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Installation: Anaconda: Not asking for VNC because we don't have a network #7490

Open glenjennings opened 2 years ago

glenjennings commented 2 years ago

How to file a helpful issue

Qubes OS release

4.1.0

Brief summary

I do NOT have a computer/technical background and this is my first time trying to install any form of Linux OS. I'm just trying to install this OS on a remote dedicated server as it has the perfect threat model that I need for the server. I've tried my best to figure this out and I don't know what else to do and I am ready to give up because I'm mentally exhausted. I can't get past installation of the OS from ISO. Once the Installation process reaches the point when the Anaconda scripts start running it says

Starting installer, one moment... anaconda xx.xxx.xx for Qubes R4.0.1 started.

Steps to reproduce

1.) Downloaded fresh Qubes OS 4.1.0 ISO from https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/ 2.) Verified the source using GPG detached signature 3.) Logged in to my remote dedicated server viewer using .jnlp KVM IPMI access 4.) Attached ISO to KVM IPMI virtual media 5.) Turned on dedicated server and selected the boot option manager 6.) Selected the option that had my virtual CD ISO to boot from 7.) Installation begins successfully and log information starts to flow on the screen 8.) That stage completes and the log says closing Plymouth 9.) The screen clears and a green bar shows up on the bottom of the black screen and the aforementioned pops-up on the screen saying that there's no network. Then it goes to a black screen and I've tried leaving it overnight and have to ultimately restart the computer and try installation again.

Expected behavior

Qubes OS To install successfully

Actual behavior

Qubes OS doesn't install

System Configuration

CPU: Intel i7-7700(k) 4.2GHz Mobo: Supermicro X11SSH-F BIOS: Supermicro Version 2.7 (Most recent update) GPU: Integrated Processor Graphics Intel® HD Graphics 630 Memory: 64GB DDR4 RAM 2400MHz Storage: 4 - 500GB NVMe SSD (2 RAID0 Configured with a hardware Raid Controller) Network: 1GBps Ethernet

Attempts to Fix the Issue

Web pages that referenced this issue that I read through trying to fix this myself

https://www.reddit.com/r/Qubes/comments/ppctr3/cannot_install_not_asking_for_vnc_because_we_dont/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Qubes/comments/bfhrpn/installation_doesnt_actually_install_or_install/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Qubes/comments/bfjtlf/installer_stuck/ https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/not-asking-for-vnc-becouse-we-dont-have-a-network/3164 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=952801 https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/-5dFjugKzLY https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/installation-failing-on-new-pc-the-installation-cannot-continue/5259/6 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/qubes-installation-on-new-2-000-high-end-pc-takes-60-minutes-to-load/10917/8

And more...

glenjennings commented 2 years ago

Screenshot (133)

Just attempted installing again using the Troubleshooting verbose installation option. I haven't even had this issue before I dont think lol

andrewdavidwong commented 2 years ago

It doesn't sound like your use case is supported. Please see:

https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#can-i-install-qubes-in-a-virtual-machine-eg-on-vmware

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/installation-guide/#installation-summary

andrewdavidwong commented 2 years ago

Closing as "not an issue" (the reported behavior is not a bug, or the proposal is not suitable as an enhancement or task). If anyone believes this is a mistake, please leave a comment, and we'll be happy to take another look. Thank you.

marmarek commented 2 years ago

I'm just trying to install this OS on a remote dedicated server

It doesn't sound like a virtual machine.

Mobo: Supermicro X11SSH-F

@fepitre do you have experience with similar machines, especially the way IPMI works there?

glenjennings commented 2 years ago

It doesn't sound like your use case is supported. Please see:

https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#can-i-install-qubes-in-a-virtual-machine-eg-on-vmware

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/installation-guide/#installation-summary

Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to look into my issue.

Because you linked directly to #can-i-install-qubes-in-a-virtual-machine-eg-on-vmware it lead me to believe that when you reviewed my issue that you thought that I am trying to install Qubes OS onto a virtual machine. The dedicated server that I am trying to install Qubes OS onto is a bare metal server that I rent out of a data center. I included the hardware specs in my original post.

