[Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

bin · 2025-07-22 06:54

Odd.

2 machines that are quite happy booting other UEFI distros - BIOS UEFI on and Secure Boot disabled or enabled - will not boot either version of alpha 9 in UEFI mode. If switched to Legacy only then they do boot fine.

ISOs md5sum OK, burning to USB with Gnome Disk Utility which I have used for hundreds and hundreds of ISO burns.

They both boot fine in UEFI mode on VMs so I am puzzled.

UPDATE:-

It's the same with Trixie install so it must be a debian thing....will need to check.

Last edited by bin (2025-07-22 07:21)

q4osteam · 2025-07-22 07:53

We will check it too.

bin · 2025-07-23 06:31

As an additional update, tried with EXTON https://distrowatch.com/12495 which is Trixie based and it boots fine.
Something to do with 'keys' ???? Bit out of my depth with this stuff.

q4osteam · 2025-07-23 08:50

If you have secure boot disabled, it should boot without keys authentication. So you don't need to add any. Additionally, Debian will boot without any problems out of the box on hardware with Secure Boot enabled, as it includes a Debian shim bootloader that is signed by Microsoft.

Although we are unable to reproduce it on our machines, the issue seems to be more widespread. We are getting error and fallback shimx64 messages when booting. We are investigating now.

bin · 2025-07-26 14:19

After a lot of head scratching I realised what was going on.
When you boot Q4OS installation media the first thing that appears is the grub screen with the default option highlighted.
Now on my machines when you boot in Legacy mode it generates 1 beep, in UEFI it does 2 quick beeps.
I was getting the beeps but then a dead blank screen.
I had tried just leaving it to see what happened, but nothing did.
Thinking that there may be something there but just not visible, this time I just hit enter and then a flat cursor appeared top left followed by Q40S live media booting as normal.
I know that the grub screen resolution is much lower in Legacy mode than UEFI, not sure if this is somehow involved.
Both machines are stock 1366x768 if that helps.
This one has Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4000 (IVB GT2).

Last edited by bin (2025-07-26 14:24)

bin · 2025-08-03 07:00

I also posted about this on the Debian forum and finally it is starting to show up as an issue there as well.

q4osteam · 2025-08-03 10:13

We can confirm, Debian's Trixie shimx64 loader has some quite serious issue. Hopefully it will be fixed by Debian devs.

bin · 2025-09-07 09:05

This turns out to have an interesting and twisted tale - but it is better explained here.
https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=163314

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1051832

Last edited by bin (2025-09-07 09:06)

q4osteam · 2025-09-07 10:14

@bin
Thanks for the info.

bin · 2025-09-08 08:27

Issue is resolved in Trixie 13.1

bin · 2025-09-15 07:02

UPDATE:-
Although the booting issue was resolved using a Trixie 13.1 net install iso, I found that when booting the new TDE r1 iso I was back at the blank screen needing 2 presses of return button to kick off the boot process - same as Trixie 13.0/Q4OS testing.

q4osteam · 2025-09-15 08:50

bin wrote:

I found that when booting the new TDE r1 iso ...

Install-cd or Live ? The new Q4OS 6.1 install-cd is based on Trixie 13.1 netinstall, so it should bear the same way. We will check that and post back.

bin · 2025-09-15 11:17

Live, just the standard q4os-6.1-x64-tde.r1.iso
I was a bit puzzled as expected it to work.....something to do with grub customisation?

q4osteam · 2025-09-15 11:20

bin wrote:

..something to do with grub customisation?

Most likely yes. But Q4OS live is based on Debian live, so we guess the Debian live has the same issue. Unfortunately we have no hardware to reproduce the issue so we only guess. It would be helpful, if you would check the Debian KDE live and Q4OS "install-cd" as well.

Last edited by q4osteam (2025-09-15 11:20)

bin · 2025-09-16 07:03

OK, so the only - but possibly significant - difference seems to be in the grub parameters.
The Debian Live iso 'boots' to black screen and hangs unless you hit return twice - as reported originally.
The same applies to the Q4OS live iso
The Debian net install iso contains vga=788 in the boot parameters and boots as normal
The Debian Live - and Q4OS live - do not contain this.

q4osteam · 2025-09-16 07:38

+1

Last edited by q4osteam (2025-09-16 09:56)

q4osteam · 2025-09-24 09:39

What we know so far:
Media that display Grub boot table properly:
- Debian-13.1 netinst

Failing:
- Debian-13.1 live
- Q4OS-6.1 live

We would need some more testing on hardware in question as we can't reproduce this issue.
- Does Q4OS-6.1 "install-cd" show the Grub boot table ?
- Does Q4OS-5.8 "live" show the Grub boot table ?

We will also provide a "testing" Q4OS-6 live cd, so we would appreciate, if you can test it on the hardware affected.
- As we understand they are 2 EFI computers ?
- Would you post a brief hardware specs please ?

bin · 2025-09-25 07:28

Thanks for the response. We have just moved house and things are a little upside down at the moment. I will follow up to provide the requested info - but it may be a few days.

q4osteam · 2025-09-25 09:07

Thanks This issue seems to be pretty momentous one, we are still working on that.

bin wrote:

We have just moved house and things are a little upside down ...

Good luck +1

bin · 2025-09-26 17:09

Thanks for your kind thoughts !

Hardware as requested - in both cases using 5.8 live

ACER E1-571
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire E1-571 v: V2.14
serial: <superuser required> Chassis: Insyde Corp. type: 10 v: 2.14
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Acer model: EA50_HC_CR v: Type2 - Board Version
serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Insyde v: 2.14 date: 02/19/2013
Battery:
ID-1: BAT1 charge: 6.1 Wh (100.0%) condition: 6.1/47.5 Wh (12.8%)
volts: 12.3 min: 10.8 model: PANASONIC Li_Ion_4000mA type: Li-ion
serial: <filter> status: charging
Memory:
RAM: total: 7.58 GiB used: 669.9 MiB (8.6%)
RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges
required.
CPU:
Info: dual core model: Intel Core i5-3230M bits: 64 type: MT MCP
smt: enabled arch: Ivy Bridge rev: 9 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB
L3: 3 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1198 high: 1200 min/max: 1200/3200 cores: 1: 1197
2: 1200 3: 1197 4: 1200 bogomips: 20753
Flags: avx ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-7 ports:
active: LVDS-1 empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1,VGA-1 bus-ID: 00:02.0
chip-ID: 8086:0166 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: Sunplus Innovation HD WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
bus-ID: 1-1.3:3 chip-ID: 1bcf:2c18 class-ID: 0e02
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: crocus gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 101 s-size: 343x193mm (13.50x7.60")
s-diag: 394mm (15.49")
Monitor-1: LVDS-1 model: AU Optronics 0x22ec res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 101
size: 344x193mm (13.54x7.6") diag: 394mm (15.5") modes: 1366x768
API: OpenGL v: 4.2 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4000 (IVB
GT2) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 7 driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:1e20 class-ID: 0403
API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-32-amd64 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active
Network:
Device-1: Broadcom NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: tg3 v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s
lanes: 1 port: N/A bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 14e4:16b5 class-ID: 0200
IF: enp2s0f0 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 [Rainbow Peak] driver: iwlwifi
v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:0091
class-ID: 0280
IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 295.78 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 PRO 256GB size: 238.47 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: USB 3.2Gen1 size: 57.3 GiB
type: N/A serial: <filter> rev: 1.00 scheme: MBR
Partition:
Message: No partition data found.
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 51.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A

