control boot line in installer?

[Nathan Myers]

I am trying to install on an ASUS ZenBook UV501 (Skylake, HD530, NV960M,
NVME SSD). The installer kernel OOPSes because it loads the nouveau
driver module, and gets confused by the bumblebee/optimus hardware
arrangement.

I have installed Debian 9.3 on this machine, and it works if I blacklist
the nouveau module during boot. (I.e. the i915 module needs to load
first.) But I don't see any way to control the boot line during
installation. ("E" only shows me a chainloader command line.)

Also, when choosing where to install, the installer seems to offer only
the whole disk, but I have partitions already in place, currently
formatted for swap and ext4, that I would like for the installer to
overwrite. How do I tell the Qubes installer to use those?

Might the 4.0 beta installer deal better with these details?

Thanks,

Nathan Myers

[awokd]

On Thu, March 8, 2018 6:19 am, Nathan Myers wrote:
> I am trying to install on an ASUS ZenBook UV501 (Skylake, HD530, NV960M,
> NVME SSD). The installer kernel OOPSes because it loads the nouveau
> driver module, and gets confused by the bumblebee/optimus hardware
> arrangement.
>
> I have installed Debian 9.3 on this machine, and it works if I blacklist
> the nouveau module during boot. (I.e. the i915 module needs to load first.)
> But I don't see any way to control the boot line during
> installation. ("E" only shows me a chainloader command line.)

You might need to mount the installer from another machine and edit
directly. I know I've seen more detailed instructions somewhere, try
searching this mailing list for nouveau + 4.0 (or 3.2 if that's what
you're using).

> Also, when choosing where to install, the installer seems to offer only
> the whole disk, but I have partitions already in place, currently formatted
> for swap and ext4, that I would like for the installer to overwrite. How
> do I tell the Qubes installer to use those?

There's a manual/custom option in there somewhere that lets you specify
partition layout yourself.

> Might the 4.0 beta installer deal better with these details?

It's similar to 3.2's.

[awokd]

On Thu, March 8, 2018 9:39 am, awokd wrote:
> On Thu, March 8, 2018 6:19 am, Nathan Myers wrote:

>> I have installed Debian 9.3 on this machine, and it works if I
>> blacklist the nouveau module during boot. (I.e. the i915 module needs to
>> load first.) But I don't see any way to control the boot line during
>> installation. ("E" only shows me a chainloader command line.)
>
> You might need to mount the installer from another machine and edit
> directly. I know I've seen more detailed instructions somewhere, try
> searching this mailing list for nouveau + 4.0 (or 3.2 if that's what
> you're using).

Found it: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/

[Yuraeitha]

The Qubes installer equivalent to the "E" key to edit is "Tab" key. The screen won't change much, but keep eyes peeled on the bottom of the screen when you press the tab key, and you'll notice the boot line appears. The edit icon appears at th end of the boot line. Press space key once, and add your commands :)

This also had me confused for a while as well, I wonder what advantages there is to a different approach in the installer. But once you know this difference, you will have similar capabilities as you did with the "E" key Grub version.

[Nathan Myers]

With the 4.0rc5 installer, it never gets to the option to edit the
chainloader command line. It just says X failed, press ENTER, and then
nothing when i press ENTER. The log shows it looping trying to start
things. But the kernel is not obviously OOPSing.

What to try next?

[Yuraeitha]

that sounds odd... the boot-loader isn't even loading?
Is it possible to temporarily disable your nvidia graphics card in the BIOS/UEFI? It should produce the same results as writing the blacklist. Then if that works, you can then later easier blacklist it inside Qubes, reboot, and then re-enable your nvidia card in the BIOS/UEFI, and then test if it works.

Also about the full partition thing, I do not mean to scare you or put you off, but I recall there was an issue back in fedora-23 that caused changes to other partitions despite not telling the installer to do anything to them. It should be fixed today? I never personally encountered this bug, but I recall it discussed once. Qubes 3.2. installs dom0 with fedora-23, while Qubes 4 installs dom0 with fedora-25. At any rate, it might be a good idea to backup first. Though, I haven't seen it since, so maybe it's rare, or it's fixed today. But that you can't "choose" partition layout editor seems a bit worrying. I'm still on lower Qubes 4 release candidates updated to RC-5, I haven't re-installed with RC-5 yet though. Maybe it's something specifically in the RC-5 installer? Any chance you can try out the RC-4 and RC-3 installers and see if they act differently with the partition editor here? If so, then you can just update to RC-5 from those if it installs.

[Mike Keehan]

Try using the instructions at this url -

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/