Introducing Bluefin's New Installation Experience

[neko]

WOAH! I’m not Jorge! But I’m in the announcements category anyway!

I’m Jaiden from Fyra Labs, you may already be familiar with me, or at least what my team does. If not, we build awesome FOSS software like Ultramarine Linux and Terra.

But you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here, on the Universal Blue discourse.

Well, enough beating around the bush, here’s the big news:

We’re proud to announce Bluefin’s new installation experience!

Bluefin’s main goal is to build a seamless experience, from start to finish. As you may have noticed; the seamless experience didn’t always start until after installation, but fear not! We’re fixing that today!

Readymade is Fyra’s next generation installer, designed for modern operating systems and devices. Readymade simply walks you through a bit of configuration, and quickly installs the OS to your disk.

We’re excited to see what you think of Readymade, this is its first production outing, so make sure you tell us all the gorey details.

Thank you to the Universal Blue contributors, and our community for everything they’ve done to make this possible. Now go install Bluefin and tell us about how it went!

P.S. If you wanna contribute, join our community.

Instructions for testing Bluefin: Call for Testing: New Bluefin ISOs!

[phreed]

I have an updated framework 13 that is not critical (for me).
I will try it out on that.
I will let you know how it goes.
Do you have a link to the process?

[neko]

@phreed

Do you have a link to the process?

Right here!

Call for Testing: New Bluefin ISOs!

Alright everyone, thanks to the folks at Fyra Labs we are now pretty close to fixing one of the worst parts of our experience, installation! If you’ve heard of Ultramarine Linux then this is made by the same people. So basically a sister project in this Fedoraverse. Readymade (don’t forget to star the repo!) will be the installer that we will be using for the forseeable future. Rationale We purposely didn’t want to make an installer so when we found out that Fyra was working on a bootc back en…

[red11]

I tried Blufin ISO inside VirtualBox 7.1.8 on Windows 11 host:

1. First option language selection it looks have no effect, it is always English only. Also I see there is no separate selection for keyboard. For example in other Linux distros I can select “English” language and German keyboard.

2. When selecting disk encyption and typed in password it looks like English/US keyboard is selected.

3. Links are pointing to ultramarine linux.

4. When Install button is finaly clicked I see “Installing base system…” which is fine. But there is no indication how far installation has progressed or how much time it still needs - You know like on Windows “Less then a minute” that takes 10 minutes, but just better. Maybe like 5%, 10%, 15%… and some time estimate like 10 min remaining. Now I can’t tell if installation is still ongoing or has frozen. Maybe for start on Install button just write something like: “Installation will take xxxxxx min on modern hardware. Please wait.”

5. After like 10 min I get installer crash.

Crash details

I copied text from the crash windows:

0: e[91mReadymade subprocess failede[0m

Location:
e[35msrc/backend/install.rse[0m:e[35m190e[0m

e[96mNotee[0m: exit status: 1
e[96mNotee[0m: Stdout:
Setting env var NO_COLOR to 1
Setting env var READYMADE_LOG to info
2025-04-22T07:29:27.970966Z INFO readymade: Readymade Installer 0.12.2
at src/main.rs:352

2025-04-22T07:29:27.971351Z INFO readymade: Logging to journald
at src/main.rs:356

2025-04-22T07:29:27.971467Z INFO readymade: Logging to /tmp/readymade-logssuaXUI/readymade.log
at src/main.rs:357

2025-04-22T07:29:27.971693Z INFO readymade: Running in non-interactive mode
at src/main.rs:245

2025-04-22T07:29:27.973753Z INFO readymade::backend::install: Layering repart templates
at src/backend/install.rs:234
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “VBOX HARDDISK (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 15.0 GiB (16106127360 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

2025-04-22T07:29:27.974457Z INFO readymade::util::fs: Copying directory using internal implementation, from: “/usr/share/readymade/repart-cfgs/bootcwholedisk”, to: “/run/readymade-install”
at src/util/fs.rs:150
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “VBOX HARDDISK (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 15.0 GiB (16106127360 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

