I am converting from CentOS 7 to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For various reasons the EOL of CentOS is getting in my way and its time to move on to a distribution that has support going forward. I chose Ubuntu based on a recommendation from others.
I am running into the following problem. For reasons I wont go into depth on here, I sometimes test NVMe drives which have a 520e byte sector format. I boot from a standard SATA drive, so there is no involvement (or there should not be) with the NVMe drive. Boot order is usb followed by SATA drive. I am using the same exact workstation as I did on CentOS with the exact same BIOS settings.
During the CentOS boot everything works as expected. The system boots up, I login and can begin working with the 520 byte sector drives using some custom tools.
On Ubuntu with the same setup, same drive, upon boot right after the initial press F3 etc I get an alloc magic error. This is before any of the console scroll output begins. It says press any key to continue, but a press of any key does nothing. I dont think it gets far enough to allow me to get to the grub menu.
If I boot from the usb (the rufus built 22.04 install usb) same thing happens except the esc key press will get me to the grub menu. The usb boot then works fine. This isn't helpful as a workaround although it might provide a clue for debugging.
The NVMe drives are direct attached to PCIe slots. I have been using this setup on centOS successfully for about 5 years.
If I reformat the drive to 512 byte sector on another centos workstatioon, then conect it to the Ubuntu setup, everything works as expected. The system boots using the sata drive and all comes up normally.
I think something in the 22.04 distribution is scanning all possible boot devices in the early part of the boot sequence, and then failing when it encounters the NVMe drive it either cannot read or gets NVMe identify data it does not like.
Any thoughts on how to get Ubuntu to allow me to boot with the 520 byte sector NVMe drive present?
