4.0-rc4 Install Help

[Shashank]

Hi I’ve been trying to install qubes 4.0 rc4 in my dell xps15
But I am not able to get the installation done.

After I boot through the USB:

*starting graphic installer
*if installer doesn’t start type inst.txt to start text install
* not starting VNC because we don’t have network
* cannot start installation
*PRESS ENTER

At the bottom of the screen I see
* PANE DEAD

and the message below goes on repeating
Watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - cpu stuck for 22s[xorg:1325]

I tried installing rc3
Rc3 shows the install menu but again has the same
Problem like mentioned above

Could anyone guide me to install it.

[awokd]

On Sat, February 3, 2018 1:37 pm, Shashank wrote:
> Hi I’ve been trying to install qubes 4.0 rc4 in my dell xps15
> But I am not able to get the installation done.

> and the message below goes on repeating Watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - cpu
> stuck for 22s[xorg:1325]

Is it trying to initialize a driver in the message immediately before the
first soft lockup? If so, try disabling the corresponding device from your
BIOS setup.

[Shashank]

Here is the full error:
Starting Installer, one moment....
Anaconda 25.28.9-10 for Qubes R4.0-rc4 started.
*Installation log files are stored in /temp during the installation
*shell is available on TTY2
*If the graphical Installation interface fails to start, try again
With the Inst.text bootoption to start text Installation
*when reporting a bug add logs from /temp as separate text/plain attachments

09:82:43 Not asking for VNC because we don’t have a network

09:83:48 x startup failed, aborting Installations
stuck for 22s! [Xorg:1296]

09:83:48 x startup failed, aborting Installations
stuck for 23s! [Xorg:1296]

The installation cannot continue and the system will reboot

Press ENTER to continue

At the bottom of the screen it says PANE DEAD

[Shashank]

[Mike Keehan]

You need to add 'modprobe.blacklist=nouveau' to the kernel options
in the boot line. Hit the Tab key on the be=oot menu line that you
want to use (I used the Check and Install line), then move the
cursor to the 'quiet' word and append the above phrase.

Best of luck.

[awokd]

Add nomodeset to your installer's boot options. If that doesn't work, try
the "Inst.text bootoption to start text Installation".

[Shashank]

Hi

The installation does not take me to the options for selecting

Initially there is a long list of loading that happens

And immediately after that it’s the screen that I’ve posted above

There is no check and install, install, or rescue qubes screen

Thanks

[Shashank]

Can you please guide me on how to get to the boot options?

The only thing working on that screen is alt-tab to switch screen

Where it goes to terminal like screen with root@qubes$ I think it was.

[Mike Keehan]

You might need to use your Bios boot select options.

When I first tried the installer, I got the same thing - it tried to
boot up straight into the installer, without giving me options.

I had to interrupt the laptop's boot phase (F12 on my Dell), and then
choose the option to make it boot from the usb in legacy mode I think.
Then the boot menu appeared.

Mike.

[Shashank]

Yes I am doing the same thing, in fact I had qubes 3.2 earlier
Now switching to 4.0. But I am getting this error.

I enter the bios boot menu by hitting F12 (one time boot menu)
And then select the usb to boot into. But for some reason it’s all messed up and I really want 4.0.

How else would I get to boot options to enter the command
Modprob.blacklist=nouveau or
Inst.text

[Mike Keehan]

Use the Legacy boot, not the UEFI boot option. Legacy runs grub to
diplay the options menu.

I ought to warn you that I did not manage to finish the installation
yet. Everything worked OK up to the boot loader install - that failed
and I don't know why yet. Also the building of the "init ram disk"
(or whatever it is called - I forget) never finished, so I can't yet
boot into rc4. Will have another go probably next week.

Mike.

[Shashank]

I am using dell XP’s 15 9560, I set the SATA option to ahci
Instead of RAID and boot into qubes. Qubes 3.2 worked with above options perfectly. Is there a way I set legacy mode explicitly? I couldn’t find the option

[Shashank]

Is there a way that I can set boot options through command line when I hit alt-tab it takes me to the command line with root@localhost

If I Ls then I can see boot folder along with others and boot folder contains initrmd.img I think it is called.

[Mike Keehan]

That's the same laptop as mine. In the bios, there are a couple of
boot settings. You need to enable Legacy boot in one of them.
It's not a disk thing.

[Shashank]

I found it!!
I have a couple of questions before I change to legacy. Do you use legacy and uefi? So the last time I was trying to install(ona diff machine) I had switched to legacy and installed qubes rc3. When I wanted to boot back into windows I changed to uefi and all he’ll broke loose I couldn’t boot back into windows and it was a huge mess.

I can’t even remember how I was able to install windows 10 on it back again. I always thought that switching back to uefi mode would let me boot back into windows. Do you also do the switch?

[Mike Keehan]

In 3.2, Qubes installed OK from an UEFI boot, but it installed itself
as the first and only boot option in the bios. I was able to add back
the original UEFI boot options in the bios, and then use the F12 to
interrupt before boot, and select Qubes from the one-time menu list.

