Unable to start NixOS installer

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1

Hello,

Yesterday I wanted to install NixOS on my Thinkpad p14s AMD Gen 5 edition, so downloaded the graphical installation iso, put it on my Ventoy stick and tried to boot.

This resulted in an error in Find NixOS closure, looked it up, appears to be a problem with Ventoy.

Retried but now on a stick flashed with dd, this didn’t even boot to grub, looked it up, maybe secure boot, disabled it, tried again, not working.

Asked an AI, it generated that maybe it was an issue with my BIOS firmware, flashed my BIOS, tried again, with ventoy and direct flash, didn’t work.

After a bit of digging someone on the forum pointed out maybe kexec would work, tried the kexec method with a live usb of kali (was what i had on hand), gave me a blank screen and that was it.

Then I looked more into the Find NixOS closure issue, seems like NixOS installer wants to find a label, so i tried booting from Ventoy again but have the same image on another USB which was dd’d plugged in aswell, this also failed.

I also tried older versions of the NixOS installe because i saw people talking about regressions of the installer, I don’t know the exact versions anymore but i tried minimals, graphicals from ages ago. I also tried graphical and minimals from the unstable channel, also didn’t work. I would attach logs, but I have no idea how to add logs from a system that either doesn’t boot at all or doesnt get past the initramfs.

It feels like I’ve tried every trick in the book, but it’s not working. Spent about 6 hours yesterday trying to debug it to no avail?

Would anyone be open to help me find and resolve the issue?

2

This is the supported method, and it really should just work. What exact command did you use to flash the drive?

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3

I used the following command:

dd if=Downloads/nixos-graphical-26.05.1947.a0374025a863-x86_64-linux.iso of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress conv=fdatasync

When I try to boot into it, it sends me back to the Device picker

4

Ok. So I had no problem booting into the graphical installer. Well, I did. I purchased a used Framework 13, and it had a password on the bios. Sorry, no fcuk you win 11. Pardon my french. And after resetting the motherboard, I had to adjust the bios to get it to boot from the usb thumbdrive.

If this is at all helpful, I suspect it is not the boot device or the nixos installer, but a bios setting.

By the way, I did this this to copy the iso to the thumbbrive: sudo cp nixos-graphical-26.05.1183.6b316287bae2-x86_64-linux.iso /dev/sdg followed by a sudo sync

Not that there is anything wrong with dd

5

I will note that I had to abandon the graphical installation early, as I like having lvm partitions and it was a little buggy there. What it was helpful for was getting wifi networking working, as nmtui is pretty sad, and the little framework 13 did not come with an ethernet module

6

can you post the exact error, and where the error appeared?

Hey cool, I’ve never heard of ventoy before. I’ll give this a go when I get home and see if it works for me.

I wouldn’t put much faith in AI answers to NixOS/hardware issues. The AI is mostly just guessing at what could be wrong.

I’m sorry you’re having such a bad experience. People here are usually very happy to help.

Can you post a bit more information about the exact error message you’re seeing, and at what stage of boot/install you’re seeing it?

7

In my experience, it almost invariably produces incorrect information

8

Ventoy does strange things and in the past it’s sometimes been a point of failure, even if used as intended. If it works then great but if in doubt use something else (like dd).

9

Hi,

Thanks for replying, I have retried and made some pictures of the errors, the graphical and minimal iso’s give me two different errors;

graphical:

IMG_1438
IMG_14381920×1440 486 KB

IMG_1437
IMG_14371920×1440 595 KB

And for the minimal installer

IMG_1440
IMG_14401920×1440 418 KB

IMG_1439
IMG_14391920×1440 576 KB

I didn’t put much faith in AI from the start, but after 6 hours of endless trial and error, I thought I’d give it a try haha

10

I disabled pretty much everything that I thought could interfere, from secure boot, memory protection & encryption, so I don’t think that could be it anymore, unless there is some other boot option from Lenovo I’m missing?

I also tried the copy command just to be sure, but that also didn’t work. It’s not reaching GRUB.

11

From looking at your photos, it seems like there might be some hardware incompatibility. Which is a bit odd, given that your cute thinkpad is pretty modern, and they are known to be linux friendly. If it is not reaching GRUB, I might try to tinker with the bios settings, to make sure your USB stick is in front of the line in the boot device order

My instinct might be to install something like Debian (or ugh, Ubuntu) on it to bifurcate the problem space. I think, but I don’t know, that it is possible to even use another linux to bootstrap into NixOS

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12

This error doesn’t make sense. The NixOS ISO would never boot without an init= parameter. This indicates an altered boot loader config, like you flashed it with Rufus not in dd mode or something along those lines.

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