Apple NVMe Linux Driver Sees Fixes After Being Bitten By New Firmware

A set of patches providing fixes for the Apple Silicon NVMe driver for the Linux kernel were sent out today due to new issues cropping up when running newer Apple firmware. Firmware shipped by macOS 15+ is causing issues with the current Apple NVMe open-source Linux driver developed by the Asahi Linux crew. Since macOS 15 there is new firmware shipping for the NVMe controllers used on Apple M series SoCs. The newer firmware is more strict than earlier releases but also needed as a prerequisite for Apple M4 support on Linux. As a result these new patches fix a few different problems that turned up in the Apple NVMe driver when running with this newer firmware. Open-source developer Sven Peter remarked with today's patch series: "This series fixes a bunch of bugs that were working fine with M1/M2 NVMe controllers with older firmware but are now starting to bite us. With macOS 15 a new firmware is installed for the controller and both XNU and the controller are a bit more strict now. This firmware is required once we add M4 support. The first patch fixes a panic that can happen when the controller fails to initialize, which now happens for the first time with the new firmware. The other fixes then make it work again." The fixes include addressing a possible kernel panic, working around a missing chicken bit on the newer firmware, better matching the macOS behavior with the new firmware, and a quirk for page-aligned admin queue buffers that is important for M4 and later NVMe controllers.