Mistakenly deleted MBR & system partitions to install, can't boot Qubes

[sjil...@gmail.com]

Hello,

So I've been trying for nearly two weeks to get qubes to install on my system.  And finally success!  Oh sweet success!

...well sort of. 

I finally was able to get qubes to install, but now when I turn on my machine it shows there are no operating systems and it goes straight into checking hardware.  If I go into the one-time-boot-menu (f12), it shows my only boot option as onboard NIC. In the bios (F2), it also shows no boot path for legacy or uefi.  If I use a live usb to get into a GRUB shell and try to manually boot qubes via manually setting root, manually loading the kernel and initrd, I can't see the qubes filesystem on (hd1,3) it says "unknown filesystem".  If I use my original qubes installation usb and choose option to fix a qubes install. It tells me that qubes is not installed.

I think it is because I deleted system partitions that I shouldn't've deleted.  The first three thousand or so times I tried installing qubes, I got a lot of messages like /dev/root doesn't exist, or that it could not mount root fs on unknown blocks, and then lots of kernel panics.  I thought it was because I still had windows on my machine.  So I reluctantly decided I wanted qubes more than windows and deleted those partitions.   I'm not sure if deleting them is why I am now able to install qubes.  I've tried booting into a pop_OS live usb that I had, and tried the utility bootrepair but it could not fix it.  I'm not real sure on where to go from here.

I did choose to partition things manually while installing qubes, but I let qubes set up the root and boot and swap itself. I deleted everything but the windows recovery/backup I had made before I deleted windows, and also kept my pop_os installation (which also won't boot now even manually from grub (I'm a dummy so I'm probably doing it wrong)).  In my pop_os installation, I made backup images of all the windows and system partitions before deletion, so if I feel like if I could get in there I could restore the windows and system partitions. But I am just not tech savvy enough to figure it out I'm afraid.  Hoping one of you can help me or point me in the right direction. Really hoping I didn't brick my laptop.

My system is a g5 5590, i7-9750H, 32gb Ram, gtx2060, 1tb dell laptop.  Qubes and Pop are current versions.  The following is what my current partitioning looks like:

nvme0n1p       953G (hd1)
    nvme0n1p1 1M        BIOS boot efi  (hd1,1)
    nvme0n1p2 1G        Linux Filesystem (hd1,2)
    nvme0n1p3 324.8G Linux LVM    (hd1,3)
                        15 G     Qubes-dom0-swap

    nvme0n1p5 48.8G   Windows Backup (hd1,5)
    nvme0n1p6 251.5G PopOs Installation  (hd1,6)

Thank you for reading,

Jillian

[dhorf-hfre...@hashmail.org]

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 07:25:59PM -0700, sjil...@gmail.com wrote:
> nvme0n1p 953G (hd1)
> nvme0n1p1 1M BIOS boot efi (hd1,1)

this is WAAAAAY too small.
make it at least 100M, better 500M or even 1GB.

here a single set of xen+linux+initrd is about 35-40MB, and
in general you want enough space for more than one, plus
whatever is needed for booting your other systems.

> nvme0n1p2 1G Linux Filesystem (hd1,2)
> nvme0n1p3 324.8G Linux LVM (hd1,3)
> 15 G Qubes-dom0-swap

this indicates you manually changed the partition layout for qubes
in too many ways to count, including removing the disk encrpytion.
good luck with that.

[sjil...@gmail.com]

Hello!

Thank you for replying,

> nvme0n1p       953G (hd1)
>     nvme0n1p1 1M        BIOS boot efi  (hd1,1)

this is WAAAAAY too small.
make it at least 100M, better 500M or even 1GB.

Per your advice I've tried reinstalling to make this partition bigger.  I deleted  the previous qubes partitions, and all partitions except the windows-backup and pops-partition, then clicked the "let qubes set mount points" option and it auto-populated boot and the other qubes partitions, when I clicked on the one you mention and try to change the "desired capacity" will not accept more than 2MiB.  I tried manually creating this partition, but as soon as I select BiosBoot it changes from my input of 1GB to 2MiB.  I maximized the other boot option too, to see if that would help. I did not. After reinstallation I still can't boot.

>>     nvme0n1p2 1G        Linux Filesystem (hd1,2)
>>     nvme0n1p3 324.8G Linux LVM    (hd1,3)
>>                        15 G     Qubes-dom0-swap

>this indicates you manually changed the partition layout for qubes
>in too many ways to count, including removing the disk encrpytion.
>good luck with that.

I did not.  I only deleted partitions and kept a windows-backup and a pop_Os partition, qubes did everything else.  I left off encryption because I thought that was the reason I couldn't see it in grub to manually boot it.  I left encryption on for this new install.  But have changed nothing else. I assembled the above  from fdisk -l and grub ls command, but perhaps it is confusing or I was confused, I attached a picture of qubes layout from the install screen so you can see it easier (the "unknown" is partitions 5 & 6  the windows/pop partitions, there is no partition 4).

Thanks again for your help.

[Mike Keehan]

You say "I deleted the previous qubes partitions, and all partitions
except...". This doesn't sound good - deleting Qubes partitions would
be OK, but "all other partitions" may not be right.

I suggest you post an output from fdisk -l so we can see what partitions
are present, and how they are arranged on the disk.

Mike.

[sjil...@gmail.com]

Hi Mike,

Yeah, really seems I messed up...

My fdisk -l:

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/ram0: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram1: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram2: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram3: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram4: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram5: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram6: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram7: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram8: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram9: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram10: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram11: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram12: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram13: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram14: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/ram15: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes


Disk /dev/loop0: 1.7 GiB, 1757536256 bytes, 3432688 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 953.9 GiB, 1024209543168 bytes, 2000409264 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 66AD24F4-0160-489F-BDD1-5D92BB6D7A4B

Device              Start        End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1       2048       6143      4096     2M BIOS boot
/dev/nvme0n1p2       6144    1030143   1024000   500M Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 1319260160 2000408575 681148416 324.8G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p5  668499968  770899967 102400000  48.8G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p6  770899968 1319260159 548360192 261.5G Linux filesystem

Partition table entries are not in disk order.


Disk /dev/sda: 29.1 GiB, 31221153792 bytes, 60978816 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x02ea3617

Device     Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *     2048 60978815 60976768 29.1G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

lsblk:

mint@mint /home $ lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    1  29.1G  0 disk
└─sda1        8:1    1  29.1G  0 part /cdrom
sdb           8:16   1  29.9G  0 disk
└─sdb1        8:17   1  29.9G  0 part /media/mint/32GB
loop0         7:0    0   1.7G  1 loop /rofs
nvme0n1     259:0    0 953.9G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0     2M  0 part
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0   500M  0 part
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0 324.8G  0 part
├─nvme0n1p5 259:4    0  48.8G  0 part
└─nvme0n1p6 259:5    0 261.5G  0 part

Thank you,

Jillian

[Mike Keehan]

On 5/18/20 5:28 PM, sjil...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Monday, May 18, 2020 at 8:27:17 AM UTC-6, Mike Keehan wrote:
>>

HI,

What is the boot disk for your system - /dev/sda, /dev/sdb or the
/dev/nvme0n1 disk?

Which partitions of the nvme disk are PopOs?

Which partitions of the nvme disk are the Qubes partitions?

How do you intend to boot Qubes when you start up your system?

Mike.