Qubes 4.2-RC1 does not load after first reboot [Not repeatable?]

It seems to have worked fine after starting the install over again. The only differences that I know about are:
#1. I chose “install” instead of “test the media and install”
#2. I didn’t realize this at the time, but I did not have the ethernet cable in during the install, meaning it had no internet access. When whonix tried to connect to the internet and took forever, i realized the problem and plugged it in. (maybe the problem was that the install disk pulled a updated version of a package?)

anyway, leaving this here in case it helps someone:

Ok, starting with a system with hard drive that was successfully running a previous version of qubes (either 4.0 or 4.1).

Booting to USB and going through the 4.2-RC1 installer seemed to work fine up to the part of the process where you need to reboot, i said reboot, waited for it to be starting back up and pulled out the USB.

On the screen was:
Warning: USB in dom0 is not restricted (blah blah)
[FAILED] Failed to start dbus-broker.service - DBus System Message Bus.
[FAILED] Failed to start dbus-broker.service - DBus System Message Bus.
[FAILED] Failed to start dbus-broker.service - DBus System Message Bus.
[FAILED] Failed to start dbus-broker.service - DBus System Message Bus.
[FAILED] Failed to start dbus-broker.service - DBus System Message Bus.
[FAILED] Failed to start qubes-qmemman.service - Qubes memory management daemon
[FAILED] Failed to start qubesd - Qubes OS daemon
{and so on}

The logs don’t seem that helpful in this case. Anyone with ideas on what’s going on?

The first time I booted, it also said things about ext-fs error “checksumming directory block 0” (referencing dm-3), however the second time I booted (which was a physical power off and back on), this did not happen, which is interesting.

The “3rd” time I rebooted, when I saw the graphical “loading screen”, i hit escape, and saw a bunch of green “[ OK ]” messages for services and it went to the next step of the installation.

I’ll continue with the installation, but I wanted to document the issue to possibly help the next person.

Some random tidbits about the hardware, that could possibly be related:

  • Memory is very low on the test hardware (only 8 Gigs)
  • It’s a physical hard drive
  • It’s probably using “BIOS” instead of UEFI
  • The Image on the USB was verified manually via checksum, and via its own internal “test media” thing.