Qubes OS is not showing in the BIOS menu after unplugging and plugging the SSD again

cabuki · October 11, 2023, 6:53pm

And how do I boot it into UEFI mode? I just launched the installation media normally

apparatus · October 11, 2023, 7:09pm

You can disable Legacy BIOS or CSM support in BIOS and then only UEFI will be used.
Or just try different boot entry from the one that you tried before.

cabuki · October 11, 2023, 7:11pm

I just did that, its not in UEFI mode but still I dont know how to proceed. When I type fdisk -l it shows this:

How to proceed?

apparatus · October 11, 2023, 7:14pm

You need to run this command instead:

efibootmgr -v -c -u -L QubesOS -l /EFI/qubes/grubx64.efi -d /dev/sda -p 1

cabuki · October 11, 2023, 7:30pm

Thank you very much, it worked!
Do you know why the Qubes option disappears from the boot menu if the ssd is unplugged? And if there is a way to prevent it in the future?

apparatus · October 11, 2023, 7:37pm

Check this issue:

github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues

Document UEFI drive removal behavior and workarounds (if drive is unplugged, UEFI removes associated boot entries)

opened 09:26AM - 02 Jun 22 UTC

mehrexe

T: enhancement C: doc P: default

[How to file a helpful issue](https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/issue-tracking/) #…## Qubes OS release Latest as of posting, 4.1.0 ### Brief summary I manually unplugged every drive on my computer except for the target drive for the installation, which was all free space unpartitioned. Installer ran typically, chose automatic for the installation type. Booted into the OS' configuration and then the full OS. GRUB is verified to have worked because I managed to see it when initially booting for configuration and because of a later restart due to a display artificating and then system lockup problem I had that I attribute to Nvidia. After using another drive and then unplugging it, and plugging the Qubes drive back, there was no detectable boot source. I booted a live OS and found that the partition structure was intact but didn't investigate further and reinstalled Qubes. I then got the idea to see if this issue happened if I BIOS disabled drives instead of unplugging them. I disabled my Qubes drive and enabled another, and booted into it fine. I then disabled my other drive and reenabled the Qubes drive and the same issue happened again where my system does not see any boot entries. The system does see the drive, and switching on CSM and legacy boot I can boot from the drive but get an error screen saying to boot from proper media. This second time, I _kind of_ fixed it but I must do these steps every time I remove the drive or disable it in BIOS. I lose the option to boot without the Xen hypervisor and the boot hiccups. I essentially have to boot my install media, run Anaconda rescue and: 1. Mount the bootloader partition 2. Copy the contents of /mnt/EFI/qubes/ to /mnt/EFI/BOOT/ 3. Rename grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi 4. Rename grub.cfg to bootx64.cfg 5. efibootmgr -v -c -u -L Qubes2 -l /EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi -d /dev/sda -p 1 ### Steps to reproduce I believe the best way to reproduce this issue is to do a fresh install of Qubes on hardware similar to mine: Asus Prime Z-390-A Motherboard Intel i7-9700K CPU 16GB DDR4 RAM 1TB HDD Most notably, this motherboard. I will be filing a compatibility report soon, but I believe this motherboard may have something to do with how it reads the GRUB bootloader as it's configured for Qubes. Further, these are the only non-stock BIOS settings: - Disabling the Intel LAN Controller (it causes a PCI reset error and ends the last step of the configuration, doesn't matter since I don't use it, and I believe the fact that it's unplugged is the reason this issue happens) - Enabling Virtualization - Enabling Vt-d - Disabling all other drives ### Expected behavior The GRUB bootloader is supposed to appear after the BIOS initializes regardless of whether the drive was previously unplugged from the system or not (safely of course). ### Actual behavior Please read above. After unplugging the drive or disabling it in BIOS, the entry for GRUB is missing.

There’s info about this problem and a way to prevent this in the future.

Qoobsnoob · November 19, 2023, 5:34pm

What should i put for ‘-p’ and ‘-d’ here

Edit: some context here - im ramdonly unable to boot after using qubes for about a month.

Ive tried rescue mode but option 1 says “you dont have any linux partitions”

Some other information: I multi-boot qubes, and 2 windows OS. Using lenovo legion 5

apparatus · November 19, 2023, 6:01pm

efibootmgr -v -c -u -L QubesOS -l /EFI/qubes/grubx64.efi -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 1

Qoobsnoob · November 19, 2023, 8:27pm

Thank you for the timely response!

I tried this but im still having issues booting qubes

Where do i go from here?

apparatus · November 20, 2023, 2:08am

So do you still miss the Qubes OS boot menu entry in your BIOS?
Or you have it but it’s just fails to boot?
If it fails to boot then how exactly does it fail?

Qoobsnoob · November 20, 2023, 2:24am

Its from this thread. QubesOS stuck at boot - #14 by apparatus

I tried to boot from qubes liveusb.

Im on this thread trying other solutions but im not techie enough to know what im doing lol

Ive tried rescue mode too but its tellling me theres no linux partitions.

Trying to boot normally gives me this result after entering LUKS password

apparatus · November 20, 2023, 2:34am

You need to check the log to see why did it fail.

Qoobsnoob · November 20, 2023, 3:02am

I see. I tried the solutions but i just couldnt get it to work. It wouldnt detect my external usb so i couldnt mount it. I think ill just re install qubes. How can i stop this from happening again?

apparatus · November 20, 2023, 3:12am

You can copy the file to /dev/nvme0n1p1 and then boot from another system and get it from there.

Without logs I don’t know what happened.

Qoobsnoob · November 20, 2023, 3:24am

I can boot any linux based OS? I have other non linux OS but im unable to viee the contents?

Also, how would i view them on a linux os if its encrypted?

apparatus · November 20, 2023, 3:40am

If you copied the rdsosreport.txt to the /dev/nvme0n1p1 partition which is EFI System partition, you can access this file in any OS. It has a FAT filesystem so even Windows can see it.

Qoobsnoob · November 20, 2023, 4:20pm

Ive tried viewing it on win 10 but its seems it a rather complicated process to do this since it wont give me permission to view contents of the folder. I have spent some time on forums seeing how to get access but it seems rather complicated and i cant afford to lose my daily driver OS.

Why couldnt my qubes os detect any of my usbs?

Im thinking of giving up on this tbh

apparatus · November 20, 2023, 4:29pm

Then boot in Qubes OS installer shell and copy this file from your EFI System partition to your USB.

Qoobsnoob · November 20, 2023, 7:08pm

Shell doesnt detect any of my usbs. Ive tried formating to NTFS, exfat etc.

apparatus · November 20, 2023, 9:14pm

It’s not detecting the USBs or you can’t mount them?
Use FAT32 to be able to mount it in Linux and Windows. NTFS and exfat require additional software in linux to work.