I’m running Pureboot. I want to install Qubes on an external SSD without messing up the OS on the primary drive. And then have the option to boot to the SSD.
Before I mess anything up, has anyone else done this? Will Pureboot allow this? Will the Qubes installer allow it to be installed on an external SSD?
I haven’t used any of what you describe, but if its like other distros you shouldn’t have an issue. It would be best to have the installer put the bootloader on the external drive so you can move it to a different computer if you want (and to prevent it messing with the PureOS bootloader, though I don’t know if it would or not).
I think Pureboot will boot off of USB. Grub should be able to see it if its plugged in, so you can update-grub from PureOS and have it in the grub list (and then probably have it default to boot PureOS after 5 seconds or something so you don’t accidentally try to boot Qubes when it isn’t plugged in).
I’d say your main concern is the Qubes installer, but you can see if it’ll offer the option to install to the external SSD without committing.
Won’t there be a problem with the cryptographic integrity check if you have two boot partitions, one on the internal disk and one on the external disk?
However maybe the question can be … if I ignore that problem … will it work at all?