I installed Qubes OS at the external NVME via NVME to USB-C adapter.
I also check how it’s work with Linux Mint before. And all works good. Similarly as internal storage.
But. When Qubes OS working it’s have a chance freeze on boot or, sometime, in the process work.
After hard shutdown the system, bios is not see my drive with Qubes and I shall unplug and plug storage on the down PC. After then, boot is normally. (If to forgot about chance to freeze again)
Please Help me find resolve for this problem. What log I should see and what test I can do?
You can check the log in dom0 terminal with journalctl.
The cause of your problem may be because your USB drive disconnects for some reason. In that case you won’t find anything in logs.
Can you describe your freezes in more details? When your Qubes is freezing then abruptly nothing changes on the screen when you use mouse/keyboard? Or Qubes first start to work improperly but you can move your mouse on the screen and after some time it’ll freeze entirely?
At first Qubes freezes. After a few minutes, all windows and the task manager disappear. Only the desktop wallpaper remains. Also sometimes before this I see messages that sys-net and some other machines are stopped. The mouse cursor is active. Some media keys work. I can adjust the screen brightness, but I cannot adjust the sound volume. I can also wait for the screen to lock and unlock it by password, but only if I have done this before during the session. Otherwise, after locking the screen I see the screen saver window without the password prompt.
Also I can press the shutdown button and Qubes switches to a black screen that has a log message warning that I don’t have sys-usb set up (I provides a screenshot later).
I also think the USB drive is disconnected, but I don’t know what I can do about it. It doesn’t always happen, more often when I try to run something.
I could not find anything interesting in journalctl right now. I will try again right after the incident.
What I may do for provide more usefull information for you?
These symptoms are almost certainly mean that your Qubes USB drive was disconnected for some reason.
This may be because of hardware problems - faulty cable, faulty connectors, overheating. Maybe power issue with voltage drop due to high load and bad cable/connectors.
You can run some stress tests from another OS for your drive and see if it’ll disconnect during it.
Something else. If I pull the cable out, the system crashes immediately. and the next time it forces Qubes to test the drive. if I don’t pull the cable out on the working system, the next startup will be fine.
Maybe if drive disconnects and then immediately reconnects it’ll break Qubes but won’t cause immediate crash.
Check the logs in dom0 with journalctl.
Unfortunately I can not agree with you that I have a problem with the cable or overheating. as there are days like yesterday when there are no freezes. and there are days like today when 3 reboot while an hour. and now everything works.
overheating would be at the stage of installation.
cable also works well especially since the laptop I use more as a stationary system because just afraid to touch something. But now I’m sitting on the bed and next to it is the disk, which I took out of the box to air it out. and everything works. so far.
There is more that the OS freeze does not exactly disable the disk, because nothing would change if I took it out. and the effect is there. So the disk is being used.
it seems to me that Qubes is doing something in the background and maybe accidentally or on purpose to control usb devices and turn off the drive (or unmount). why do need sys-usb?
P.S. Also, there are days when I turn on a cold system and immediately experience a hang. still at the stage of starting sys-net. which by the way is used together with usb devices.
I keep terminal dom0 open. And will try check system after next freeze. Thank you for you time and I hope I can get the logs.
Today I switched the interface from USB-C to USB-3.0. And Qubes could not start. Immediately after starting at the sys-net startup stage, the system freezes. Every time! Then I switched back to the USB-C interface and for 5 or 6 times I caught the freeze right after startup. In all cases it happens BEFORE starting sys-net. I also have another Qube with KeePass that is not dependent on sys-net and it starts successfully.
My opinion is this. The sys-net switches the usb controllers and that disconnects the drive. How do I tell sys-net not to touch the usb controllers?
Remove USB controllers from sys-net in Qube Settings → Devices tab.
You can remove just a single USB controller that is used by your USB drive and leave the other controllers in sys-net (if you have more than one USB controller).
please tell me, how I can update update-initramfs. dom-0 say that command not found
To regenerate initramfs for current kernel:
sudo dracut -vf --kver $(uname -r) /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img
You can save the old one in case the generated initramfs won’t work so you can easily restore it later:
sudo cp /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img.bak
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