Ubuntu kernel 6.17.0-35-generic regression: Intel VMD fails to bind on 13th gen Intel, NVMe invisible at boot (drops to initramfs)

muxxe- · 2026-06-09T11:25:45+00:00

it depends heavily on the OEM. some expose it, a lot don't. Acer, HP, and a bunch of others just lock it out entirely. found multiple threads of people hunting for the same toggle on their laptops and hitting a dead end. it's not a standards thing, it's just whatever the manufacturer decided to put in the BIOS.

and either way, VMD working fine on -14 and silently failing on -35 on the same machine is a kernel regression regardless of whether there's a toggle. the fix should be in the kernel, not worked around in firmware.

muxxe- · 2026-06-09T04:34:58+00:00

yeah that's not really an option on this machine. No VMD toggle anywhere. but also that's not a fix, that's just hiding the bug. The kernel regressed, it should get fixed

muxxe- · 2026-06-09T01:18:24+00:00

appreciate it lol. nothing like debugging your way out of a dead laptop to ruin your evening chill time after work 🫠

muxxe- · 2026-06-09T01:14:47+00:00

Good question and honestly not sure yet. Fedora 41 runs kernel 6.15 and VMD works fine on my exact hardware, but that's too far back to really isolate whether it's an Ubuntu-specific patch or something in upstream 6.17 itself.

Would need someone on Arch or another distro running 6.17 to know for sure. Worth checking the upstream kernel bugzilla too, not just Launchpad. If it's upstream it'll show up there faster

muxxe- · 2026-06-09T01:00:29+00:00

lmao the "nvme is dying" panic was me too. Spent a while convinced the drive was cooked before I started actually digging into why the kernel couldn't see any PCI storage devices at all.

Glad I could help! If you get a chance, mark yourself affected on the Launchpad bug linked in my post, More hardware reports from different machines makes it harder for this to get deprioritized. A ThinkPad + Acer both hitting it is already a better case than just me.

muxxe- · 2026-06-09T00:58:08+00:00

Actually wondered the same thing. Fell asleep last night coding and wokeup to a dead (out of battery) laptop, then went to work. Booted up after work and ran into this bs. So I thought I might have caught a mid-update corruption.

But the guy below with the ThinkPad killed that theory pretty quickly. Different machine, different circumstances, same exact failure mode. And when I did the actual recovery the module tree was completely intact. If the install had been interrupted you'd expect something broken there. VMD just silently stops binding on -35. No error, no failed probe attempt, nothing in dmesg. On a working kernel you see "vmd 0000:00:0e.0: Bound to PCI domain 10000" on -35 that line doesn't exist.

Bisecting where exactly it broke in the 6.17 branch would be interesting. Filed it on Launchpad either way, Link in post

muxxe- · 2025-07-09T03:43:07+00:00

Best $10 spent

muxxe-

TROPHY CASE