Hi, I’m having trouble install Qubes to a USB. Qubes is failing to save the configuration to my USB and hence the installation will proceed no further. I’ve tried at least four different USBs made by either SanDisk or Kingston, they are all 32Gb USBs. I tried using USBs which had various formats including FAT32 and NTFS. I also used a USB without any partition at all with the same results. I don’t suppose you have any idea as to why Qubes won’t work?
Regards
Nick
Can you describe in more details at what point does it fail and what error do you get?
Hi, thanks for getting back to me, it was much appreciated. Of course I can describe in more details what occurred. So I get as far as a screen which allows me to select installation destination which I select. I choose my USB stick and click done at that point I get the following errors (I hope you can see the picture I uploaded):
This is the final error but before this Qubes states that ‘Failed to save storage configuration’. I’d have uploaded a screenshot of this too but apparently I can only add one embedded image to a post.
I hope this clarifies the problem I am having.
Regards
Nick
Ok, I got it.
The problem is that 32 GB is not enough for auto partitioning. But you can manually partition the drive.
Hi, thanks for getting back to me, it is much appreciated. Two further questions occur to me the first is how big a drive do I need and the second is how would I manually partition the drive?
Regards
Nick
I don’t know exactly how much space is required for auto partitioning to work, but it won’t work on 32 GB drive but it’ll work on 64 GB drive.
You can read about it here:
Nice one. Thank you so much for the prompt reply. I’ll look into the answers now.
Regards
Nick
Just bought a 64Gb USB and hopefully that will work. I reviewed the attached link but that pertains to a Fedora installation and seemed somewhat broken. How would I get to the manual partitioning screen in Qubes and also when I clicked the link in the Fedora document to get the recommended partitions it didn’t seem to work. I don’t suppose you have any further advice please.
Regards
Nick
It seems to be too old for f32 link, you can check the newer version for f36:
Installing Using Anaconda :: Fedora Docs
You need to select Custom in Storage Configuration and press Done:
Installing Using Anaconda :: Fedora Docs
You can see it here:
Installing Using Anaconda :: Fedora Docs
But for Qubes OS the recommended partitioning will be different. Qubes doesn’t need separate home partition.
Hi, thanks for getting back to me again, much appreciated. I found where I can perform the manual partitioning and fiddled around with the to try and figure out the partition scheme. I used a standard partition as the default didn’t work which was some light format though have forgotten what. The I set /boot/efi to 1GB, the swap partition to 5GB and then about 18GB to /. I got further this time as installation completed but then when I tried to boot into Qubes it hung at the point it tried to install the Fedora templates (I think). Any ideas where I went wrong? I think I might be getting there though!
Regards
Nick
Not sure, maybe 18 GB is not enough to install VM templates.
I can suggest you to not use swap at all since it won’t be used anyway (at least not for everyday dom0 usage).
And install only one template debian or fedora.
Cheers thanks for the response I’ll try it without a swap file. Not quiet sure how to only use one template but hopefully it will become apparent when I try.
Regards
Nick
Hello again, I just tried installing Qubes to my 32Gb USB with a 500Mb /boot/efi and the remainder as the / partition which I think was about 27Gb. Unfortunately when I tried to boot from the USB I got the following error:
I don’t suppose you might know what this means and what I might do about it please?
Regards
Nick
Did you create /boot partition during installation?
Hi, thanks for getting back to me. I created a /boot/efi partition. Is that the same thing or do I also need to create a /boot partition?
Regards
Nick
You need to create separate /boot partition as well. Else /boot will be placed inside / (root) partition which is encrypted.
Oh darn! I shall try that henceforth.
Regards
Nick
I tried adding a 1Gb /boot partition, a 1Gb /boot/efi partition, a swap file of about 2Gb and a / partition of about 23Gb but I still got the same error as above. Any other ideas?
Regards
Nick
Try a different USB port, a wild guess would be that Xen doesn’t see the USB device when trying to boot, this can be a common issue on USB3 ports for some OS.
I wonder if this would work anyway, what will happen on a successful boot with sys-usb?
What is your exact partitioning?
Example:
partition - mount point - size - filesystem
/dev/sdb1 - /boot/efi - 1GB - EFI System
/dev/sdb2 - /boot - 1GB - ext4
/dev/sdb3 - / - 23GB - LUKS+LVM
