Qubes 3.1 Installer Hangs on Creating default DisposableVM

[ad...@roughshod.net]

Hello,

I've spent a few hours every time a new release has come out since 2.0 trying to get a successful install going on my personal workstation to no avail. Every single time things go sideways where the installer creates the default DisposableVM. I see in 3.2 the installer has had a lot of work done so I was really hoping I'd be able to get past the hurdle this time but no such luck.

I've tried installing to SSDs and USB sticks and I'm not using particularly strange hardware. I was able to boot 3.1 by using the text based installer from another PTY after the graphical installer failed and skipping the step that creates VMs but the resulting environment was basically crippled and I found it impossible to bootstrap because to go through the steps that generate the default vms and vm templates required deleting existing VMs that were flagged essential and I couldn't quite figure out how to get around that.

I don't know what it is about my setup that so consistently causes the installation to fail. When I google for solutions I seem to be the only one having this particular problem and I spent about a week in the IRC channel a few months back trying to get 3.1 to work without success.

If anyone has any insight or could suggest how I would go about debugging the problem I would really appreciate it; if there's anything I can share to help paint the picture please just let me know.

Thanks very much!

[ad...@roughshod.net]

Oops, subject should read 3.2 not 3.1

[raah...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, October 18, 2016 at 11:27:00 PM UTC-4, ad...@roughshod.net wrote:
> Oops, subject should read 3.2 not 3.1

Have you tried to install without creating any default vms? I believe that is an option, then you can try to set up your vms manually afterwards.

[ad...@roughshod.net]

For posterity, I was able to track the problem down to what appears to be an issue with the netvm acquiring pci devices that should ostensibly be network controllers. I wasn't able to get anywhere by simply removing my RAID controller so I removed the GPU (ATI HD) and was finally able to complete an installation on integrated graphics. When I reinstalled everything and booted back into Qubes networking was no longer functioning. I opened the netvm's settings and noticed that the only PCI device it had captured this time was my RAID controller:

RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator] (rev 05)

I was able to get things running again by shutting down the netvm and its dependents then manually reassigning PCI devices.