On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 4:59:00 PM UTC+1, bill...@gmail.com wrote: > I tried to send this question from the email address I used to subscribe to > the user group, but it's been about two hours and it hasn't shown up. I'm > assuming it's a Google thing, but I apologize if this question shows up twice. > > > So, here I go again. I'm a newbie with Qubes, but I love the idea. I tried > installing 3.2 some time ago, but had hardware difficulties, so I decided to > give 4.0 a try. > > I currently have a Dell Inspiron 5759 laptop, System BIOS 1.3.0, ePSA build > 4304.09 UEFI ROM, Intel i7-6500u cpu, secure boot disabled, Intel SGX > disasbled, fast boot set to "thorough" (though the same results occur with it > set ot "auto"). It is set up as dual boot with KDE Neon linux and Windows 10. > > I decided to give Qubes 4.0 rc3 a go. When I play with a new distro, I > usually start by installing it on an external hard drive, so I can make sure > it plays well with others without having to destroy my current working setup. > That's what I tried here. I attempted to install it on a Western Digital 2 > TB external portable drive. > > I downloaded the OS, created the installation flash drive, and chose the > external drive as the drive to install on. It seemed to go fine. No > warnings, no hangs. I installed using the default partitioning, with the > exception that I resized the / directory to make it a little smaller and > added a vfat /data partition. > > When I rebooted and hit F12 for the boot sequence options, sure enough > "Qubes" was one of them. Qubes *doesn't* show up in the boot options if it > gets to the grub boot list, that's still just neon and windows. But, if I use > the BIOS boot sequence, Qubes is an option. > > I chose "Qubes" as the option, and it dumped me into a BIOS screen that said > it was checking the safety of hardware, which it apparently passed, but then > came up and said it couldn't boot (though I did not write down the exact > error message, unfortunately). I rebooted again, did the boot sequence > thing, and it came up with a black screen with the options: > > "Press F1 to reboot" > "Press F2 to reboot into setup" > "Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics" > > And each button did exactly that. > > I then tried to boot on USB using legacy boot, but that came up with "no boot > device found." > > Booting into neon or windows still works fine. I can mount the external > drive and see all the normal linux stuff that a distro should have. I can > read and write to both the / and /data partitions on the drive with root > permissions. > > I tried changing usb ports, and that didn't do anything. I tried installing > with and without disk encryption, and that didn't change anything except that > I couldn't mount the encrypted / partition in neon. > > Is this some problem with having a /boot/efi on the external drive *and* a > /boot/efi on the internal drive? If so, why does it not work on an > installation but seems to work on the installation flash drive? > > Anybody have pointers to what I should try next? > > Thanks! > > billo
You may want to opt to use LegacyBIOS/Grub instead of UEFI/EFI to install. One reason out of multiple, is that if you ever need to move the external drive to another machine, do an UEFI update, or similar, you might encounter issues with having to re-build the EFI path to UEFI. This is on some setups easier, and on others downright annoying or buggy. It can get more troublesome if you have secureboot, but luckily it's not part of the solution anyway without a Qubes SecureBoot key, which has not been made yet. Either way, having it with Grub, makes it easier, and also more intuitive if you need to use an older kernel/xen after having issues with a kernel/xen update. You can also install Qubes on another machine, update it, and then bring your drive back to the machine you intend to use it for. Just be careful not to use bad hardware, keep it to hardware you trust. Also don't install with UEFI/EFI on another computer, unless you know your way around re-building EFI paths to UEFI, which can harm both computers in terms of existing EFI paths, as well as making new EFI path each time you move the drive around. Unfortunately I'm out of time now, I gotta go. But for now I hope these thoughts can help you in some way. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to qubes-users@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/e846c2d8-a717-4404-ab35-7b48a630ef8e%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
