trouble with Lenovo P51 (nvidia quadro m1200)

[Dave C]

Trying to install Qubes on a laptop with graphics card
NVIDIA Quadro M1200 4GB GDDR5

The 3.2 installer fails to start X, and falls back to text mode. (Which complains something about disk entryption and fails to complete the install.)

I have Qubes 3.2 installed on a portable SSD, so I tried booting the P51 to that. It made it as far as prompting for the disk password, again in text mode. After typing the password the boot stopped with only a flashing cursor (underbar) in the upper left corner of the display. No errors, just stopped there.

I've read some troubleshooting tips...

Tried disabling VT-d in bios - no difference.

Tried `iommu=no-igfx`on the boot line - again no difference.

And I've found https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/install-nvidia-driver/ and reading that now. Is this page up to date? (It mentions "fedora 18").

I thought this machine would be great for Qubes, as it has tons of RAM among other things. But maybe not so much!

Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks,
-Dave

[Dave C]

Since posting this, I've found quite a lot of nvidia threads in this group.

i.e. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/v26zXkiNElg/discussion
...and others.

I'll share here if I make any progress with those suggestions.

[Dave C]

tl;dr - Unable to boot this machine to Qubes. Install completes, but cannot boot from the nvme drive where I've installed Qubes. Can't boot installer media to UEFI.

I got past the graphical UI and Xorg problem. The trick was a setting in BIOS. Changed from "hybrid graphics" to "discrete" (can't recall the exact wording). While the system is not doing anything fancy with the graphics card, the basics are working.

Unfortunately, after installing completes without errors, the system will not boot. Now, I believe the problem has to do with UEFI boot from nvme drive.

I've tried to troubleshoot following https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/. The "Installation finished but “Qubes” boot option is missing and xen.cfg is empty" section sounded perfect, because that describes my problem.

When I get to the step of running `efibootmgr`, I get error "EFI variables are not supported on this system".

Some searching has turned up that the system must have been booted via UEFI and not legacy in order to use `efibootmgr`.

But here I am stuck! My qubes installer USB stick will only start up in legacy boot mode!

I've tried other settings in my bios (UEFI only, or UEFI first) and then I get a grub menu when booting the qubes installer. But each selection on that menu fails to boot! The xen EFI loader says something like "failed to boot both default and fallback entries."

Worth noting, I've seen https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/thinkpad-troubleshooting/ and I've left the `USB UEFI BIOS SUPPORT` enabled, while disabling other secure boot and eufi options. I feel like I've tried almost every combination of options by now. I've also tried appending `/mapbs /noexitboot` and/or `-- efi=attr=uc` to the chainloader line. This also does not change the behavior. An error flashes too briefly for me to read what it says.

Any suggestions appreciated! Thanks.

[pseudo-sue]

This isn't Qubes-specific, but I had a fair bit of trouble getting various linux distros installed on my P51 (until I finally got NixOS working). The issue seemed to be that, while the installer (and *some* of the various linux kernels I was working with) seemed to know what to do with the NVME drive (the faster and more modern of the two SSDs I have on this box), and would even let me install grub to its boot sector, the BIOS itself couldn't find it. I was working in Legacy mode, so that might have been part of the issue. The workaround was to install grub in the boot sector of a more traditional drive (the older SSD worked fine).

Not sure if this is the same issue you're having, and afaik, Qubes sort of struggles with Nvidia, especially the newer cards, so there might be more hassles ahead.

[Dave C]

I'm happy to report that I have Qubes running on the P51 now. I had considerable trouble getting it installed on the NVME drive. What finally worked for me, I've shared in a separate post:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/4VsKdxnKHBk

I did not end up needing nvidia drivers. Maybe in the future I'll mess around with that again. But for the time being I'm content with the display, and appreciate the kernel without nvidia's proprietary "taint".

One problem that does bother me... the laptop occasionally does not wake from suspend. More often than not, it resumes just fine. But from time to time it does not and I have to power off then reboot.

HCL report attached!