I didn't want to put to much information into the issue or accidentally combine multiple issues into one post. However, to add some additional background in case you might find it relevant, I will tell you more about what I did before this. Again, please forgive me for overlapping issues, but I don't know enough about how stuff works to know what is or isn't related/relevant.

After the first couple unsuccessful installations, I reached out to the host from which I rent my bare metal server and asked if they would install the OS for me because of the problems I was having. The service I subscribe to with them is an unmanaged server support tier so the assistance is very limited, but they did oblige me.

The host was able to semi-successfully install the OS onto the machine, but it had some problems. I connected to the machine using my web IPMI, and inside the OS I had zero of the default VMs, only the dom0 (e.g. no sys-net, sys-firewall, sys-usb, sys-whonix). Furthermore, when I would try to create a new VM there were zero templates to choose from (e.g. no Fedora, no Debian, no Whonix). I could create a VM as far as making the name of the VM, and using the settings to check the box that says I could have it provide the network access, but there was no base system template for me to choose from. So it was available as a VM and I could click start VM but it would just start and turn back off.

I worked really hard to find any way to get around the issue researching in the forums and Googling until I couldn't Google any more. I tried lots of different commands. I spent several hours scouring all the different types of commands I could use to try to create a VM or download templates from the repository. The commands "worked" as far as they attempted to do what they were supposed to do, but there were always errors.

Here are some of the errors I would receive:

Due to some helpful people in the forums, I eventually found my way to figuring out how to find where the templates would normally be installed in the packages.

System Tools > Packages > Search “Template” it shows four options with checkmarks next to all of them.

So the templates were there but I had no way of installing them (based on my limited knowledge and ability).

This led me to a comment that @marmarek made at https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/qubes-4-1-installation-failure/1847/

Did you changed template selection earlier during installation? If not, something went wrong at that stage, can you search for “qubes-template” in /var/log/anaconda and share logs that you find this way?

I did in fact go to that file path. When i went to Filesystem root, and I navigated to /var/log there was no folder named anaconda so filepath /var/log/anaconda did not exist for me. There is also not a document named anaconda in the log folder.

That is what led me to believe that maybe when my Host attempted to install the OS that maybe they did it incorrectly. So I had them install it with me and we went through the installation process step by step and it never asked us whether or not we wanted the default VMs to be installed that is pictured in the installation guide (though I know the screenshots there are 4.0). We followed the guide every step of the way. Multiple times.

That is what led me here. The "Not asking for VNC because we don't have a network" error message is what I believe, in my limited knowledge, causes the other problem I experienced and now I can't even get it to install at all to get back to the dom0-only environment because I think the Host had to do some finessing to get it to that point.

Forum Posts I created: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/fresh-install-no-templates-only-have-dom0-vm/11144 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/please-help-me-not-asking-for-vmc-because-we-dont-have-a-network/11169 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/xen-hypervisor-4-14-3-vs-4-14-3-config/11165

glenjennings commented 2 years ago

I truly, truly did try my best to try to problem-solve and investigate the problems I was having to the best of my abilities. I tried to research through all of the documentation, qubes forums, other forums like on Reddit, I even hopped into the Qubes Discord to try and see if anyone had any ideas there. I even tried to go and research and study in the main Salt website and documentation to see if there was anything else I could do. Like I said I don't have a computer science/technical background so if there was more I could do, the only reason it wasn't done is due to not having that kind of expertise or educational background. I tried my best though.

I love what you guys stand for here, and I really want to be able to use Qubes OS, it sounds amazing, and it sounds exactly like what I need in order to secure my bare metal dedicated server so I really hope to figure out a solution that will allow me to use it if there is one.

