Why is installer of R4.3.0 (Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso) is not bootable?

User Support
1

Brief summary

I am trying to boot installation flash drive of R4.3.0 (installer Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso).
I made a bootable usb with the recommended dd command:

sudo dd if=Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sda conv=fsync status=progress && sync

The flash drive has size of 8GB.

The problem is that is does not boot on a laptop. The same laptop that was booting from R4.2 boot USB drives. And the same laptop boots Kubuntu iso image copied in the same way with dd.

The drive is visible in the boot list, but selecting this flash drive does not boot anything, I get back to the list almost instantly.

Notes:

  • I checked that Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso is not corrupted.
  • I tried writing with dd twice, no difference.
  • I see the Qubes-R4.3.0 boot media in the list in BIOS, I see EFI directory on flash drive and other files.
2

If you see EFI directory then it’s in legacy bios boot mode. Did you allowed your machine to boot from legacy mbr devices?

1 Like
3

Did not get your statement.
Legacy boot - is boot starting from MBR (first sectors of the disk). While EFI directory on is the modern way of boot.

I want to boot with modern boot (from EFI directory). The laptop is not even supporting legacy MBR boot, I do not want to use it, nor it is used by Qubes OS.

4

I suggest to double-check the integrity of the written image as outlined here.

1 Like
5

Thousands of installs of others, a valid images but issues in your case.

Pick another drive. Keep it “un-fancy”. A simple USB stick might do it.
Try flashing it with Ventoy instead of dd.

Still no success - try booting that stick on another system.

2 Likes
6

It don’t work with Ventoy.
On MBR disks, there are EFI directory.
On GPT disks, there are EFI partition.

1 Like
7

OK. I solved it, it was my fault: the problem was that I used 8 GB flash drive, and R4.3.0 is the first version that does not fit in 8GB (I expected 7.6GiB to fit, but it does not).

The error message of dd is hard to notice due to terrible output design, I was falling for that before: no ERROR message, no color in colored terminal, no proper error message location of message (in the middle instead of the last line):

$ sudo dd conv=fsync status=progress of=/dev/sda if=Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso
7888337408 bytes (7.9 GB, 7.3 GiB) copied, 443 s, 18.4 MB/s 
dd: writing to '/dev/sda': No space left on device
15417345+0 records in
15417344+0 records out
7893680128 bytes (7.9 GB, 7.4 GiB) copied, 444.713 s, 18.4 MB/s

UPD: fixed: 8TB with 8GB.

8

I’m pretty sure 8TB flash drive can fit the Qubes 4.3 iso. 8 GB won’t fit :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

It’s dd. Those were the days…

Happy you solved it.

2 Likes
10

Yep, confused due to modern SSD sizes.