Installer fails - Q470 chipset ?

Hi,

First post here, in a nutshell, I’m having issues understand why/where the installer ISO fails on my new setup.

I just assembled a new workstation, that I want to use as my personal device and run Qubes on it.

! My hardware setup is :

  • Asus Pro Q470M-C : I chose this motherboard mainly for the Q470 chipset and TPM2.0 support. It’s a rather new chipset and support LGA1200 CPUs.

  • I5-10400 : bang for bucks CPU / latest gen. Indeed VT-x and VT-d ( through CometLake chipset )

  • 32 GB Ram in 2 slots - DDR4

  • M2 SSD - 1000 GB

According to me, everything in spec for a Qubes 4.0.

! BIOS tuning
This is a fairly recent AMI BIOS (UEFI)

  • enabled VMX (aka VT-x)
  • enabled VD-d
  • cleared / deleted Secure Bios keys ( and set OS Type to OTher vs. Windows)
  • disabled serial and paralell ports (no use - reduce attack surface)
  • graphics set to internal ( I don’t have any PCIe device - no discrete GPU ) and increased memory

! Booting the ISO
preparation: ISO downloaded from official site, added keys to my GPG and verified ISO !

After POST, I can briefly see the typical log info displayed on the terminal ( HDMI link ) ; it’s very fast by I can see it’s trying to start Dom0.
Then black screen, and very quickly another set of log lines then… nothing.

I find it very difficult to troubleshoot. Any pointer appreciated.

Also, I managed to boot an Arch Linux installer ISO again (UEFI) and well, it’s behaving as it should.

Streuphy

Answering self:

Documentation is available here:

Installation Troubleshooting

and

UEFI troubleshooting

So if I understand correctly, I can change kernel options here.

What would be the best option ? I’m going to rewrite my installation media and try

Some systems can freeze with the default UEFI install options. You can try the following to remove noexitboot and mapbs .