ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13

Has anyone tested the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 with Qubes OS 4.2.4 yet? I can’t find any compatibility reports (probably too new?). Given that Gen 12 had some issues with Qubes (e.g. here), I’d appreciate any feedback on:

  • installation experience
  • hardware compatibility (WiFi, graphics, suspend/resume)
  • required workarounds
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I don’t think anyone here tested it. Sorry :worried:

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The system fails to boot. The initial error message indicates that USB in dom0 is not restricted, at which point the boot process freezes. Bypassing USB initialization leads to a secondary hang at plymouth-quit-wait.service. Manual login is possible, but the system remains non-functional due to the lack of a graphical interface and network connectivity

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At the 39C3, the CCC’s chaos communication congress in Hamburg I had the chance to have a Qubes developer troubleshoot the issue. For a yet unknown reason, the graphics driver does not get copied onto the system during the installation, if you manually copy the driver from the install medium, you can make it work. However, the graphics driver seems to have minor issues (like black bars sometimes temporarily appearing in unexpected places or the yellow frame of the personal VM being displayed as black) and also onboard wifi will not work out of the box.
Here is what the Qubes developer (thanks again!) did while the install usb stick (/dev/sda) was attached:

login as user
$sudo -i
#mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/
#lsinitrd /mnt/images/pxeboot/initrd-latest.img |less
#mkdir firmware
#cd firmware
#lsinitrd --unpack /mnt/images/pxeboot/initrd-latest.img usr/lib/firmware/\\*
#find | grep lnl
#cp -ari usr/lib/firmware/xe /usr/lib/firmware/xe
#umount /mnt
#reboot
#dracut -f
#lsinitrd /boot/initramfs-6.17.9-1.qubes.fc41.x86_64.img |less
#reboot
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See also here: Drivers for Intel(R) Wi-Fi 7 BE201 320MHz on Thinkpad Carbon X1 Gen 13

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Oh, this could be really helpful. Perhaps a stupid question: how do you login as a user?

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Press e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F2, then a login prompt will appear, as long as you have already entered the disk encrpytion password previously. (You have to do this blind due to the missing graphics driver, just wait a bit when you see the “USB in dom0 is not restricted” message and then enter the disc password and hit enter)
Also it is very helpful to delete the “quiet” keyword in the grub config, therefore on the preboot menu hit “e” and then remove the “quiet” keyword and press F10.
And also, afterwards, for the initial qubes install setup script did never run, the Qubes developer triggerd it manually so that all the default VMs get created but as of right now I do not how to trigger that but this could be solvable with a quick forum search, hth

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Change Forum Account Username

Thanks for this. Removing the “quiet” made the boot process more transparent (ie more verbose). However, I still struggle to login. I entered the disk encryption password (I also tried a US-keyboard version just because) and then tried Ctrl-Alt-F2 and Ctlr-Alt-FN-F2. Still no luck.

As for the post-install script, try this: 4.3: No templates installed; "Templates Configuration" screen never appeared - #2 by DVM

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Sorry but you have to get past the disk encryption password somehow. Please assume the keyboard layout at the time to be US. So that means that not only your z and y keys might be switched, but also some of the special characters might be wrong. (e.g. see here: Google Image Result for https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0810/3669/files/usenglish-windows-keyboard-layout-keyshorts_1024x1024.png?3916)
Also note that if you do come past the disk encryption password, the keyboard layout will also be US when you hit CTRL-ALT-F2 and login with your user, so the same will hold true for your usernames password, enter your password as if you were operating a US layout keyboard.

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Thanks again for the reply. I even reduced the password for the encryption to a single letter and tried external keyboards - all to no avail. I guess there is no video documentation of what the QubesOS member did? :slight_smile:

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any news on it? still have new laptop unused

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Sadly I don’t have any news here. I wonder what person @malaclypse spoke to. Perhaps this person might have some important piece of info we missed.

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Maybe you could share a photo of your bootscreen when it stops booting?

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Will try to do so soon. This is a work machine and I have to get hold of it again.

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