On Thursday, September 6, 2018 at 9:03:48 PM UTC+2, Guy Frank wrote:
> I did a fully automatic disk partition on my last attempt to install Qubes 4.
> When I try to boot my new Qubes install, I get a 'no bootable device' error.
> I looked at the partitioning scheme using a live usb drive and it shows a
> /boot partition, with EFI and GRUB information and a large encrypted
> partition, which presumably holds / and swap. It may be relevant that the
> installation was on a 500GB SSD drive and that there is also a 2TB hard disk
> in the system. I used gparted to delete all partitions from both devices
> before installing Qubes. The 2TB device is entirely unallocated and using
> BIOS to turn off recognition of everything but the SSD drive has no effect.
> Also the system indicates it has UEFI firmware.
>
> I'm not very familiar w/ how the boot process works, but had thought there
> would need to be a GPT table or MBR on the disk, but automatic boot doesn't
> put one there. In previous attempts to install, I tried to create an ESP
> (GPT) partition, but the Qubes installer would not permit this (and doesn't
> have it as an option). In another attempt, I added a BIOSBOOT partition (for
> MBR table, I presume) of 1MB. Installation halts at post-installation (about
> half way through) and never completes.
>
> Any suggestions?
I'm one, but it may not be any good.
Try to enter BIOS and somehow select UEFI boot which should list "Qubes" as the
boot device. I don't think this needs any MBR(code) as long as the partitions
exist, like:
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 223.6 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: D72B9D42-215E-483B-82A3-28CA53959280
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1640447 1638400 800M EFI System
/dev/sda2 1640448 468860927 467220480 222.8G Linux filesystem
See none is marked as bootable (would be an "*")
the EFI System is a vfat partition:
$ lsblk|grep sda
sda
8:0 0 223.6G 0 disk
├─sda2
8:2 0 222.8G 0 part
└─sda1
8:1 0 800M 0 part /boot/efi
The point is, BIOS should be capable itself of reading your /dev/sda1 FAT
partition and boot from it(in UEFI mode) without needing to run any MBR
code(aka Legacy). Actually I just looked, my MBR starts with lots of zeroes
until the partitions are defined, but the very next sector starts with "EFI
PART" so maybe there's some kind of stamp that's required? I don't know, I'm
new to all this EFI thing.
In BIOS you may have two settings something like "Legacy" (needs MBR code and a
partition set active in order to succeed booting - but maybe Qubes Installer
didn't prepare for this if it detected you system supports UEFI? I'm guessing
here) and something like "UEFI". See if you can try to boot in UEFI mode.
That's my suggestion basically.
See also: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/
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