QUBES stops when starting for the first time (no error message)

User Support Hardware Issues
1

Hello together

With the serious intention of saying goodbye to Windows completely and ‘slightly’ increasing my privacy level, I want to switch to Qubes.

Highly motivated, I immediately bought a new Yoga Pro 7i Gen 9 (32GB, Intel 155H, 14.5’ 3K (3072 x 1920), Intel ARC).

After a few attempts, I managed to install it via stick (version 4.2).

When I finally start the system, I get to the splash screen after decrypting the hard disc and Qubes gets stuck there.

As far as I can tell, there are no error messages - it simply starts loading the two services (ligthdm.service and plymouth-quit-wait.service).

Does anyone have any idea from this description what the issue might be and what I could look at next? I’m quite motivated to delve into this, but I’m looking for starting points.

Many thanks!

Error_installation
Error_installation834×635 182 KB

2

Do you have dGPU in your laptop or only Intel iGPU?
Did you connect external display to your laptop?
You can try to install Qubes OS with latest kernel, there is a separate option for this in installer GRUB menu.

3

Thanks @apparatus

No dGPU, just Intel iGPU. And yes, I’ve read that two GPUs can be a problem.

As for the kernel - as far as I know, I’m already running the latest kernel. I just downloaded the Qubes OS 10 days ago. Or do you see any indication from the shared image that I might not be running the latest kernel?

4

There is a separate GRUB menu entry to install Qubes OS using kernel-latest, did you use this entry?

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The “Install Qubes OS R4.2.1” entry doesn’t have latest kernel.

5

I can hardly believe it, but exactly THAT was the solution! Thank you very much @apparatus!

But now I’m curious (I want to learn):

  • Why is the very last kernel not standard in the current installation version and has to be selected additionally?
  • And was there a hint for this in the logs or is this just experience in the sense of “the kernel could be the problem”? :slight_smile:
6

Using older kernel is better for stability since it should be more tested and less buggy compared to the latest kernel. But latest kernel have support for newer hardware that may be missing in the stable kernel. So it’s better to use stable kernel if your hardware is supported by it and use latest kernel if the hardware support is missing/buggy in stable kernel.

I’ve assumed that since your CPU is rather new then its GPU drivers could be missing/buggy in the stable kernel.

1 Like
7

Thanks @apparatus for the explanation, that does indeed make sense! That probably won’t be the last question, there will be a few more :sweat_smile: