failed Qubes 4.0.3 install on Dell Inspiron 14 5485

[aihey]

Hi there,

I've been trying to install the latest release of Qubes (4.0.3) into a Dell Inspiron 14 5485 laptop (spec below) but having a few problems. I've followed the 'Installation Guide' to setup the correct BIOS configuration (AMD virtualization enabled and secure boot disabled) and load the ISO image of Qubes into a USB drive using the dd tool. I've tried a few BIOS configurations which problems I'll describe below:

1) default behaviour (UEFI mode): on boot I press F12 to choose boot media and select USB flash. The installation start and prints a couple of messages but then goes to a blank screen and freezes;

2) legacy mode: on boot I press F12 and choose the USB drive. It opens a pop-up with 3 options- install Qubes, test USB media and install Qubes or troubleshooting. Inside troubleshooting you've a few other options, including installing Qubes in graphics mode. The test media option doesn't display any messages (freezes straight away). If you choose any of the installation options, it will start printing messages but then shows a blank screen and freezes;

3) legacy mode: pressed TAB in the installation dialogue and edited the command to trigger display of more information (console=vga and removal of 'noerror' flag). The installation still frezed but I was able to read the last message (an error related with ACPI).

4) legacy mode (console=vga, 'noerror' flag removed and acpi=off): introduced acpi=off in the installation command. Was able to go a bit further but the installation still freezed.

5) I've also followed the instructions in https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/ (2 and 3 sections) but had no success (both in UEFI or legacy modes);

6) there is a setting in the BIOS for fast boot (options are minimal, Auto or through). None of these seem to make a difference both in UEFI or Legacy modes.

Any ideas of what I could be doing wrong or other things to try? Happy to give more information if required.

Thanks

---

Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 5485 v: 2.1.0 serial: <filter> Chassis:

           type: 10 v: 2.1.0 serial: <filter>

           Mobo: Dell model: 0RWVK3 v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 2.1.0 date: 04/12/2019

Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 6.5 Wh condition: 39.4/42.0 Wh (94%) volts: 11.7/11.4

           model: SMP-ATL-3.61 DELL VM73283 serial: <filter> status: Charging

CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx bits: 64

           type: MT MCP arch: Zen rev: 1 L2 cache: 2048 KiB

           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 33538

           Speed: 1223 MHz min/max: 1400/2100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1223 2: 1222 3: 1223

           4: 1222 5: 1223 6: 1223 7: 1222 8: 1222

Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Picasso vendor: Dell driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.0

           chip ID: 1002:15d8

           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.5 driver: amdgpu,ati unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa

           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz

           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RAVEN (DRM 3.33.0 5.3.0-28-generic LLVM 9.0.0) v: 4.5 Mesa 19.2.8

           direct render: Yes

Audio:     Device-1: AMD vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.1

           chip ID: 1002:15de

           Device-2: AMD vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.6

           chip ID: 1022:15e3

           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.3.0-28-generic

Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Dell

           driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 168c:0042

           IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>

           Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 2000

           bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8136

           IF: enp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>

           Device-3: Atheros type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 3-2.3:3 chip ID: 0cf3:e009

           IF-ID-1: orpheu-laptop state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A

Drives:    Local Storage: total: 523.04 GiB used: 40.97 GiB (7.8%)

           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB size: 465.76 GiB

           speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter>

           ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Ultra Fit size: 57.28 GiB

           serial: <filter>

Partition: ID-1: / size: 455.31 GiB used: 40.72 GiB (8.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-1

           ID-2: /boot size: 704.5 MiB used: 245.0 MiB (34.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2

           ID-3: swap-1 size: 980.0 MiB used: 1024 KiB (0.1%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-2

Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 58.9 C mobo: 38.0 C sodimm: 48.0 C

           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 2562

[fiftyfour...@gmail.com]

Fellow Dell Inspiron user here,

Your problems are different from mine, and I'm no expert, but maybe the simple solution that worked for me might work for you:

Mount the ANACONDA partition of the Qubes boot USB, then edit BOOTX64.cfg so that kernel parameters include 'nouveau.modeset=0'

[aihey]

Thank you for your comment. Did you run this in UEFI or legacy mode? Also, how do you check that the parameters defined in BOOTX64.cfg are being used during boot? In legacy mode the parameters appear different from what is defined in the config file (you can check/edit the boot command by pressing TAB).

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

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[fiftyfour...@gmail.com]

My Dell is newer and simply doesn't have legacy boot. I know that the altered parameter is used during boot because it was the only thing I changed to make my installations turn from failures to successes.

[aihey]

Unfortunately this has not worked for me but thanks for your suggestion.

Does anyone happen to know if the installation messages are saved somewhere? I would like to find out what triggers the installation to freeze (it all happens very quickly before it goes blank).

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Tuesday, 11 February 2020 13:11, <fiftyfour...@gmail.com> wrote:

My Dell is newer and simply doesn't have legacy boot. I know that the altered parameter is used during boot because it was the only thing I changed to make my installations turn from failures to successes.

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[awokd]

'aihey' via qubes-users:

> Unfortunately this has not worked for me but thanks for your suggestion.
>
> Does anyone happen to know if the installation messages are saved somewhere? I would like to find out what triggers the installation to freeze (it all happens very quickly before it goes blank).
>
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Tuesday, 11 February 2020 13:11, <fiftyfour...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My Dell is newer and simply doesn't have legacy boot. I know that the altered parameter is used during boot because it was the only thing I changed to make my installations turn from failures to successes.

Looks like your Dell is a Ryzen with integrated AMD graphics, correct?
Don't think the kernel included Qubes 4.0.3 has video drivers for it. To
confirm, you could try to install in text mode and see if you get
further. You should be able to switch to a terminal session
(ctrl-alt-F2?) during install to see the temporary logs.

If text mode does get further, you might need to build a custom ISO with
the latest 5.x kernel to get the video drivers. There are also test
builds of Qubes 4.1 you can try. Believe they include 5.x as well.

--
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Mailing list etiquette:
- trim quoted reply to only relevant portions
- when possible, copy and paste text instead of screenshots

[aihey]

> Looks like your Dell is a Ryzen with integrated AMD graphics, correct?

that's right: it's a AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile

> Don't think the kernel included Qubes 4.0.3 has video drivers for it. To confirm, you could try to install in text mode and see if you get further. You should be able to switch to a terminal session (ctrl-alt-F2?) during install to see the temporary logs.

I'm only able to get a bit further with a bunch of different tricks which I've described in my original post. The ctrl-alt-F2 during install has not worked for me.

> If text mode does get further, you might need to build a custom ISO with the latest 5.x kernel to get the video drivers. There are also test builds of Qubes 4.1 you can try. Believe they include 5.x as well.

I spent a yesterday afternoon looking into this. I built Qubes 4.1 (stable version) following the instructions in https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/qubes-builder/. I did this on the actual machine and had to re-install the OS with Fedora 31 as the building tool didn't support my original OS (Linux Mint 19.3, debian based). I was able to build and generate the ISO file successfully using the standard configuration. Loaded the ISO file into an USB using dd and it booted fine up to GRUB.
Unfortunately, I was not able to go further from GRUB and got identical behaviour as before. Tried standard install, USB testing and troubleshooting mode but non of these worked.

You mention that the video drivers might be included in Qubes 5.x- would you be able to point me to building instructions for this? I was not able to find any information on how to configure the building tool for version 5. I've only followed the standard+stable configuration- do you know how to add the necessary drivers as part of the building process?

I came across this post https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/install-nvidia-driver/ which suggests a fix to issues with NVIDIA/AMD video drivers. I was hoping to use this to built-in the necessary drivers into the Qubes 4.1 OS build but was not able to get that far. Any ideas on how to do this?

Many thanks for your suggestions!


‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 15:58, 'awokd' via qubes-users <qubes...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> 'aihey' via qubes-users:
>
> > Unfortunately this has not worked for me but thanks for your suggestion.
> > Does anyone happen to know if the installation messages are saved somewhere? I would like to find out what triggers the installation to freeze (it all happens very quickly before it goes blank).
> > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> > On Tuesday, 11 February 2020 13:11, fiftyfour...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > My Dell is newer and simply doesn't have legacy boot. I know that the altered parameter is used during boot because it was the only thing I changed to make my installations turn from failures to successes.
>
> Looks like your Dell is a Ryzen with integrated AMD graphics, correct?
> Don't think the kernel included Qubes 4.0.3 has video drivers for it. To
> confirm, you could try to install in text mode and see if you get
> further. You should be able to switch to a terminal session
> (ctrl-alt-F2?) during install to see the temporary logs.
>
> If text mode does get further, you might need to build a custom ISO with
> the latest 5.x kernel to get the video drivers. There are also test
> builds of Qubes 4.1 you can try. Believe they include 5.x as well.
>

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
> - don't top post
> Mailing list etiquette:
>
> - trim quoted reply to only relevant portions
> - when possible, copy and paste text instead of screenshots
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/b1273a0d-453d-15d2-9f89-e57a2cdd47da%40danwin1210.me.
>

[A]

Have you tried to installing Qubes OS 4.1 both in UEFI and in legacy mode without success... ?

