If Enter gives a shell you can try if and use journalctl to see if you can get any extra information
Unfortunately it freezes at the end so neither Enter nor Ctrl+D give me anything.
by the way, secure boot is off on my sys but I am not sure about CMS (CSM?) legac mode, is this what you were referring to?
Yes, CSM is the compatibility support module it’s the same as legacy mode, it switches UEFI mode on and off.
Well, a tiny bit of progress.
I believe I was stupidly booting UEFI at the boot menu, I guess “USB” is “legacy”.
So now, after selecting install or check media install i get the pretty Qubes screen with the little progress line across the bottom (which moves really slow) and then
… the same “entering emergency mode” and frozen sys with seemingly no ability to control+D or enter maintenance
So I havent gotten the Qubes loading screen (or whatever its called) before, at least not with IOMMU enabled. Not sure this is significant?
This was with the most recent ISO, would it be better to go back to the stable 4.1.1 installation ISO instead?
I don’t think it matters which ISO you use, but it’s hard to say without seeing the system log.
You can try removing all extension cards and hard drives, booting only using internal graphics. If you keep getting the same error, my guess would be that the motherboard is supported by qubes.
I’d just like to say a few things:
- Legacy most does not mean USB mode. Legacy mode means that the BIOS will look for instructions on the first 512 bytes of the boot disk for “what to do next”
- The Qubes OS ISO should be able to boot in Legacy and UEFI mode.
- There’s no hardware or firmware-related reason why Legacy mode should work over UEFI. People just prefer one over the other because of “personal preference” (I didn’t know how else to describe “I don’t trust Microsoft to boot my computer and be honest about it!”
) - These are the modules that failed to load, and I assure you that they’re not what’s causing this error:
https://docs.kernel.org/filesystems/cramfs.html
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/blockdev/floppy.html
It depends on the BIOS. There was a time when hardware manufacturers just wanted the BIOS to be as little as possible and only initialise everything and hand it over to the OS (it was cheaper that way). No fancy graphics, no sounds, no mouse cursor, not even a text editor, just a menu. These are the BIOSes that won’t give you any grief, because they’re straightforward. Coreboot is based on this model.
But nowadays, I mean, just look at how complex your BIOS screen is. Animations, full 256-bit colour, a mouse cursor, drop-down menus, images everywhere. That all has to fit on a SOIC chip…
It’s marketed for a specific purpose (gaming). And sometimes that purpose is determined by company marketing, and less by functionality and versatility.
I mean, look at how much digging you had to do to find IOMMU and AMD-V. Ten years ago they would be front and centre. Also, you’re lucky that they actually had options in the BIOS to begin with. Software/Firmware designers in recent years have taken a more “No, don’t bother making a menu option for that, The stupid user won’t know what it is, and will break their machine. Just leave it automatically off” approach to their menu options.
sigh, but this is the way the world is going… 
In fairness, it is a very nice motherboard.
Nicely done. It got most of it right 
Don’t do that. You don’t need to.
Your systemd reached the Basic System target, which means the initramfs is satisfied that your machine is sufficiently configured to hand over to a hard disk to continue the boot process.
You’re getting a timeout because the initramfs is shouting to the /LiveOS/squashfs.img on the Qubes ISO “Where the heck are you!!! You’re supposed to be on stage!!!”, but it can’t seem to find it.
Your udev took an unusually long time to load, which suggests that your block devices might be placed where the installer expects them to be.
Just a hunch…
They’re all here if you want to try them one by one, but honestly you shouldn’t have to…
I’m curious about how you created your installation media using Rufus. Did you change the “partition scheme” option that you can choose between “MBR”(BIOS or UEFI CSM) and “GPT”(UEFI none CSM). It’s usually easier to install and use to select GPT.
- How you create installation medium ?
- Disable csm and secure boot, we will proceed with uefi installation.
- Make sure IOMMU and SVM is enabled.
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I had gone with the defaults which apparently was not GPT but I tried again, redownloading an iso (stable 4.1.1), used a different flash usb that I had, using dd instead of rufus and tried booting up but ended up with more or less the same error (normally two modprobe errors about floppy and cramfs, this time just a modprobe floppy error - though from what @alzer89 said those errors are inconsequential anyway)
As for CSM, when i try to disable it i get an error that my display does not support UEFI?
Is that referring to my monitor or graphics card?
Your GPU.
It’s also making me facepalm. This is what I meant when I made the comment about gaming PCs and their rigidity.
Very rigid and inflexible proprietary drivers… 
This might be of use:
Good to know.
I was using my old ATI graphics card (which worked fine on my old system) as it has 3 ports, the spare monitor I have does not have hdmi/dp which is the ports that the mobo has, and for some reason the converter DVI->DP doesnt seem to work so I will try to borrow/hook up another, newer, monitor so can try the sys w/o the old ATI card
Are you using internal graphics or GPU?, if you have both options try switching to the other.
You can’t always use all combinations of Internal/GPU with UEFI on/off.
Just in case anyone is wondering, I have had a uncomfortably large project dropped in my lap (work) so dont really have the bandwidth to deal with this as the moment. I am considering using this board for a truenas server, managed to boot up trusnas without a problem, not ideal but will do. That still leaves me without a workstation. I have scoured the HCL and there really dont seem to be many newer (like 3 years or newer) mobos out there, esp mATX? I really wanted something that would support 128gb, dual m2, and is somewhat future resistant proc wise (ie can buy a relatively cheap proc now and do a fairly significant upgrade in say 5 years). My case will support a mATX mobo at most. I’ve had great success with supermicro and asrock … until now. SM doesnt make mATX i dont think? and I am not sure if there are perhaps other ASRock options? Intel maybe? I kinda wanted to go the AMD route but am totally fine with intel if it gives me a working system.
Can’t you get a small case that supports standard ATX, does it have to be micro-ATX?
The reason I am looking for a mATX mobo is because I already have a server case (10 3.5 bays) that the wont-work-with-qubes mATX board I have will fit in, but the case I got for my workstation will support a maximum size of mATX.
Otherwise yes, I’d totally do that.
I’m on a ASRock b550m-itx/ac motherboard. After enabling IOMMU I found that the installer or an existing install would fail to boot showing messages about nvme timeouts. What worked for me when turning on IOMMU was disabling SMT. Both installer and booting into an install works fine with IOMMU Enabled and SMT Disabled.
There are messages about the USB reaching the 127 device limit in the logs. So I’m not sure what the conflict is between IOMMU and SMT that causes that. Maybe another setting/configuration somewhere? Ideally SMT should be enabled (while IOMMU is enabled) performance wise.
Hope this helps.
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Maybe you can find this related.
Have you seen this thread? It sounds like the “How to install qubes on a motherboard that hates it” may be helpful.
Thanks All.
I pretty much gave up, my server mobo died so I just decided to use the AMD setup as a replacement server mobo (not quite what I wanted for my server setup but meh) and will get an intel board when I have the money (was thinking about the Z790?).
Thanks for all the help and suggestions!