2025-04-22T07:29:27.984606Z INFO readymade::backend::install: Using /run/rootfsbase as copy source, as it exists presumably due to raw rootfs in dracut
at src/backend/install.rs:632
in readymade::backend::install::systemd_repart with blockdev: “/dev/sda”, cfgdir: “/run/readymade-install”, use_keyfile: true, is_bootc: true
in readymade::backend::install::stage-mkpart
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “VBOX HARDDISK (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 15.0 GiB (16106127360 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

2025-04-22T07:29:46.727276Z INFO readymade::backend::install: running bootc install to-filesystem, imgref: “containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”
at src/backend/install.rs:422
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “VBOX HARDDISK (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 15.0 GiB (16106127360 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

Installing image: ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable
Initializing ostree layout
layers already present: 0; layers needed: 71 (7.7 GB)
Deploying container image…done (3 minutes)
Running bootupctl to install bootloader

bootupctl backend install --write-uuid --update-firmware --auto --device /dev/sda /tmp/.tmp3kbL6o

e[96mNotee[0m: Stderr:
/run/readymade-luks.key has 0644 mode that is too permissive, please adjust the ownership and access mode.
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:2: Too many arguments in MountPoint=, ignoring: /:subvol=/,compress=zstd:1
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:3: Too many arguments in MountPoint=, ignoring: /home:subvol=/home,compress=zstd:1
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:6: Unknown key ‘CompressionLevel’ in section [Partition], ignoring.
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:8: Unknown key ‘Compression’ in section [Partition], ignoring.
Applying changes to /dev/sda.
Wiped block device.
Storage does not support discard, not discarding entire block device data.
Successfully wiped file system signatures from future partition 0.
Successfully wiped file system signatures from future partition 1.
Successfully wiped file system signatures from future partition 2.
Formatting future partition 0.
mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
/dev/loop1 successfully formatted as vfat (label “EFI-SYSTEM”, uuid dcd99fe3)
Successfully formatted future partition 0.
Syncing future partition 0 contents to disk.
Formatting future partition 1.
mke2fs 1.47.1 (20-May-2024)
Creating filesystem with 262144 4k blocks and 65536 inodes
Filesystem UUID: f6eeb5f3-c9c6-4c04-b3b2-839d1265bccb
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376

Allocating group tables: 0/8 done
Writing inode tables: 0/8 done
Creating journal (8192 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: 0/8 done

/dev/loop1 successfully formatted as ext4 (label “xbootldr”, uuid f6eeb5f3-c9c6-4c04-b3b2-839d1265bccb)
Successfully formatted future partition 1.
Syncing future partition 1 contents to disk.
Encrypting future partition 2…
Successfully encrypted future partition 2.
Formatting future partition 2.
btrfs-progs v6.12
See https://btrfs.readthedocs.io for more information.

Performing full device TRIM /dev/mapper/luks-repart-95ee29e11535b16f (13.48GiB) …
NOTE: several default settings have changed in version 5.15, please make sure
this does not affect your deployments:
- DUP for metadata (-m dup)
- enabled no-holes (-O no-holes)
- enabled free-space-tree (-R free-space-tree)

Label: root-x86-64
UUID: 3efa1fc9-5aa2-45f3-a133-7ab86769bf3d
Node size: 16384
Sector size: 4096(CPU page size: 4096)
Filesystem size: 13.48GiB
Block group profiles:
Data: single 8.00MiB
Metadata: DUP 256.00MiB
System: DUP 8.00MiB
SSD detected: no
Zoned device: no
Features: extref, skinny-metadata, no-holes, free-space-tree
Checksum: crc32c
Number of devices: 1
Devices:
ID SIZE PATH
1 13.48GiB /dev/mapper/luks-repart-95ee29e11535b16f

/dev/mapper/luks-repart-95ee29e11535b16f successfully formatted as btrfs (label “root-x86-64”, uuid 3efa1fc9-5aa2-45f3-a133-7ab86769bf3d)
Successfully formatted future partition 2.
Syncing future partition 2 contents to disk.
Adding new partition 0 to partition table.
Adding new partition 1 to partition table.
Adding new partition 2 to partition table.
Writing new partition table.
Telling kernel to reread partition table.
All done.