LENOVO THINKPAD E530System:
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 627227G v: ThinkPad Edge E530
serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: LENOVO model: 627227G v: Win8 Pro DPK TPG
serial: <superuser required> UEFI: LENOVO v: H0ET94WW (2.54 )
date: 08/02/2013
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 47.2 Wh (96.7%) condition: 48.8/48.8 Wh (100.0%)
volts: 11.3 min: 11.1 model: SANYO 11 45N1043 type: Li-ion serial: <filter>
status: discharging
Memory:
RAM: total: 15.47 GiB used: 710.3 MiB (4.5%)
RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges
required.
CPU:
Info: dual core model: Intel Core i3-3110M bits: 64 type: MT MCP
smt: enabled arch: Ivy Bridge rev: 9 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB
L3: 3 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1200 min/max: 1200/2400 cores: 1: 1200 2: 1200 3: 1200
4: 1200 bogomips: 19155
Flags: avx ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics vendor: Lenovo driver: i915
v: kernel arch: Gen-7 ports: active: LVDS-1 empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1,VGA-1
bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0166 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: Ricoh Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
bus-ID: 2-1.6:3 chip-ID: 05ca:1823 class-ID: 0e02
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: crocus gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 101 s-size: 343x193mm (13.50x7.60")
s-diag: 394mm (15.49")
Monitor-1: LVDS-1 model: LG Display 0x033b res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 101
size: 344x194mm (13.54x7.64") diag: 395mm (15.5") modes: 1366x768
API: OpenGL v: 4.2 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4000 (IVB
GT2) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio vendor: Lenovo 7
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:1e20
class-ID: 0403
API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-32-amd64 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 status: active
Network:
Device-1: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie:
speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:0888 class-ID: 0280
IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
vendor: Lenovo RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie:
speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: 2000 bus-ID: 0c:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168
class-ID: 0200
IF: enp12s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel Centrino Bluetooth Wireless Transceiver type: USB
driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-1.3:3 chip-ID: 8087:07da class-ID: e001
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 2 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 2.1
lmp-v: 4.0 sub-v: fc00 hci-v: 4.0 rev: 1ebd
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 280.88 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: SanDisk model: SSD PLUS 240GB size: 223.57 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 04RL scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: USB 3.2Gen1 size: 57.3 GiB
type: N/A serial: <filter> rev: 1.00 scheme: MBR
Partition:
Message: No partition data found.
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 38.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 fan-2: 0

Both machines boot to Grub menu with q4os-5.8-x64-tde.r1.iso This does NOT have the vga=788 entry.

Both machines boot to Grub menu with q4os-6.1-x64-instcd.r1.iso This DOES contain the vga=788 entry.

Happy to test a modified live 6.1 as and when needed.

q4osteam · 2025-09-26 20:28

What we know::

Ok, Grub table shown:
- Debian-13.1 netinst (debian-13.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso) .. YES-vga=788
- Q4OS-6.1 inst-cd (q4os-6.1-x64-instcd.r1.iso) .. YES-vga=788
- Q4OS-5.8 live (q4os-5.8-x64-tde.r1.iso) .. NO-vga=788

Fail, Grub table not displayed:
- Debian-13.1 live (debian-live-13.1.0-amd64-kde.iso) .. NO-vga=788
- Q4OS-6.1 live (q4os-6.1-x64.r1.iso) .. NO-vga=788

Q4OS-6 live apparently inherits the issue from it's Debian live base. We will perform more investigation and try to compile some media for further testing. Thanks @bin

q4osteam · 2025-10-20 11:08

We have made some progress here. This bug seems to be one of these:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1110759
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1088356
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1110446

We have created a testing live media with a possible fix, download "q4os-6.1-x64-tde.r1.x-testing.iso" here https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/

@bin
Would you please try to boot the testing .iso above and post back the result ?

bin · 2025-10-20 17:36

Thanks for that team. Boots OK and brings up the grub screen as it used to with Bookworm and before.
Much appreciated - I guess a Plasma test would be a good idea as well it it's not too much trouble please, as that has the same problem.

q4osteam · 2025-10-20 18:33

Well, we will release stable Trinity and Plasma, both fixed soon. Thanks

q4osteam · 2025-10-21 11:33

Plasma testing .iso is also available https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/files/testing/ . We will make a stable release as soon as it passes QA. Thanks for reporting and valuable testing.

Q4OS Forum

#1 2025-07-22 06:54

[Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#2 2025-07-22 07:53

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#3 2025-07-23 06:31

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#4 2025-07-23 08:50

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#5 2025-07-26 14:19

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#6 2025-08-03 07:00

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#7 2025-08-03 10:13

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#8 2025-09-07 09:05

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#9 2025-09-07 10:14

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#10 2025-09-08 08:27

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#11 2025-09-15 07:02

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#12 2025-09-15 08:50

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#13 2025-09-15 11:17

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#14 2025-09-15 11:20

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#15 2025-09-16 07:03

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#16 2025-09-16 07:38

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#17 2025-09-24 09:39

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#18 2025-09-25 07:28

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#19 2025-09-25 09:07

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#20 2025-09-26 17:09

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#21 2025-09-26 20:28

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#22 2025-10-20 11:08

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#23 2025-10-20 17:36

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#24 2025-10-20 18:33

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

#25 2025-10-21 11:33

Re: [Closed] Unable to boot Q4OS alpha 9 on hardware in UEFI mode

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