Installation fails in many different ways

[fiftyfour...@gmail.com]

Happy new year, fellow Qubers!

Well, I'm not really a Quber --not yet-- but maybe you can help me join your ranks.

I went out and bought a Dell Inspiron 5593 --a shiny new laptop with an i7-1065G7*-- for the express purpose of installing Qubes on it, but found out during BIOS setup that the CPU simply doesn't support legacy boot. This may or may not be relevant to my problem installing via USB:

Using 4.0.2-rc3, I managed to get all the way to actual installation after battling several major issues (like m.2 not appearing), but it seems like I've hit a brick wall. Installation freezes/fails during installation, but where and how varied among all attempts. 

Attempt 1: Slowly set a root password and username during installation. Cursor freezes during the end of setting these, but the keyboard stayed alive. Tabbed and entered my way back out, only to be greeted with a prompt saying that the installation encountered a fatal error: "DNF error: Error unpacking rpm package webkitgtk4.2.18.3-1.fc25.X86_64". (9xx/1025, I think). Keyboard still useable. Hard reset.

Attempt 2: Quickly set passwords. Cursor still alive when done. 7xx/1025, cursor freezes, but keyboard remained alive. Kept tabbing to verify that keyboard was still alive. 9xx/1025, installation stalls but the pinwheel (?) kept spinning and keyboard was still alive. Waited twenty minutes--no joy. Hard reset.

Attempt 3: Didn't set any passwords as an experiment. Walked away, and came back to a completely frozen installation. (Early installation; no number). Hard reset.

Attempt 4: Quickly set passwords. Kept wiggling cursor to find out when it freezes. Observed increasing cursor lag starting at 804/1025. Cursor and pinwheel freezes at 808/1025. Dead keyboard. Dead installation. Hurt feelings. Hard liquor. Hard reset.

Attempt 5: Didn't set any passwords. Cursor lag 815/1025. Cursor frozen at 834/1025. A wild fatal error appeared: "DNF error: Error unpacking rpm package kbg-2.0.3-3.fc24.x86_64". Keyboard alive.

Attempt 6: Booted from the ANACONDA partition. Quickly set passwords. Cursor lag at 826/1025. Cursor frozen at 830/1025, pinwheel spinning. A wild fatal error appeared: "DNF error: Error unpacking rpm package mesa-dri-drivers-17.05-3.fc25.x86_64". Keyboard alive. Pride, barely.

Not sure what's going on here or how to resolve this, so I'd appreciate any ideas.

*Since I wanted hardware-level Spectre mitigation

[awokd]

fiftyfour...@gmail.com:

> Happy new year, fellow Qubers!

And you.

> Using 4.0.2-rc3, I managed to get all the way to actual installation after
> battling several major issues (like m.2 not appearing), but it seems like
> I've hit a brick wall. Installation freezes/fails during installation, but
> where and how varied among all attempts.

> *Attempt 4: *Quickly set passwords. Kept wiggling cursor to find out when

> it freezes. Observed increasing cursor lag starting at 804/1025. Cursor and
> pinwheel freezes at 808/1025. Dead keyboard. Dead installation. Hurt
> feelings. Hard liquor. Hard reset.

Second to last is often a good idea, but can on occasion lead to more
problems.

Don't have a definitive answer, but try disabling Speedstep in UEFI
config power save options, and/or disable power saving or making it more
backwards compatible. Also heard of Nvidia cards causing similar
behavior, so disable.


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[trueriver]

I have found problems with touchpad during installs of Qubes on various laptops and when installing R 4.0, R 4.0.1 and R 4.0.2rc3. I will be posting soon my guess about why this happens. But the first thing to say is I don't think this is hardware specific so please don't regret buying that shiny new kit.

But in the meantime here's the workaround that worked for me this week to install R 4.0.2rc3 on an Asus laptop.

Don't try to use the trackpad or the touch sensitive screen during install. Instead use a USB plug in mouse, have it already plugged in at boot up.

With the installed system you may occasionally get similar symptoms but they are transient, going away as soon as Dom0* has done whatever was keeping it busy. Unlike the experience with the installer, the system is usable 98% of the time, and the trackpad drop outs are an occasional brief irritant rather than a show stopper. They can be fixed too (look out for my upcoming post here, perhaps today, certainly this week)

((* Dom0 is a special virtual machine that is central to many of the Qubes specific security features. Under current versions of Qubes it also looks after the screen, keyboard and mouse. In very non technical terms it sometimes needs to focus on the security or the background stuff about configuring Xen at the expense of the mouse. That's especially the case when it's installing a new system. Plans are in place to move these things out of Dom0, but that's a work in progress and doesn't help us right now)).

Let me know how you get on using a USB mouse, please.

And come back if you find occasional returns of this effect on the installed system. In my opinion, on my laptops, it's fixable so is worth persevering. My strong hunch is that it will work even better on your kit.

And when Qubes works it's great. Welcome, and I hope we can encourage you to stay :)

[fiftyfour...@gmail.com]

Tl;dr--Installation successful; Nvidia was the culprit.

Follow up:

Attempt n (some large number): Disabled SpeedStep. Passwords quickly entered. Cursor lag 819/1025. Cursor freeze 836/1025. "DNF error: Error unpacking rpm package anaconda-core-1000:25.20.9-16.fc25.x86_64".

Attempt n+1: Kept SpeedStep disabled. Booted ANACONDA. Passwords quickly entered.  Cursor lag ~830/1025. Cursor freeze 840/1025. "DNF error: Error unpacking rpm package gtk3-3.22.17-2.fc25.x86_64".

Attempt n+2: Kept SpeedStep disabled. Disabled C-State Control. Passwords quickly set. Cursor lag 808/1025. Cursor freeze 812/1025. *Installation proceeds*. At 839/1025: "DNF error: Error unpacking rpm package adwaita-icon-theme3.22.0-1.fc25.noarch"

Attempt n+3: Same setup as before, but didn't set languages or time. Didn't set passwords. Complete freeze 809/1025. CPU fans at max for 5 mins before hard reset. Hard doubts about approach.

Attempt n+4: Re-enabled SpeedStep and C-State Control. Edited BOOTX64.cfg to add "nouveau.modeset=0" param to kernel config keys. Booted ANACONDA. Passwords quickly set. Installation succeeded. Nvidia was the culprit here (no option to disable in BIOS).

Installation booted, configured, and setup without issues--thanks for the great start to a new decade! * Will definitely see some of you around here as I poke around.

*Yes, I know it's technically not the start of a new decade.

[fiftyfour...@gmail.com]

awokd,

It was Nvidia--adding "nouveau.modeset=0" to BOOTX64.cfg did the trick.

Thank you!

[fiftyfour...@gmail.com]

Thanks for sharing, trueriver,

I finally got past the introductory boss of Qubes--now I get to roam the sandbox world. 

It wasn't so much an issue with the trackpad as it was the Nvidia GPU that can't be disabled.

Since you seem to be a dev who's interested in Qubes' compatibility with this particular 10th gen Dell, I can keep you posted (privately) about my experiences if you want.