disks.

I can decrypt and mount the SATA drives fine:

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 blorp
mount /dev/mapper/blorp /tmp/blorp

I've made sure that UUIDs in /etc/crypttab are correct, and regenerated the initramfs for this kernel.

Seems to me like the 4.4 series kernel just can't see the nvme SSD.

Any suggestions?

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  • I couldn't boot 16.04 fresh install from SSD and a NON-AHCI Motherboard. I had to edit grub for the linux kernel command to run with the parameter "libata.force=noncq", (NCQ is native command queue, very common on SSD but not supported by old non AHCI motherboards). I don't know if is this your case, but if you want check this on bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1591293
    – Nano
    Jun 15, 2016 at 3:23

2 Answers 2

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This just happened to me, and it turns out the nvme kernel module wasn't loaded into the initramfs.

When you get dropped into the busybox prompt, try modprobe nvme. If it doesn't show up in /proc/modules afterwards, the initramfs is missing it.

Simply add nvme to your /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file, and then run:

sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

and it should fix your problem.

(Someone with an launchpad account should report this bug to Ubuntu)

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  • Seems to already have a bug report: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/+bug/1524879
    – 小太郎
    Jun 26, 2016 at 9:44
  • Upvote, thanks. This fixed the problem after latest kernel update (5.4.0-113). Shell prompt on boot was useless; no input accepted from keyboard. Have older mobo w/ no nvme support so /boot is located on separate SATA drive. Added 'nvme-core' and 'nvme' to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file and updated initramfs for new kernel (only) and...done. Now hoping this doesn't become necessary on every kernel update.
    – u2n
    May 25, 2022 at 14:25
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This was happening to me too using 4.4.0-24. 4.4.0-28 which seems to have been pushed out today has fixed the issue.

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