Need Help Detached encrypted Boot and Header

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 10:20am

Hello
I wanted to try the tutorial from 51lieal (Playing with Qubes os) but now I’ve run into a problem where I don’t know what to do.
I have done the first part then switch back to the cli and select my ssd and usbstick.
But then I can only format qubes_dom0-swap
I can’t do anything with Qubes_dom0-root
When creating the partitions I got this error code :

Thin pool volume with chunk size 64.88 KiB can address at most 15.81 TIB of data.
Volume group “qubes_dom0” has insufficient free space (5139 extents): 7680 required.

An answer would be very cool.

DVM · April 12, 2024, 11:04am

You should redo everything and make sure you put a file system on each of them before you go back to the GUI, otherwise you won’t be able to do anything with them there.

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 11:27am

How can I check if I have a file system

DVM · April 12, 2024, 11:32am

Have you run any mkfs commands on the root volume?
If not, you don’t have any.

Make sure to format the root lvm volume to ext4 with mkfs.ext4.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/qubes_dom0/root

Also format any other volumes/partitions you need to use in the GUI.

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 1:55pm

Many thanks already. That worked
But now I have the problem with the usbstick which does not want to be formatted to /Boot/efi
It is written with bios boot but I am not sure if this is correct

apparatus · April 12, 2024, 2:59pm

It seems that you’re booting in legacy BIOS mode and not in UEFI mode so you can’t use EFI partition.
In that case you can use just a single /boot partition without a need to setup /boot/efi partition.

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 3:37pm

unfortunately this does not work and the cli shows me that a /boot/efi partion is needed.

see error →
Failed to find a suitable stage1 device: EFI system partition cannot be of type biosboot; EFI system partition cannot be of type ext2; EFI-
System partition must be mounted on one of the /boot/efi; EFI-
system partition cannot be of type None.

what can I do here

apparatus · April 12, 2024, 3:57pm

In that case maybe you didn’t create the EFI System partition correctly?
How did you create it?
What’s the output of this command?

fdisk -l /dev/sdb

The /dev/sdb1 needs to be of EFI System type. It could be created using fdisk or this command following the guide:

sgdisk -n 0:0:+200MiB -t 0:ef00 /dev/sdb

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 4:41pm

ahh

this is mixed up on sdb1 is bios boot, and on sdb2 is efi boot. so if i format fat32 to efi boot, it works. then
i format sdb1 to ext4 and go into cli but i can’t enter /boot there

(I accidentally restarted the labtop and have now changed the places of the installation usb and the other one.
not that it now comes to confusion)

apparatus · April 12, 2024, 4:48pm

Did you rescan the discs in installer after your changes of the partitions?

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 4:49pm

yes i do that

apparatus · April 12, 2024, 4:52pm

Did you rescan it on this window by clicking Refresh at the bottom right:

And not on the one on your photo?

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 4:57pm

just now i do that, nothing changed

apparatus · April 12, 2024, 5:01pm

If you’ve rechecked in console with fdisk that partition is indeed ext4 then I guess it’d be easier to just reboot the installer and continue.

DVM · April 12, 2024, 5:26pm

If you really want to use GPT on a legacy boot system, you need to configure your external usb key like this:

sda1:
- Size: 1M
- Type: BIOS boot
- Format: none
- Mount: none
sda2
- Size: 512M
- Type: EFI System
- Format: FAT32 - mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/sda2
- Mount: /boot/efi
sda3:
- Size: 512M
- Type: Linux filesystem
- Format: ext4 - mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3
- Mount: /boot

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 5:26pm

after reboot the same problem again. EFI partition recognized again and can be edited and bios boot cannot be edited to /boot
I have now reinstalled the usb again and have
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress
after that
EFI partition
sgdisk -n 0:0:+200MiB -t 0:ef02 /dev/sda

Boot partition
sgdisk -n 0:0:+200MiB -t 0:ef00 /dev/sda

Root Header Partition
sgdisk -n 0:0:+16MiB -t 0:8309 /dev/sda

then I created the file systems with
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

then I go into the cli, refresh disks, and same problem again
BIOS boot can not be edited to /boot

do i have an error somewhere?
maybe my usbstick with 4gb is not enough (that can’t be because the filesystems don’t exceed 4gb)

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 5:36pm

What exactly would the commands for this look like?
or can I also create this normally via the cli
when the usb is empty

DVM · April 12, 2024, 5:53pm

You can use gdisk for this.

gdisk /dev/sda

sda1 (BIOS boot):
n
enter
enter
+1M
ef02

sda2 (EFI System - /boot/efi):
n
enter
enter
+512M
ef00

sda3 (Linux filesystem - /boot):
n
enter
enter
+512M
enter

sda4 (luks):
n
enter
enter
enter
enter

w
(Y)

apparatus · April 12, 2024, 5:53pm

I think there is an error in the guide and you don’t actually need to create BIOS Boot type partition, you just need to create simple ext4 partition:
EFI Partition

sgdisk -n 0:0:+512MiB -t 0:ef00 /dev/sda

Boot Partition

sgdisk -n 0:0:+1GiB -t 0:8300 /dev/sda
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Root Header Partition

sgdisk -n 0:0:+16MiB -t 0:8309 /dev/sda

But I didn’t look too deep into it so I could be wrong.

Sks772 · April 12, 2024, 6:10pm

Thx
I try it later