Qubes OS 4.2 Signed Weekly Builds

fepitre · February 20, 2023, 11:02am

Hi,

New ISOs for 4.2 can be found through Issues · fepitre/updates-status-iso · GitHub. ISOs are built like @marmarek said, in a dedicated build machine like how the official ones are done. They can be downloaded at Index of /qubes/iso-testing/ and I’ve uploaded the dedicated signing key https://qubes.notset.fr/iso-testing/qubes-weekly-builds-signing-key.asc

Best regards,
Frédéric

GWeck · February 21, 2023, 12:05pm

Hi,

I tried to install today’s version, but with no success:

Normally, I am running legacy BIOS, but the ISO file is formatted with GPT, so the test machine has to be switched to UEFI because otherwise, it is not able to read the installation media.
The installer forces installation as a UEFI system; there is no way to specify legacy BIOS. Since the target disk already has an MBR filesystem, this may cause problems.
After part 1 of the installation, reboot crashes by GRUB going into rescue mode, complaining unknown file system, or, with a slightly different BIOS setup, the system complains that there is no operating system to load.

Is there any way to use the ISO on a legacy BIOS system?

marmarek · February 21, 2023, 12:43pm

The ISO has (among other things) GPT headers to boot as UEFI, but it has also MBR for legacy boot and ISO9660 for booting from DVD (both legacy and UEFI). If you boot installation via UEFI, it will also want installing target system as UEFI, but booting as legacy should work just fine.
Installing in legacy mode works just fine in openQA, but that’s mostly inside a KVM; most tests on physical machines there are using UEFI, and there is also one with Heads, but it has its own boot protocol (based on kexec), so also not a pure legacy boot.

What error specifically you get? Maybe if your BIOS sees both UEFI and legacy, it chooses UEFI (and pretend it didn’t see legacy)? There are usually several firmware settings for the boot mode, maybe you need not only enable legacy boot, but also set to not try UEFI?

GWeck · February 21, 2023, 4:42pm

When trying to boot from the ISO in legacy BIOS mode, the computer (an HP EliteBook 840 G4) does not see the installation USB stick. After converting the USB stick from GPT to MBR, the USB stick is recognized but booting leads to the message This is not a bootable disk ....

Here’s how my partitioning tool (under Windows) sees the USB-Stick:

For the target disk, a SAMSUNG Portable SSD T5, formatted as MBR), I tried all options offered by the BIOS of my machine: legacy BIOS alone, UEFI alone, and both activated, probably selecting UEFI automatically. Each variation leads to one of the errors mentioned above, i.e. GRUB rescue mode with unknown filesystem (with legacy BIOS selected) or BootDevice Not Found (with UEFI selected).

And this is the target disk after part 1 of the installation:

I hope this helps a bit.

GWeck · February 21, 2023, 5:16pm

Currently, I have to boot the installation USB stick via UEFI, and then the target selection step forces me to create the Qubes media as UEFI, too. This problem could possibly be solved if this step allowed to create a Qubes disk with legacy BIOS, even if the installer was started from a UEFI stick. Such a feature could also be useful to create a Qubes disk for some other machine.

Just to make sure: I used the ISO from Index of /qubes/iso/, published by @fepitre.

GWeck · February 22, 2023, 12:46pm

I tried now with the newest ISO (Qubes-4.2.202302220603-x86_64.iso - no change: if the system runs on legacy BIOS without UEFI, it does not see the installation media.

ChrisA · February 22, 2023, 12:55pm

Quick question:
Is there a reason, that the Qubes-4.2.202302220603-x86_64.log gives

$ curl http://mirror.notset.fr/qubes/iso/Qubes-4.2.202302220603-x86_64.log
<html>
<head><title>403 Forbidden</title></head>
<body>
<center><h1>403 Forbidden</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>
$

?

unman · February 22, 2023, 1:22pm

It’s a mistake - none of the 4.2 build log files are accessible. whereas
the 4.1 builds are.
Some mistake in the script I suspect - @fepitre ?

cristiioan · February 22, 2023, 1:51pm

What are the changes between 4.1 and 4.2?

fepitre · February 22, 2023, 2:52pm

Fixed. Sorry, some wrong permissions on my web server

ChrisA · February 22, 2023, 3:40pm

The main changes I’m looking forward to, are

fedora-37 for dom0
xen-4.17

– I’m still trying to get Qubes running on a “new” Lenovo T14 Gen 3 (Ryzen™ 5 PRO 6650U and AMD Radeon™ 660M GPU) … and I’ve seen some hints/comments, that this update might solve some of my issues.

marmarek · February 22, 2023, 4:39pm

Ok, I can reproduce the issue.

marmarek · February 22, 2023, 11:29pm

Created Installation image doesn't boot in legacy mode on some systems · Issue #8058 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub for this.

Cpotts · February 23, 2023, 4:51am

Has Xen been updated to 4-17 for these test builds? Is there a place I can keep track of when the changes are implemented?

augsch · February 23, 2023, 5:33am

Yes.

You can also see feptire’s isos’ build logs, such as this one for info about the iso’s components’ versions.

yanakieff · February 23, 2023, 7:41am

There was a similar 4.2 thread here with that question. Someone responded with a clip from an Qubes event, where they talk about different things including the ones new in 4.2.

You can try find it on youtube or here, whichever is easier for you.

cristiioan · February 23, 2023, 11:08am

Thanks for the info.

GWeck · February 23, 2023, 1:23pm

This unbootable installation is created if the target disk is an MBR disk containing already some partition and if this partition is kept in the target selection and configuration step during installation. This led me now to a configuration that could be booted into part 2 of the installation:

Change the partition type of the target disk from MBR to GPT.
Enable UEFI and disable legacy boot on the target system.
Install Qubes OS R4.2, selecting a UEFI configuration during target disk configuration.

After running part 2 of the installation, Qubes R4.2 is entered, but, so far, I was not able to boot into it again. The system again shows the BootDevice Not Found error.

But the following option may help to avoid some problems: If the installer allows creating a legacy BIOS installation of Qubes R4.2 if the selected target disk is already formatted as an MBR disk and not allowed to be erased, the resulting system should be bootable from legacy BIOS - even if the installation itself is running on a UEFI system.

What do you think of that possibility?