Autostart troubleshooting

The following instructions are valid for Qubes OS R4.0 legacy mode and Qubes OS R4.1 legacy and UEFI modes. For Qubes OS R4.0 in UEFI mode, there is no GRUB, so manual boot from another operating system is needed.

In several cases, there is a need to prevent autostart=True for qubes on boot. For example:

  • sys-usb was enabled, but the only keyboard is attached via USB, and the qubes.InputKeyboard service is disabled.
  • A PCI device assigned to an autostarting qube crashes the system (e.g., a GPU or RAID controller card).

To address this, there is a qubes.skip_autostart option for the kernel command line. You can use it at the grub boot menu.

grub1.png

Press the E key on the first prompt (or your custom prompt). Then, press the down arrow key multiple times to reach the line starting with module2.

grub2.png

Append qubes.skip_autostart to the end of this line (generally after the rhgb quiet options).

grub3.png

Press Ctrl+X to boot with the edited GRUB entry. The boot will proceed as usual from here, except that no qube will be autostarted.