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:10.015: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:10.079: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:10.194: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.784: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.786: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.786: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.885: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.895: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.895: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.909: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.954: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed

(bootc:4241): GLib-CRITICAL **: 07:44:11.985: g_atomic_ref_count_dec: assertion ‘old_value > 0’ failed
Installing for i386-pc platform.
/usr/sbin/grub2-install: warning: ../grub-core/partmap/gpt.c:194:this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won’t be possible.
/usr/sbin/grub2-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub2-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
error: boot data installation failed: installing component BIOS: Failed to run “/usr/sbin/grub2-install” “–target” “i386-pc” “–boot-directory” “/tmp/.tmp3kbL6o/boot” “–modules” “mdraid1x part_gpt” “/dev/sda”
ERROR Installing to filesystem: Installing bootloader: Task Running bootupctl to install bootloader failed: ExitStatus(unix_wait_status(256))
Error:
0: bootc install to-filesystem failed

Location:
src/backend/install.rs:454

Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it.
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets.
Warning: SpanTrace capture is Unsupported.
Ensure that you’ve setup a tracing-error ErrorLayer and the semver versions are compatible

Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it.
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets.

[red11]

Now I have baked the Blufin ISO to USB key and plug it into my desktop PC.

1. Turned on PC and image booted from USB key. First issue menu is displayed far bottom-right and is cut off the screen. Never seen this before, on other Linux distros GRUB menu is always centered on middle of the screen.
   

   

2. From top panel I have selected Settings and Display is the following:
   

   

3. The same issues as in my previous post (language selection has no effect and no separate keyboard selection - English/US keyboard only).

4. Disk selection displays:
   

   

I have two disks in this machine HDD (sda on image and currently Ubuntu is installed on it) and SSD (sdb on image). I don’t know what is sdd it has 0 bytes. Also strange sdc is displayed, this is my USB key I am installing Blufin from and also strange sr0 is displayed, this is my DVD player. I don’t know, probably first two options should be only displayed.

5. I selected first disk I just want to override my Ubuntu installation (just for testing on desktop)

Like I understand the only thing I can do is just select one single disk (no partition nothing else), just one disk and whole disk is cleansed and image is flushed on it.

7. I clicked on Install button.

8. Then it took like 10 minutes or so and after that installation was successful. I was requested to reboot. I clicked on Reboot. Interesting there is no warning to remove USB key from computer.

9. I removed USB key and after reboot I get the following again at the bottom-right corner instead on the middle of the screen, so some text is cut out again.
   

   

But it looks like installation is broken…

10. I have hard reset the machine to shut it down and power it on and the same grub menu as in previous step.

Interesting…

[inffy]

Quickly tested (stable release) on a VM.

Went pretty much withouth a hitch (although I have my VMs on UEFI mode, so no BIOS shanenigans).

[neko]

@red11

I tried Blufin ISO inside VirtualBox 7.1.8 on Windows 11 host:

1. First option language selection it looks have no effect, it is always English only. Also I see there is no separate selection for keyboard. For example in other Linux distros I can select “English” language and German keyboard.

2. When selecting disk encyption and typed in password it looks like English/US keyboard is selected.

[/details]

We need help with translations!

[red11]

For desktop… I have now downloaded Gparted and deleted all of the partitions from both disk (HDD and SSD), so both disks are now completely empty (No trace of Ubuntu anymore). Did another test:

1. Plugin an USB drive with Blufin installation.
2. Just the same as in my last post and Install button.
3. After few seconds I got crash:

Crash details

I have copied crash details texts bellow:

0: e[91mReadymade subprocess failede[0m

Location:
e[35msrc/backend/install.rse[0m:e[35m190e[0m

e[96mNotee[0m: exit status: 1
e[96mNotee[0m: Stdout:
Setting env var NO_COLOR to 1
Setting env var READYMADE_LOG to info
2025-04-22T17:03:24.549067Z INFO readymade: Readymade Installer 0.12.2
at src/main.rs:352

2025-04-22T17:03:24.549108Z INFO readymade: Logging to journald
at src/main.rs:356

2025-04-22T17:03:24.549117Z INFO readymade: Logging to /tmp/readymade-logsKtYpto/readymade.log
at src/main.rs:357

2025-04-22T17:03:24.549125Z INFO readymade: Running in non-interactive mode
at src/main.rs:245

2025-04-22T17:03:24.549309Z INFO readymade::backend::install: Layering repart templates
at src/backend/install.rs:234
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “WDC WD10EZEX-00W (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 931.5 GiB (1000190509056 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

2025-04-22T17:03:24.549345Z INFO readymade::util::fs: Copying directory using internal implementation, from: “/usr/share/readymade/repart-cfgs/bootcwholedisk”, to: “/run/readymade-install”
at src/util/fs.rs:150
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “WDC WD10EZEX-00W (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 931.5 GiB (1000190509056 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

2025-04-22T17:03:24.550562Z INFO readymade::backend::install: Using /run/rootfsbase as copy source, as it exists presumably due to raw rootfs in dracut
at src/backend/install.rs:632
in readymade::backend::install::systemd_repart with blockdev: “/dev/sda”, cfgdir: “/run/readymade-install”, use_keyfile: true, is_bootc: true
in readymade::backend::install::stage-mkpart
in readymade::backend::install::install with self: InstallationState { langlocale: Some(“en_US.UTF-8”), destination_disk: Some(DiskInit { disk_name: “WDC WD10EZEX-00W (sda)”, os_name: “Unknown OS”, devpath: “/dev/sda”, size: 931.5 GiB (1000190509056 bytes) }), installation_type: Some(WholeDisk), mounttags: None, postinstall: [Script(Script)], encrypt: true, tpm: false, encryption_key: Some(“password”), distro_name: “Bluefin”, bootc_imgref: Some(“containers-storage:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable”), bootc_target_imgref: None, bootc_enforce_sigpolicy: true, bootc_kargs: None }

e[96mNotee[0m: Stderr:
/run/readymade-luks.key has 0644 mode that is too permissive, please adjust the ownership and access mode.
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:5: Unknown key ‘CompressionLevel’ in section [Partition], ignoring.
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:6: Unknown key ‘Compression’ in section [Partition], ignoring.
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:7: Too many arguments in MountPoint=, ignoring: /:subvol=/,compress=zstd:1
/run/readymade-install/50-root.conf:8: Too many arguments in MountPoint=, ignoring: /home:subvol=/home,compress=zstd:1
Applying changes to /dev/sda.
Wiped block device.
Storage does not support discard, not discarding entire block device data.
Successfully wiped file system signatures from future partition 0.
Successfully wiped file system signatures from future partition 1.
Successfully wiped file system signatures from future partition 2.
Formatting future partition 0.
mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
/dev/loop1 successfully formatted as vfat (label “EFI-SYSTEM”, uuid 2a7d7a87)
Successfully formatted future partition 0.
Syncing future partition 0 contents to disk.
Formatting future partition 1.
mke2fs 1.47.1 (20-May-2024)
Creating filesystem with 524288 4k blocks and 131072 inodes
Filesystem UUID: daf5e909-6145-4bed-b65c-f76a8d92fb4d
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912

Allocating group tables: 0/16 done
Writing inode tables: 0/16 done
Creating journal (16384 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: 0/16 done

/dev/loop1 successfully formatted as ext4 (label “xbootldr”, uuid daf5e909-6145-4bed-b65c-f76a8d92fb4d)
Successfully formatted future partition 1.
Syncing future partition 1 contents to disk.
Encrypting future partition 2…
Successfully encrypted future partition 2.
Formatting future partition 2.
btrfs-progs v6.12
See https://btrfs.readthedocs.io for more information.

Performing full device TRIM /dev/mapper/luks-repart-85d05868e36aa8c2 (929.00GiB) …
NOTE: several default settings have changed in version 5.15, please make sure
this does not affect your deployments:
- DUP for metadata (-m dup)
- enabled no-holes (-O no-holes)
- enabled free-space-tree (-R free-space-tree)

Label: root-x86-64
UUID: 70163c54-b3f8-42f3-8374-3645acd9064b
Node size: 16384
Sector size: 4096(CPU page size: 4096)
Filesystem size: 929.00GiB
Block group profiles:
Data: single 8.00MiB
Metadata: DUP 1.00GiB
System: DUP 8.00MiB
SSD detected: no
Zoned device: no
Features: extref, skinny-metadata, no-holes, free-space-tree
Checksum: crc32c
Number of devices: 1
Devices:
ID SIZE PATH
1 929.00GiB /dev/mapper/luks-repart-85d05868e36aa8c2

/dev/mapper/luks-repart-85d05868e36aa8c2 successfully formatted as btrfs (label “root-x86-64”, uuid 70163c54-b3f8-42f3-8374-3645acd9064b)
Successfully formatted future partition 2.
Syncing future partition 2 contents to disk.
Adding new partition 0 to partition table.
Adding new partition 1 to partition table.
Adding new partition 2 to partition table.
Writing new partition table.
Telling kernel to reread partition table.
Failed to reread partition table: Device or resource busy
Error:
0: systemd-repart errored with status code Some(1)

Location:
src/backend/install.rs:748

Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it.
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets.
Warning: SpanTrace capture is Unsupported.
Ensure that you’ve setup a tracing-error ErrorLayer and the semver versions are compatible

Backtrace omitted. Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=1 environment variable to display it.
Run with RUST_BACKTRACE=full to include source snippets.

4. From crash text looks to me the same issue as on my VirtualBox image.

[red11]

@neko

We need help with translations!

Can’t you just take translations from some other project e.g. Fedora or something? There should be exactly the same strings.

[JohnAtl]

Even if you do that, or use ChatGPT, someone has to do it

[neko]

@red11

Can’t you just take translations from some other project e.g. Fedora or something? There should be exactly the same strings.

If you’re talking about readymade, I’m not sure how well that would go, we use a lot more casual language and tone in our applications than RH/Fedora.

If you’re talking about the system itself, the language not setting is a bug.

@JohnAtl

Even if you do that, or use ChatGPT, someone has to do it

We won’t do it with machine translation. Nuance is hard, and we’d much rather have the community help with translations to preserve the meaning and tone of our copy. So if you speak another language we’d greatly appreciate your help

[tulilirockz]

1. We need translations on Readymade, you can try helping translate it to your native language by contributing to it! GitHub - FyraLabs/readymade: Install ready-made distribution images!
2. Keyboard layout procedure is the same as anaconda’s: change it on the DE’s settings (but we do want to make this more integrated)
3. That also needs fixing on Readymade, not particularly sure how to implement that
4. Making a progress bar is honestly very bad, people will think the thing is just stuck or something. Maybe we could add a clock saying like “it has been (x) minutes since the installation started” or something
5. We currently dont have BIOS support, you’ll need to switch your VM to UEFI

[tulilirockz]

1. Absolutely no idea what may have caused that, literally never seen it either
2. Already replied to it
3. I think the SD thing is maybe a SD Card reader issue, readymade might be reading it even w/o a SD card being read. Issue filed! Disk devices should be filtered when they are read as "0 bytes" · Issue #71 · FyraLabs/readymade · GitHub
4. Heh on this one you launched Pinta, very nice.
5. Theres no 6
6. No custom partitioning is supported right now, wiring is needed! Custom partitioning needs wiring up for Bootc · Issue #72 · FyraLabs/readymade · GitHub
7. Huh I havent seen this. Will be filing it if I manage to reproduce it.

The numbering is wrong cuz Discourse automatically changes it to markdown

[neko]

@tulilirockz

5. We currently dont have BIOS support, you’ll need to switch your VM to UEFI

We have BIOS support for traditional distros, but not bootc, I have no idea if this will happen or how long it will take

[red11]

@neko

We have BIOS support for traditional distros, but not bootc, I have no idea if this will happen or how long it will take

It would be nice installer to detect there is BIOS and return some nice error at “Welcome” window. Something like: “BIOS detected that is not supported in Blufin. If you are using virtual machine, make sure to select EFI option before installing.”

