How to Install Qubes OS on a Multi-Boot Partitioned Drive?

User Support General
1

Long-time Qubes user here, having a bit of trouble.

I have a 4TB NVMe that I’d like to host several different operating systems on (Windows for gaming, Fedora for regular daily use, Arch for trying to learn Arch lol, and Qubes.

For Qubes, I’d like to only partition off about 200GB–if not a little less–but it’s not letting me. So far, all I’ve installed on my drive is Fedora. Here’s what I’ve tried.

  • Shrinking Fedora to 150GB, but doing that makes Qubes want to take up ~3.8TB. That’s a no-go.
  • Expanding Fedora back, but only leaving 200GB for Qubes. But it didn’t like that. When I tried to say reclaim space I got a message basically saying that it was having trouble doing that. It wouldn’t let me proceed.
  • Then I shrunk Fedora back to about 150GB, and created a second partition with gparted of about 200GB: I tried partitioning it with nothing, then Fat32, exfat, ext4, and btrfs. Nothing worked.

It seems like Qubes is refusing to install on anything less than 3.5TB. What am I doing wrong?

Edit:

First it says “Failed to save storage configuration.”

Then immediately afterward it says “Error checking storage configuration”

I found another lead:

“Failed to find a suitable stage1 device: EFI System Partition must be mounted on one of /boot/efi; EFI System Partition cannot be of type ext4; EFI system Partition must be mounted on one of /boot/efi; EFI System Partition cannot be of type luks.”

1 Like
2
1 Like
3

@FranklyFlawless

This is not solved. Neither of those links helped.

1 Like
4

His point is valid. Multi boot compromises qubes.

Edit

1 Like
5

Look, I’m not being chased by the NSA. My Qubes won’t be compromised lol I assure you.

I still need my question answered, instead of answering everything except for my question

1 Like
6

Not trying to be rude in any way, but why would you want to do that? That just doesn’t make sense. You will compromise your Qube (the architecture of Qubes will be useless in such a setup), and you’ll be dealing with a system prone to breaking. Running three OSes can cause a lot of compatibility issues, GRUB problems, etc. So why do you want to do that? If you want to learn Arch, just install it in a VM. If you don’t need any software that heavily utilizes your GPU, then just install Qubes as your main OS, remove everything else, and you’ll be fine. Or, if you have a software that need your dedicated GPU, if you have 2 GPUs in your setup, you can just make a GPU Passthrough???

2 Likes
7

Lol I mean, people let me have a compromised Qubes!

Just tell me the flipping answer! Goodness gracious

1 Like
8

You need 1gb fat32 EFI partition at the start of drive

1 Like
9

Okay, so are you saying that I should use gparted to create a 1GB fat32 partition and then it’ll work?

The weird thing is I have another PC on which I’ve dual-booted Fedora and Qubes. I did it a while ago, but it wasn’t this hard. I think it took me all of two attempts. I just don’t recall what I did. I know I didn’t just create a gb fat32

1 Like
10

Dunno if it helps, but you provided such error.

My QubesOS is installed on UEFI laptop so it uses it. Don’t know how it goes with legacy BIOS.

You said that you cleaned you drive and installed Fedora - it’s in legacy boot? Did you haf Win10/11 before on this machine? If yes then it’s UEFI BIOS machine. Fedora might work in legacy mode but maybe QubesOS detects UEFI and nerd EFI boot partition.

I don’t remember it but maybe gparted have option to create EFI partition. If it don’t have automatic script then it is FAT32 partition with boot and esp flags.

But then you need to change drive schema from MBR to GPT and your Fedora wont start anymore so need to install Fedora again into EFI.

So the question is - is this machine have legacy or UEFI bios and you have MBR or GPT partition schema.

1 Like
11

I bought a completely new 4TB drive. Nothing was on it. I slapped it in my PC, and installed Fedora first thing, from a USB

But when I dual-booted Qubes and Fedora, that was on a drive that originally had Windows 11 on it.

One thing I find interesting is that one of the errors was that it didn’t like luks. When I set up my Fedora on this 4TB drive, I installed it with encryption. Do you think that’s throwing it off?

But I’m sure I encrypted last time too

1 Like
12

Are you using legacy or UEFI boot? (Asked before.)
I’m assuming that with the Fedora install you allocated some space, and
left free space for other OS. How much did you give to the Fedora?

But when I dual-booted Qubes and Fedora, that was on a drive that originally had Windows 11 on it.

I doubt that encrypted the Fedora install will give you issues.
What does “it didn’t like luks” mean? If you want help you will have to
provide more detail about what you did with the Qubes install, and about
the error messages that you had.

Obviously you will have to use a custom install, and set up partitions
specifically for Qubes. Did you do this? How did you configure them?

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team. When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
1 Like