Qubes on slow motion on new install

katiehill · January 8, 2021, 7:55pm

Hi,

The problem

I am installing Qubes Stable (4.0.3) on my new laptop.

During this install and after the install, I encounter:

“gliding windows”
mouse moving jerkily
.5 sec delay at each keystroke

Basically, it’s Qubes on slow motion.

Happy to upload two small videos to illustrate if useful. (Is there a preferred method/place?)

What I have tried so far

Use Tails

Tails runs normally on the laptop without slow motions.

Disable the Nvidia Graphic card

Since:

I wondered if my problem could be related to my graphic card and
Nvidia is well-known to cause troubles with Qubes and
I saw these lines from dom0 → sudo dmesg:

[ 5.897636] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: unknown chipset (166000a1)
[ 5.897643] nouveau: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -12

I added nouveau.modeset=0 rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau video=vesa:off at the end of line beginning with kernel=vmlinuz... in the file /bot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg, then rebooted.

It did not help the situation.

Download `kernel-latest`

Since:

my laptop is brand new
the documentation (Installing and updating software in dom0 | Qubes OS) says that kernel-latest may be useful for troubleshooting newer hardware,

I typed in dom0: sudo qubes-dom0-update kernel-latest and then rebooted.

It didn’t solve the problem.

Some questions

I have difficulties discerning which errors in the log files (journalctl, dmesg) are relevant and which are not.
Should I post any log file here? Which one(s) would help? Which part?

How can I go forward?
How to pinpoint the problem?
Where/what should I look for to start with?

Your help is very much appreciated!!
Thank you!

katiehill · January 12, 2021, 1:58am

Hi,

I did some additionnal tests.

What I tried so far (additions):

Installl Qubes 4.0.4-rc-1

I tried to install 4.0.4-rc-1 (UEFI mode again).

The installer showed the same “slow motion”, so I did not go further.

Funny (?) display rate

Q menu —> System Tools —> Display… shows a Refresh rate of 77 Hz.
Isn’t this an odd value?

Installation with Legacy instead of UEFI

I don’t know if it makes sense to try to install in Legacy when the install (kind of) worked with UEFI.

At this stage, I’m trying every option that I can think of to make Qubes work.

I get:

When I understood how to handle try again with the inst.text bootoption, I was able to go one step further:

"qubes encryption requested for luks device 
but no encryption key specified for this device"

(Figure removed since I am not able to post more than 1 media on this post)

Then I found @marmarek 's comment: “unlikely to be fixed in the near future […] but it’s still useful when using automated install”.

OK, no cheese down that hole, then.

Various error messages in journalctl

I tried to google error messages in dom0’s dmesg and journalctl without knowing if they are important or related to my problem.

Additional info

dom0 —> uname -r —> 4.19.155-1.pvops.qubes.x86_64 (after sudo qubes-dom0-update)

Hardware

MSI GL75 10SFR-602
BIOS Version: E17E7IMS.109
Intel Core i7-10870H, including:
- Intel UHD Graphics for 10th Gen Intel Processors, according to https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/208018/intel-core-i7-10870h-processor-16m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz.html
Wifi: Intel wifi 6 ax201
nVidia GeForce RTX 2070

Conclusion & Questions

Knowing that:

I’ve been banging my head on the wall without results for days now on this slow motion Qubes
Moreover, sys-net does not show wifi networks. At first sight, my Intel wifi 6 ax201 looks very much like @lofidevops's https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/intel-corporation-killer-wi-fi-6-ax1650i-is-not-killing-it/2148. Consequently, I am currently updating through my raspberry pi.
Thanks as well, @ludovic, for your precious inputs in https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/hcl-lenovo-thinkbook-15-iil-wip/2142/2
Moverover, i have suspend/resume problems as well. I hope https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/suspend-resume-troubleshooting/ might help if all the other problems were solved.

So, with those 3 problems, should I bring my new laptop back to my reseller and try to be reimbursed?

I had Qubes on my previous laptop and I can’t imagine working with another OS now. That means I would have to buy and try another laptop, not knowing if that one will work better!?

@unman, is it possible to pay for 1-2 hours of consultancy? I would love to be able to move forward and to finally learn what goes wrong.

Thank you all for your answers to that post, help is very much appreciated!

ludovic · January 12, 2021, 10:17pm

Hi @katiehill,

first I haven’t a solution, but some ideas…

Some tests could imply a Qubes OS failure on next boot or no more graphic display (tagged with [/!\]), so do it only if you accept the risk and understand what you do.

First level ideas (display frequency / display device)

This is the most weird part of your post, you should continue in this direction.

try to change this frequency (maybe possible, maybe not, from the same setting panel)
try to change the screen resolution
connect an external screen and deactivate the lapop screen display (from the same setting panel)

Second level ideas (driver / BIOS / graphic tuning)

are you sure your are using the nvidia card and not the intel one? (see lsmod, xorg logs)
check the BIOS settings in general
check the main GPU choice from BIOS settings
try to use only the intel card (deactivate the nvidia from the BIOS)
in the BIOS, change the RAM size used by the intel card [/!\]
try some tuning with xrandr
deactivate the fancy tweaks and/or composition settings (Q menu —> System Tools —> Window manager (Tweaks))
check xorg logs (/var/log/Xorg0.log)
window manager logs: ~/.xsession-errors
xorg setting tuning (/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d) [/!\]
you said you installed the kernel-latest, after the reboot did you check the current kernel version ? (should be 5.x, neither 4.19.x, default and list is in xen.cfg) [/!\]
use the basic and low performance framebuffer xorg driver [/!\]

Third level ideas (input devices)

I think it’s a display problem, but you can also check the input devices.

check the mouse and the keyboard with the xev software in a dom0 terminal (terminal display reactive with the mouse/keyboard actions).
plug an USB mouse and/or an USB keyboard
try some tuning with xset (mouse, dpms, s)

I hope that one of the ideas will help…

katiehill · January 17, 2021, 9:38am

Thank you so much for your answer, @ludovic!
I was completely in the dark and you helped me a lot!!

The first time I installed kernel-latest, I got a black screen and did not know it was possible to go further.

I re-tried and now it went through. I still have some minors trouble and I will maybe post again in the forum if I don’t find any solutions.

Thanks again, @ludovid!!

ludovic · January 17, 2021, 11:10pm