Qubes Boot Loader Help #7542

User Support
5

Hi Tim - and welcome to the forum!

My interpretation of your situation is:

  • You have successfully installed Qubes on SSD, connected via USB
  • After installation, you can boot and run Qubes without issues
  • If you unplug/move the USB connection to a different port and boot the computer, then you cannot boot Qubes again

– is that a correct description of your issue?

If so, then you should be able to follow the instruction from @apparatus, by opening an terminal in dom0 and copy the files around:

sudo -i
cd /boot/efi/EFI
cp -r qubes/* BOOT
cd BOOT
mv grubx64.efi bootx64.efi
mv grub.cfg bootx64.cfg

If you are currently unable to boot Qubes, then you could try the following:

  • Connect the SSD drive via USB to the computer
  • Connect the USB installation stick to the computer
  • Select the Installation stick as the boot medium
  • When you see the “Install Qubes OS R…”/“Test media and …”/“Troubleshooting - …” menu, hit c to got grub> prompt
  • Type configfile ( and hit the Tab key on your keyboard
  • You should get a list of “Possible devices are” - eg. hd0 hd1 hd2
  • Test each possible device, by typing configfile (hd0, and hit Tab - it should give you a list of partitions on each drive - eg hd0,gpt1 hd0,gpt2 hd1,gpt1 hd1,gpt2 hd1,gpt3
  • You need to find the partition that has the file /EFI/qubes/grub.cfg - so in my example, I should try each of:
configfile (hd0,gpt1)/EFI/qubes/grub.cfg
configfile (hd0,gpt2)/EFI/qubes/grub.cfg
configfile (hd1,gpt1)/EFI/qubes/grub.cfg
configfile (hd1,gpt2)/EFI/qubes/grub.cfg
configfile (hd1,gpt3)/EFI/qubes/grub.cfg

– with a little luck, you’ll find the GRUB menu for you qubes installation and be able to boot into Qubes OS. Once you have Qubes OS running, you can open a terminal in dom0 and do the steps above.

:slight_smile: