- Thinkpad T480 with latest f/w and UEFI boot, SAS SSD
- Qubes 4.2.2 (latest, updated) with default installation options
- Problem
- Every time I reboot, there’s that little exclamation sign/icon which - when I select it - leads to system trying to configure storage (LVs) again. I have no choice but to click OK to proceed but since storage has been configured, that fails, and then I dismiss the error, I return to the light blue screen where the exclamation sign is gone, click on QubeOS (or whatever it says there) icon and can login as usual. This happens every time I reboot.
While this is a minor inconvenience (no data loss observed, backup works, qubes can be created, etc.), it does look worrisome and I’m afraid that one day some update may be the straw that renders the system unbootable.
It’s also interesting that I installed Qubes from the same ISO 3-4 times:
- The first time, everything completed fine and no issues after reboot. I removed it because I wanted to install Windows to update firmware
- The second time, this issue was observed. I reinstalled as soon as I saw it was trying to create LVs because it looked like installation was corrupt
- The third time, same problem, but I discovered I can dismiss that message
- I decided to try the fourth time and be careful to not deviate from defaults - same problem, I’m here now and don’t want to re-install because it looks odds of making this go away may be slim.
The only difference between the first and other attempts is I updated some f/w and maybe BIOS, I didn’t write down what they were - I just used Lenovo System Update and installed everything (9 items and many were irrelevant, i.e. Windows drivers).
Is anyone interested in some logs or diags?
I could try to reinstall again if this sounds interesting.
P.S. Every time I install, I choose to encrypt, clear all previous partitions and used auto-partitioning (defaults), as suggested in a similar thread here, which seems enough to eliminate doubts about potential remnants of interim Windows installation between the first and second attempt.
I rebooted again and this time rather than trying to recreate thin LV volumes, I picked existing (defaults were already there) and
salt.pillar [CRITICAL] Specified ext_pillar interface Y not available
Where Y is qvm_features, qvm_prefs, qvm_tags, the same as in this post except that I did not do any DIY steps or modifications.
sudo qubesctl state.highstate tells me there’s nothing to report and to check master log.
Salt logs:
minion - emptyminion.install - emptymaster - emptymaster.20240804.gz - contains empty master
One detail that may have been changed between successful installation in 1 and semi-successful 2, 3, 4 is I rechecked BIOS settings and could not boot with UEFI only meaning I’m in Legacy Mode now (I also can’t boot from install USB key with UEFI only), so I assume I couldn’t have done it before either so that should have been consistent throughout all attempts. I burned install file to ISO with dd during 1st install and Ubuntu USB Image Writer the 2nd time (and used that for 2, 3, 4).
Should I try to reinstall again? Not sure how many attempts it’d take to get a good one… I saw there’s a Community Guide for UEFI installation on ThinkPad - would that be worth a try?
Also spotted this about buggy Lenovo systems…
I reinstalled again. I tried the conservative “Check media & install” but that caused BSOD (black screen, unresponsive). Regular installation worked. I used some non-default options:
- Eliminated LVM. I used traditional provisioning (/boot, /, and /home for Qube; left one large partition empty for later - I hope one day I’ll figure out how to backup qubes to this “hidden” partition).
- Chose Debian dom-0 over Fedora as I intend to use just Debian and Whonix
- Nothing else changed compared to previous attempts. BIOS settings are still
Both, UEFI first with fallback to Legacy, T480 with BIOS v1.5.1.
- After installation I added 2 options I saw in other ThinkPad-related posts (blacklist nouveau kernel module and some ioapic_ack=new - no idea if I need that, but it’s not worse than it was).
So far, so good - no more “Finish installation” after each reboot.
Unfortunately I don’t have any “tips” to share or even a way to say [SOLVED]. It’s probably not solved, but at least it’s working and I know that if I need to restore Qube OS it may take a few times but it will very likely work.
That tip about editing xen.cfg was confusing, I spent time looking in dom-0, ISO, and during (re)installation, all in vain. Then I saw in one Github issue someone said the file was removed some time ago…