[aihey]

> Have you tried to installing Qubes OS 4.1 both in UEFI and in legacy mode without success... ?

Yes, tried both UEFI and legacy modes and both of these failed. Only difference was the GRUB dialog- in UEFI was black+white and in legacy with a blue coloured background.


‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Sunday, 16 February 2020 11:46, A <annee...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Have you tried to installing Qubes OS 4.1 both in UEFI and in legacy mode without success... ?
>

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/b92997ad-c856-4da7-8527-10843e7b2091%40googlegroups.com.

[awokd]

aihey:

> I spent a yesterday afternoon looking into this. I built Qubes 4.1 (stable version) following the instructions in https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/qubes-builder/. I did this on the actual machine and had to re-install the OS with Fedora 31 as the building tool didn't support my original OS (Linux Mint 19.3, debian based). I was able to build and generate the ISO file successfully using the standard configuration. Loaded the ISO file into an USB using dd and it booted fine up to GRUB.
> Unfortunately, I was not able to go further from GRUB and got identical behaviour as before. Tried standard install, USB testing and troubleshooting mode but non of these worked.
>
> You mention that the video drivers might be included in Qubes 5.x- would you be able to point me to building instructions for this? I was not able to find any information on how to configure the building tool for version 5. I've only followed the standard+stable configuration- do you know how to add the necessary drivers as part of the building process?

Good work figuring out the builder. Took me a while. Anyways, meant a
Linux kernel 5.x, Qubes 5.x. It should be available in one of the Qubes
repos (testing?).

> I came across this post https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/install-nvidia-driver/ which suggests a fix to issues with NVIDIA/AMD video drivers. I was hoping to use this to built-in the necessary drivers into the Qubes 4.1 OS build but was not able to get that far. Any ideas on how to do this?

Could be useful if you can figure out which version of the Linux kernel
includes video drivers for your Ryzen. If the 5.x one in Qubes repos
does, you might be in business.

[Foppe de Haan]

On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 12:07:51 PM UTC+1, aihey wrote:

> Looks like your Dell is a Ryzen with integrated AMD graphics, correct?

that's right: it's a AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile

> Don't think the kernel included Qubes 4.0.3 has video drivers for it. To confirm, you could try to install in text mode and see if you get further. You should be able to switch to a terminal session (ctrl-alt-F2?) during install to see the temporary logs.

I'm only able to get a bit further with a bunch of different tricks which I've described in my original post. The ctrl-alt-F2 during install has not worked for me.

> If text mode does get further, you might need to build a custom ISO with the latest 5.x kernel to get the video drivers. There are also test builds of Qubes 4.1 you can try. Believe they include 5.x as well.

I spent a yesterday afternoon looking into this. I built Qubes 4.1 (stable version) following the instructions in https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/qubes-builder/. I did this on the actual machine and had to re-install the OS with Fedora 31 as the building tool didn't support my original OS (Linux Mint 19.3, debian based). I was able to build and generate the ISO file successfully using the standard configuration. Loaded the ISO file into an USB using dd and it booted fine up to GRUB.
Unfortunately, I was not able to go further from GRUB and got identical behaviour as before. Tried standard install, USB testing and troubleshooting mode but non of these worked.

You mention that the video drivers might be included in Qubes 5.x- would you be able to point me to building instructions for this? I was not able to find any information on how to configure the building tool for version 5. I've only followed the standard+stable configuration- do you know how to add the necessary drivers as part of the building process?

I came across this post https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/install-nvidia-driver/ which suggests a fix to issues with NVIDIA/AMD video drivers. I was hoping to use this to built-in the necessary drivers into the Qubes 4.1 OS build but was not able to get that far. Any ideas on how to do this?

Many thanks for your suggestions!


‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, 12 February 2020 15:58, 'awokd' via qubes-users <qubes...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> 'aihey' via qubes-users:
>
> > Unfortunately this has not worked for me but thanks for your suggestion.
> > Does anyone happen to know if the installation messages are saved somewhere? I would like to find out what triggers the installation to freeze (it all happens very quickly before it goes blank).
> > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> > On Tuesday, 11 February 2020 13:11, fiftyfour...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > My Dell is newer and simply doesn't have legacy boot. I know that the altered parameter is used during boot because it was the only thing I changed to make my installations turn from failures to successes.

you can download a build from here -> https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/6161/asset/iso/Qubes-4.1-20200214-x86_64.iso 

btw, you're sure that iommu, svm are both enabled in the bios?