DemiMarie commented 2 years ago

@glenjennings Installing Qubes OS on a bare metal dedicated server should definitely work, so if it does not work, that is a bug.

andrewdavidwong commented 2 years ago

I'm just trying to install this OS on a remote dedicated server

It doesn't sound like a virtual machine.

I wasn't necessarily assuming it was a virtual machine. Rather, it sounded like it was either a virtual machine or required the installer to support some kind of network access (hence the two links).

This part, in particular, sounds like something virtualized:

3.) Logged in to my remote dedicated server viewer using .jnlp KVM IPMI access 4.) Attached ISO to KVM IPMI virtual media

But I freely admit that I know nothing about IPMI, so if you guys say it should work, then it should work.

So the templates were there but I had no way of installing them (based on my limited knowledge and ability).

You shouldn't have to try to manually install the default templates yourself. They should already be there. It sounds like something went terribly wrong during the installation. (I'm not suggesting that you selected an incorrect option or something. After all, there shouldn't be a user option for creating a broken installation and, as far as I know, there isn't.)

The "Not asking for VNC because we don't have a network" error message is what I believe, in my limited knowledge, causes the other problem I experienced and now I can't even get it to install at all to get back to the dom0-only environment because I think the Host had to do some finessing to get it to that point.

I thought that was normal, since (as my second link explains) the installer is intentionally offline.

DemiMarie commented 2 years ago

3.) Logged in to my remote dedicated server viewer using .jnlp KVM IPMI access 4.) Attached ISO to KVM IPMI virtual media

But I freely admit that I know nothing about IPMI, so if you guys say it should work, then it should work.

In this context, “KVM” means “Keyboard, Video, and Mouse”, not “Kernel-based Virtual Machine”.

tzwcfq commented 2 years ago

Maybe it's unrelated to the problem, and my problem was with GPUs but I have the same error with Qubes OS 4.1.0 ISO from https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/. When I try to install from it I'm getting this error:

X startup failed, aborting installation

I have 2 displays:

I have my integrated GPU as main source set in my motherboard BIOS. Qubes installation GRUB menu is displayed on integrated GPU but after I select Installation in GRUB then all output redirects on Nvidia and just black screen on integrated GPU. And in the end I'm getting the error above.

But with latest Qubes 4.1 ISO build with kernel-latest from https://qubes.notset.fr/iso/ I don't get this error and installation process goes on integrated GPU and everything works fine.

@glenjennings you can get latest installation image from https://qubes.notset.fr/iso/ and try it out.

glenjennings commented 2 years ago

Just as a follow-up, I am currently attempting to install Qubes 4.0.4 and so far it is successful and I have made it further than I did with Qubes 4.1. I made it to the actual installer, was able to select which default software I wanted, disk encryption password, user creation, etc. Now I am just waiting for the installation to complete, but this appears to be a success thus far. I don't know if that helps you guys narrow down where the issue might be, but hopefully it's helpful.

UPDATE: Well, I made it to about half-way through the installation of 4.0.4 and at around 300-400/1k packages that it tries to install it always gets stuck on something. One time it was the coreutils, one time it was whonix, etc and I let it sit for about 4-5 hours and it doesn't make any further progress so I have to stop it. Someone can correct me if I should just let it keep going, but that seemed like a good chunk of time for it to progress at least one step further. The circle spins around like it's working but it just doesn't do anything. I can still click to change my username and password and all that but the installation stalls. So something in the system itself isn't a fan of 4.0.4. I'll try it on my personal desktop at some point and see how that goes. As a side note, I was looking into getting a new laptop and found the Librem 14 from Purism and thought it was really cool that they have Qubes OS as the second and only alternative OS to choose from aside from their own Pure OS. I don't know if you guys knew already or not, but was neat so thought I would share.

deeplow commented 1 year ago
  • ID: fedora-34-xfce Function: qvm.template_installed Result: False Comment: Failed to install template fedora-34-xfce. Additional info follows: ERROR: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.TemplateSearch'

This problem looks like https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/7287 and it was caused by an outdated template, which did not include the new template search mechanism.