Autostart troubleshooting

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.