I’ve just received a brand new DIY Framework 13 and I wanted to give Silverblue a try. I created an install USB using Fedora Mediawriter and started the installation. I used the automatic disk formatting option but ticked the box to encrypt my data and chose a passphrase and then let the installer get on with it.
At some point I received an error that read something like “failed to write boot loader configuration”. I click to let it continue installing but on reboot I got a GRUB error screen.
At first I thought this might be a failure in the hardware, so just to check I created a Fedora Workstation install usb on the same usb stick and installed that using the same options and that worked fine.
This seems like it might be something to do with Silverblue then, how can I debug further?
The bootloader configuration may be in the UEFI settings, which may be locked. Not sure tbh.
I installed Fedora Atomic on maaany UEFI systems and the configurations were not the issue.
A few things
Did you tick the “free up space” on the “install location” page? There might be something there.
Can you go into your BIOS and check the boot options if there is something? Tell us what you find. I would look out for “boot order lock” and similar things.
After finding the issue, this should absolutely be reported to Framework, as that should not happen.
I guess that message was already a read flag, warning that the installation won’t finish normally.
There are some known limitations in Silverblue with manual partitioning, as well as with LUKS, and while those don’t apply to your use case, there might have been a glitch that won’t reproduce again. So if you’re willing, you could try installing Silverblue with LUKS again. If it works, then great, and if not, you could file a bug for your configuration (since the issue would be reproducible).
I have just tested a new installation of Silverblue in a VM with automatic partitioning and disk encryption, and it went fine.
I tried installing a few times and always got the same error so this is pretty reproducible. I also got the same error with Bluefin so maybe this is something to do with the atomic stuff? Anyway, I’ll file an issue.
I haven’t tried booting to the live image, I’ll give that a shot too.
Silverblue doesn’t have the option to boot into a live session. You could try that with Workstation, but probably not necessary, given that you have already managed installing Fedora Workstation with no issues.
!