Installation of windows 7 on qubes 4.0 fails

[Cranix]

Hello,
I'm running qubes os 4.0. I tried to set up windows 7 HVM.
I tried both ultimate and home (most basic one) editions with this same
effect.

I managed to get installator running after upgrading dom0, disabling memory balancing
and setting amout of ram to 2048M.
After installation HVM starts to shut down, its screen disappears but on
qubes manager i still see yellow dot in the state field for this vm.
After an hour i pressed stop button for this vm and killed it due to 20s
timeout.
When i tried to power it up i got message from windows that installation
was interrupted and i need to repeat it.

I have made about 3 attempts to set up this vm with this same effect.

I was considering just setting up virtualbox in some appvm but
i was told that this is impossible.

Is there any workaround for my problem other that setting up virtual
machine with windows on other physical computer?

I do not need very specyfic version of windows as long as it will be
64bit and qubes tools for that will be working.

I can paste logs and config just please tell me what will be usefull.

[Ivan Mitev]

Hi,

On 10/4/18 8:47 PM, Cranix wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm running qubes os 4.0. I tried to set up windows 7 HVM.
> I tried both ultimate and home (most basic one) editions with this same
> effect.
>
> I managed to get installator running after upgrading dom0, disabling memory balancing
> and setting amout of ram to 2048M.
> After installation HVM starts to shut down, its screen disappears but on
> qubes manager i still see yellow dot in the state field for this vm.
> After an hour i pressed stop button for this vm and killed it due to 20s
> timeout.

Did you follow the official doc [1] ? If yes, at which step does the VM
fails to shutdown ?

[1]
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/windows-vm/#qubes-40---windows-vm-installation

[Cranix]

On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 09:18:22PM +0300, Ivan Mitev wrote:
> Did you follow the official doc [1] ? If yes, at which step does the VM
> fails to shutdown ?

Thanks for quick reply.

I did not created custom config becouse
there is no config file in /var/lib/qubes/appvms/*
There are directories for appvms but none of them contains
any config file.
I just created HVM without memory balancing.
Most of detailed instructions are for qubes 3.2 if i correctly see.

After windows installer finished it's job and started powering
down VM, VM's window disappeared but there was yellow dot in qubes
manager for hour (literally i watied hour to see if it will finish by
itsefl), then i forced vm shutdown. After reboot i got message that
installation failed.

[Ivan Mitev]

On 10/4/18 9:46 PM, Cranix wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 09:18:22PM +0300, Ivan Mitev wrote:
>> Did you follow the official doc [1] ? If yes, at which step does the VM
>> fails to shutdown ?
>
> Thanks for quick reply.
>
> I did not created custom config becouse
> there is no config file in /var/lib/qubes/appvms/*
> There are directories for appvms but none of them contains
> any config file.
> I just created HVM without memory balancing.
> Most of detailed instructions are for qubes 3.2 if i correctly see.

The page I linked to has separate sections for R3.2 and R4.0. The
instructions for R4.0 are in the "Qubes 4.0 - Windows VM installation"
section.

> After windows installer finished it's job and started powering
> down VM, VM's window disappeared but there was yellow dot in qubes
> manager for hour (literally i watied hour to see if it will finish by
> itsefl), then i forced vm shutdown. After reboot i got message that
> installation failed.

That kind of error is unfortunately common with windows so it's
difficult to pinpoint what could be causing it. I'd suggest that you try
another install, this time following the instructions in the doc ; many
users had windows installed successfully that way, hopefully it'll work
for you too. If it doesn't, please send more details with the step
you're stuck at and the last 10 lines or so of the debug/log files
specified in the doc.

Hope this helps !

[Ivan Mitev]

On 10/6/18 2:52 PM, Cranix wrote:
> I repeated all the steps with other installation image of windows 7
> with this same results.

By "I'd suggest that you try another install" I meant that you give it
another go (with the same install disk you have). Sorry that it wasn't
clear.

> I tried to use automatic repair included with installator
> but without success.
>
> Any other ideas how i can debug this?

It's still not clear when the install fails: do you get past the first
part, ie. after the first reboot ?

Did you follow *exactly* the instructions below or do some of your
commands differ (except the vm name of course and maybe the path to your
install iso) ?

qvm-create --class StandaloneVM --label red --property virt_mode=hvm win7new
qvm-prefs win7new memory 4096
qvm-prefs win7new maxmem 4096
qvm-prefs win7new kernel ''
qvm-volume extend win7new:root 25g
qvm-prefs win7new debug true
qvm-features win7new video-model cirrus
qvm-start --cdrom=untrusted:/home/user/windows_install.iso win7new
# restart after the first part of the windows installation process ends
qvm-start win7new


What are the last 10 lines or so of
- /var/log/qubes/vm-win7new.log
- /var/log/xen/console/hypervisor.log
- /var/log/xen/console/guest-win7new-dm.log