Hi. I bought a ThinkPad x230 specifically to try out Qubes, but ran into problems with the installation. It’s the same problems this and other users reported, but I can’t see a solution anywhere online.
So here’s what happens:
Everything goes smoothly up until the actual installation begins. Then this happens:
This issue is mentioned in the “Installation Troubleshooting” section of the Documentation, with this comment:
Some people have encountered this error message when trying to install Qubes on drives that already have data on them. The solution is to exit the installer, wipe all data or delete all partitions, then restart the Qubes installation.
This is not a solution, it doesn’t work. I booted the installer of another distro and used it to wipe the partition table to start the installation on an empty disk. It does nothing, still the same error.
Also:
Yes, I tried flashing the ISO again
Yes, I tried downloading it again from another source than flashing it
Yes, I tried flashing it with another tool (Rufus and Etcher)
Generally though, whatever order of events of doing it wrong, I did, At least three times. I doubt you want to take up the time to emulate what I did. Someone should be by, and know that error message.
I will type all the stuff I did, that I know works.
Curious though, "How much RAM do you have?
How long is your account name? Yeah including the space. You do not need to tell it to me. I tried four characters once, and some weird stuff ensued. get like six or seven characters. And perhaps that is not an issue anymore.
Is your BIOS/EFI set to legacy or UEFI?
I would guess you have thoroughly checked all the other BIOS/EFI settings. and I do not recall what error messages give by that.
Uh once, I had to change the BIOS settings of one of the options to off, and restarted computer. then on restarted computer. Then again. Finally that part of the BIOS started working as Qubes needed it. (and it makes no sense for the BIOS/EFI settings to behave like that.)
Don’t give up just yet. My way to getting Qubes installed is time consuming, but it works.
It’s most probably an issue with the installation media.
Try to create the installation media in Linux OS and test the media before installation in the Qubes OS installer to make sure that it’s not corrupted.
I am encountering a similar error, during installation of both Qubes R4.2.2 and Qubes R4.2.3-rc1 . Installation begins fine, but at the phase “Preparing transaction from installation source” the installer throws “An unknown error has occurred” and offers either to send a bug report or to quit. The error seems to happen at the same point for both R4.2.2 and R4.2.3-rc1 attempt.
Intepreting details of the log is beyond my skill level. However the topmost log entry “File ‘/usr/lib64/python3.11/site-packages/pyanaconda/modules/payloads/payload/dnf/’ raise RuntimeError(‘the transaction process has ended abruptly:’+msg”, would sound like the installer cannot get packages correctly from Fedora repository. (I assume packages are received over Internet rather than from the USB installation medium, but I’m not sure). A similar error is discussed here, which is whatbmakes me think it is either a Fedora repository problem, or a bug in the Anaconda installer.
I’m a bit at loss how to proceed, however. My target disk is not empty; however I make empty space there with gnome-disks before every Qubes installation attempt, and automatic partitioning of the Qubes installer seem so be able to partition the said space into an Ext4 and LUKS partitions correctly every time. Hence I doubt it is a partitioning problem. The error log, too, sounds more like it is a problem of getting the required packages
It was a partitioning issue after all. I gave permission Qubes installer to reclaim all the space on the target disk (not only the 775MB worth partitions on my 1TB disk I allowed previously), and the R4.2.3-rc1 installs fine.
