Qubes stuck on loading screen (sys-usb failure?)

[aquaaa888]

Qubes OS release

Qubes OS 4.2

Brief summary

After the latest dom0 + fedora-41-xfce update the system is not starting (stucks on loading screen).

QubesOS version: R4.2.4 (Linux dom0 6.12.18-1.qubes.fc37.x86_64)

The boot process stop after the following:

Starting [email protected] 
Starting [email protected]
Starting [email protected]
Starting [email protected]

I managed to boot with qubes.skip_autostart option and tried to start sys-usb qube manually. After that the 'Qube sys-usb is starting' appeared (seems like the qube fails to start) and both keyboard and mouse stoped working.

The sys-usb journalctl has the following error, which allegedly prevents the qube from booting: at-spi2-registryd[1145]: X connection to :0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown)

Expected behavior

Qubes boots properly

Actual behavior

Qubes stucks at loading screen

Additional information

Hardware:

• External USB keyboard
• External USB mouse

/var/log/qubes/qrexec.sys-usb.log is empty /var/log/qubes/guid.sys-usb.log:

at-spi2-registryd[1145]: X connection to :0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown)

[Atrate]

Have you tried increasing the RAM allocated to sys-usb? X errors are often caused by OOM conditions.

[aquaaa888]

@Atrate I have tried increasing RAM from 400mb to 1000mb, but the problem persists.

[Mr-C1ever]

I've had the same you're facing with sys-usb not launching and freezing during the LUKS decryption process. I experienced a similar problem where the progress bar would load to about 75%, then stop, causing my USB devices to disconnect. After some troubleshooting, I found a fix and two workarounds that may help you.

Workarounds

1. Kernel Version Adjustment:

   • I was able to bypass the issue by setting the kernel version to 6.6.77-1 in the GRUB menu. However, this method was somewhat inconsistent and tedious, as I had to set it for each boot.

2. GRUB Boot Menu Modification:

   • Another workaround involved appending qubes.skip_autostart to the GRUB boot menu for Qubes. This allowed me to log in successfully without issues with my USB devices. However, if I tried to launch sys-usb, my entire system would freeze upon seeing the "qube sys-usb is starting" notification.

Fix

To resolve the issue, I followed these steps:

1. Launch Qubes with qubes.skip_autostart appended to the GRUB boot menu.

2. Modify sys-usb Settings:

   • Open the sys-usb settings and navigate to the 'Devices' section.
   • Remove all USB controllers attached to sys-usb.

3. Remove broken USB Controllers:

   • Use the command lspci | grep -i usb in the dom0 terminal to list all available USB controllers.
   • Attach a USB controller to sys-usb and attempt to launch sys-usb.
   • If sys-usb fails to launch, crashes, or freezes, that USB controller is likely causing the issue - remove it. Repeat this process for all USB controllers.