Now I have retried installing (with the same ISO image as yesterday) on my VirtualBox:

1. In VirtualBox from menu Machine | New and fill out the required fields, but on Hardware make sure to check Enable EFI (special OSes only). Yesterday I have had this unchecked, never have even bothered with this option, because there is “special OSes only” and never understood what is “special”.
   

   

2. When Blufin install starts I get this welcome screen. Comparing image with first post of this forum thread there should be some dinosaur image, but it looks like installer can’t find the image.
   

   

3. Now installation is successful and at the end I clicked on Reboot button.

4. At restart I get this screen. It looks like some UEFI screen. I just pressed Enter so “Continue boot”.
   

   

5. Now Blufin starts up and it looks like additional installation windows appears. I clicked them through and everything looks fine, just keyboard is still the wrong one (probably English/US).

6. On top-right I selected Settings and changed keyboard to my keyboard setting and now keyboard displays correctly the characters. This keyboard key may be quite annoying if someone (like me) checks the disk encryption and selects some special characters as password (you should to have strong password) and then at boot time it is pretty difficult to type in special characters, because encryption password field does not have any “Show password” option.

7. I just rebooted Blufin one more time, to make sure it really boots and it does.

RECAP:
Installation does work successfully, but currently it is not the best UX. It needs some polishing:
a) If BIOS is detected then print pretty message that it is not supported.
b) Language selection should change display screen to native languages. We can’t assume that everyone on the word knows English.
c) Beside Language selection there should be keyboard selection. I know some of the users (like me) always install operating system in English language, but of course want to have my own keyboard (that is not US).
d) Broken image at welcome screen.
e) At disk selection recognized “0 bytes” disks and DVDs and USB key that Blufin is started to install from. In Gparted partition Linux distribution I have got the following drop-down selection:

I could change setting from sda and sdb, but sdc (USB key Gparted is installed on) is greyed out.
f) At disk selection also selecting disk is little bit confusing at the first look. Selected disk is the one with blue text (black text is default). I think there should be more visible which disk is selected - like frame around image or change background of image (we can’t except everyone has perfect vision : vision impairment).
g) Maybe some text about whole disk selection limitation could be displayed and to explain there is no custom partitioning available (I don’t know how to do this nicely, to not clutter the installation dialog).
h) When Blufin boots up for the first time it starts to ask additional questions. My personal preference is to ask all of the questions one after another and after first boot Linux is ready (If I remember Ubuntu does this nicely - even starts installing immediately when it can and then asks additional questions). This is just nice to have, but it is probably for most of users also fine like it is now.

[inffy]

@red11

At restart I get this screen. It looks like some UEFI screen. I just pressed Enter so “Continue boot”.

This is normal with secure boot, it asks you to enroll the MOK key, just like it does after installing with the old ISOs (docs cover this and it should be enrolled with password universalblue)

@red11

Now Blufin starts up and it looks like additional installation windows appears. I clicked them through and everything looks fine, just keyboard is still the wrong one (probably English/US).

You mean the Gnome first-start, just like with any other “vanilla” gnome distro

[red11]

@inffy

@red11

At restart I get this screen. It looks like some UEFI screen. I just pressed Enter so “Continue boot”.

This is normal with secure boot, it asks you to enroll the MOK key, just like it does after installing with the old ISOs (docs cover this and it should be enrolled with password universalblue)

Yes, looks like I have overlooked this, because I always install in BIOS mode inside virtual machines. I have now manually added key with ujust enroll-secure-boot-key command and followed on-screen instructions. Looks working fine. Thanks for this reminder.

@inffy

@red11

Now Blufin starts up and it looks like additional installation windows appears. I clicked them through and everything looks fine, just keyboard is still the wrong one (probably English/US).

You mean the Gnome first-start, just like with any other “vanilla” gnome distro

Probably yes,… I come from Ubuntu world where every dialog appears before final install reboot. I somehow like this, because I can fill in all fields and Install button and then I can leave for 30 mins and when I come back, reboot and I get in. Just personal preference. I don’t know how “vanilla” Gnome is… I don’t like vanilla, I like chocolate.

