I’m on thinkpad t480s, which is supported. I’m booting from a USB partition which is smaller than 8GB. I’m trying to install the latest Qubes OS R4.2.4. From the flash Grub, I issue:
set root=([usb stick partition with qubes])
configfile /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
This drops me into the Qubes Grub menu. Whatever I pick from the menu, it then just hangs forever. Usually (not always) a cursor underscore shows up in the top left corner.
Any suggestions? Any way to check a debug log of what’s happening? I’ve already tried removing the quiet argument from the Grub menu entry, but nothing gets printed
The strangest thing is that among the 50 or so attempts I’ve made over the past few days, it did actually make it to the install screen twice. But only twice and I don’t know why. The shashum of the install is correct, it was created using dd. I’ve also tried using a different boot media (a harddrive instead of USB stick).
Everything else works fine on the laptop, including a Debian Live image booted from the same USB stick.
There seem to be countless forum threads about this, but I couldn’t find any applicable advice in them. Many of those threads are abandoned without a solution. Recent Github threads related to this get closed without comment. Installing Qubes is starting to feel like a gamble. Can anyone please help? I really want to run Qubes, I don’t want to give up on it.
The problem is only reproduced when booting the machine with the installation media plugged into the USB. The solution is to boot the machine without the installation media connected; wait for the flashrom GRUB to load; plug the installation media into the USB; and then boot from it.
I’d normally assume there is an isolated issue with my hardware/BIOS, but as I mentioned, Debian live doesn’t have a problem booting with the same setup.
I had issues with how I prepared the Qubes install on the Flash Drive. I discovered the flash drive worked better if I formatted before writing Qubes to it
Having a T480, close to what you have. I discovered that if I used a live distro-and gparted, I would reformat the entireity of the hard drive to FAT32. Then the Qubes distro sorted out what i wanted, but there might be some times when it seemed to stop. If I tried to install Qubes over something else, sometimes the install had a single blinking cursor, mullled over what it was doing for awhile.
Once, after making sure it was not overheating, I just went to bed. Got up after midnight and the dark screen was gone, waiting for my next input.
No longer will I try to write over something on the flash drive, or on the hard drive. For me-no dual boot. but there are good reasons to dual boot.