The best thing to do is to backup your EFI partition first, and make
a note of the bios settings regarding boot up and UEFI.

You should be able to boot in UEFI mode for Windows, but be able to
use Legacy boot for Qubes by interrupting the bios with F12 and then
selecting Qubes there.

But as I say, I haven't managed to get there yet. I had to fix the EFI
partition this time too - for some reason the installer messes up the
EFI partition type on the disk, and the bios doesn't recognise any boot
partition. I had to boot from a cdrom and use fdisk to change the EFI
partition type to EFI (which fdisk thought it was anyway!).

I had rc3 running fine, all in UEFI mode, so I think it will all work
eventually.

Good luck.

[Shashank]

I guess I’ll not jump into booting into legacy mode and having to mess up all the boot options again. If you do find a way to install it in uefi mode like 3.2 please do post the solution.

[Yuraeitha]

I can both switch without issue, but also boot UEFI windows from Grub, which is something you may want to look into too.

So as a basis you can use LegacyBOOS with Grub, and then point the Grub menu for Windows to UEFI/EFI boot, even though you're on LegacyBIOS initially. I don't remember the exact command-line in Grub, but it should be somewhat easy to do once you know the command-line to put in there. You might be able to find it quickly by googling it, this is not something exclusively for Qubes but all other Linux systems can do this too.

Also the inability to switch between LegacyBIOS/UEFI sounds like a bug in your UEFI? It shouldn't behave like that from just switching between LegacyBIOS and UEFI. Did you also make sure SecureBoot was enabled if Windows is relying on it?

Generally I believe, if nothing has changed (I'm no expert either), that LegacyBIOS is deemed more secure, because of the updates in the Kernel/Xen to prevent some of these security issues. Not all of them are fixed, but considering how fluky and poorly maintained/buggy UEFI is, it appears LegacyBIOS is the better option.

My understanding of the reason in the details, is that UEFI/EFI is less able to be fixed in the Kernel/Xen, or perhaps it's because there are so many unique UEFI distributions on every motherboard that it's just not feasible to keep it updated, while LegacyBIOS is much less frequently changing. Either way, UEFI is often buggy, and motherboard developers often care little about updating them properly, especially on the cheap models, but not always exclusively so.

[Shashank]

Hi Yuraeitha,

Thanks for the explanation. I actually didn’t try installing in legacy on dell xps 15 but on an acer.

Do you switch between legacy and uefi (dual booting) on xps 15? And qubes4 installed good in legacy?

[awokd]

On Sat, February 3, 2018 8:19 pm, Yuraeitha wrote:

> So as a basis you can use LegacyBOOS with Grub, and then point the Grub
> menu for Windows to UEFI/EFI boot, even though you're on LegacyBIOS
> initially. I don't remember the exact command-line in Grub, but it should
> be somewhat easy to do once you know the command-line to put in there.

Think I had this working at one point too with the chainloader entry
listed in https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/multiboot/ .

[Mike Keehan]

HI again.

Well I have managed to get rc4 installed in UEFI mode, but it's not
a nice process :)

The Qubes iso seems to contain two menus for EFI booting, but the
Dell XPS15 won't display them at all, hence there is no possibility
to edit the boot line and add the modprobe.blacklist option at bootup.

There are two ways I've found to overcome this - in one, I edited the
Qubes iso file before writing it to a usb stick, and the other was by
following the Lenovo troubleshooting link,
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/thinkpad-troubleshooting/

1. Binary edit the Qubes iso (I used gvim as plain vim could not
handle the temp file!?!).
Search for "i915.preliminary_hw_support=1" and REPLACE it with
the string "modprobe.blacklist=nouveau ". This MUST be exactly
the same length as the i915 string, so it add three spaces at its
end. ANY change in the length of the text line will damage the
iso and it definitely won't work.

This probably only needs to be done for the "qubes-verbose" menu
options, but I didn't check this, I just replaced all the repeats
of the string in the two menus. There is a third menu for GRUB
legacy, but I did not bother replacing them there.

Then write out the iso to usb, and reboot. Interrupt the Dell boot
screen with F2 and select the UEFI usb boot option. All should work
OK. (Qubes-check will fail because the iso has been edited, but
the check option only appears when legacy booting.)

2. Or, follow the Lenovo troubleshooting guide at the link above, and
create the usb and change the Label to BOOT and mount it. I could
not find the xen.cfg file, but there was a ".cfg" (can't remember
the name) that contained the bootup command lines. I replaced the
option "quiet" with the modprobe.blacklist=nouveau string. Length
of the string does not matter in this case. Save the file, unmount
the usb and try to boot from the it.

It didn't provide an UEFI boot option on my DELL, but I was able to
boot the "fallback boot on Anaconda" from my boot manager "refind".
You may not want to go to the trouble of installing that if you are
not multi-booting your laptop. In which case, you only have option
1.

Some of the problems with the Dell (apart from the nVidia device), are
that it seems to require that any EFI partition must have both the
correct partition type (EFI) and the specific EFI disk identifier,
otherwise its bios does not recognise an EFI boot partition.

Mike.