[red11]

Now I have found some time to do desktop installation one more time.

1. I have plugged in USB drive with Gpart partition tool and wipe both disk (HDD and SSD).
2. Now plugged in Blufin backed USB drive and booted from USB key.
3. Blufin live image starts up.
4. During installation this time I have selected SSD drive and all of the settings to get to Install button.
5. Everything looks fine I get to Reboot button, click on it and reboot happens.
6. At reboot UEFI screen appears (still very difficult to work with because UEFI is displayed bottom right and cut off) I some how remembered how are menus when new key is entered, password was asked and I typed in “universalblue” and then reboot.
7. Blufin starts to reboot.
8. Encryption field appears (I encrypted disk), typed in password.
9. Dinosaur is displayed at bottom and now This takes like 5 min, I expected to see logon screen, but it never appeared in stead Linux prompt appeared with instruction to check the “journalctl”.
10. I have mounted empty USB key and saved journal with journalctl > /var/mydir and here it is:

File is too big to be published on this forum, so I have uploaded it to: LimeWire: Share Files - Secure File Upload Platform - On this web site on left-bottom click on “Download all” button to download journal.txt file. Just check the file up to “13:13:29” when I have started adding my usb key and trying all kind of command to get info about usb key and boy how slim is this image (no lsblk, no hwinfo…).

Hope this helps diagnosing…

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EDIT: Solved boot problem. TLDR: It was more then three times wrong password to decrypt disk.

Looking through journalctl.txt file I have found the following:

Apr 23 13:06:03 bluefin systemd-tty-ask-password-agent[582]: Failed to query password: Operation canceled
Apr 23 13:06:03 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Set cipher aes, mode xts-plain64, key size 512 bits for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/6936f518-10b4-4d78-8dd6-410c927e1191.
Apr 23 13:06:04 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Failed to activate with specified passphrase. (Passphrase incorrect?)
Apr 23 13:06:09 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Set cipher aes, mode xts-plain64, key size 512 bits for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/6936f518-10b4-4d78-8dd6-410c927e1191.
Apr 23 13:06:10 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Failed to activate with specified passphrase. (Passphrase incorrect?)
Apr 23 13:06:17 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Set cipher aes, mode xts-plain64, key size 512 bits for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/6936f518-10b4-4d78-8dd6-410c927e1191.
Apr 23 13:06:19 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Failed to activate with specified passphrase. (Passphrase incorrect?)
Apr 23 13:06:19 bluefin systemd-cryptsetup[576]: Too many attempts to activate; giving up.

It looks like I have typed incorrect password at decrypt disk field after boot. But… Blufin continued with boot despite my password was incorrect. This was end of the road, if disk can’t be decrypted it can start Blufin… The doom level no 1.

I have now power-off my desktop and power-on it again and in decrypt disk field I have now typed in correct password (can you imagine) and Blufin started up just fine. Blufin asked me few questions and it looks it works perfectly.

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I don’t know if this is normal behavior to continue boot despite three wrong attempts. I haven’t seen this before. Maybe this is normal behavior I have just not typed in wrong password three times before… Probably. Still bad experience. I am not really sure, this is installer issue, because I assume after install and pressing Reboot installer does not take control anymore, just ordinary Linux kernel at boot, isn’t it?

[red11]

SOLVED: The issue with Grub2 menu is shifted to the bottom-right and cut off screen.
TLDR: Solution is BIOS setting.

Details:
This is what it looks like on my desktop (you notice at the right side menu is cut off):

I have searched the web and o boy how many different suggestions… like monitor setting, like grub settings etc. All sort of suggestions.

But… then I entered BIOS/UEFI settings by pressing <F1> key right after boot (before grub menu appears).

Looking through settings this one caught my eye: Boot Priority = Legacy First

I changed Boot Priority = UEFI First

Save and exit the BIOS Setup Utility and problem solved:

Just to make sure I have reentered BIOS settings and set it to “Legacy First” and reboot and grub menu is cut off again, set BIOS “UEFI First”, save and exit and grub is displayed fine again, centered to menu and looks great. Problem solved!