Accessing files on a different SSD on the same laptop...

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, just done my first Qubes install - onto a USB 3 stick attached to a Dell Latitude E5470 (only a temporary arrangement pending installing a second SSD in the laptop).  I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly it went (although it took a while to complete the install and updates seem to take an age) and most things I need to work, do.

One thing I can't figure out...  I have data files on the internal SSD which I would like to access from Qubes.  I can find reference in the documentation to accessing USB sticks, but not a SSD.  I would like to have the access permanent (in a "conventional" Linux installation, I think I would edit fstab appropriately?).  Neither lsblk or fdisk -l seem to show me anything about the internal SSD.

I think I must be missing something, any pointer would be welcome.

Thanks

[unman]

Do you want the SSD partitions permanently attached to one qube?
If you use qvm-block in dom0 can you see the disk/partitions?

[Andrew Sullivan]

      That might work, or maybe better permanently attached to two qubes?

 

If you use qvm-block in dom0 can you see the disk/partitions?

     Don't know, I'll give it a try and post back. 

[Andrew Sullivan]

OK, if I click on the  Devices widget I can indeed see all the partitions on my internal SSD, with an arrow next to each.  If I click the arrow I get a list of qubes, which I believe allows me to attach the selected partition to where I want.  However, when I do this I can't find the partition in the Files application in the qube.  Think I'm still missing something...  Also, am I correct that this attachment will only persist until I close the qube?

Thanks

[haaber]

On 6/6/20 6:33 PM, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>
> If you use qvm-block in dom0 can you see the disk/partitions?
>
>
>      Don't know, I'll give it a try and post back.
>
>
> OK, if I click on the  Devices widget I can indeed see all the
> partitions on my internal SSD, with an arrow next to each.  If I click
> the arrow I get a list of qubes, which I believe allows me to attach the
> selected partition to where I want.  However, when I do this I can't
> find the partition in the Files application in the qube.  Think I'm
> still missing something...  Also, am I correct that this attachment will
> only persist until I close the qube?

they will be inserted in the appvm-qube as /dev/xvdi, /dev/xvdk ...
[vd = virtual device, I guess]. The existence of a device does not mean
mounting it. I do that by hand: in a terminal, type

sudo mount /dev/xvdi /media

will mount the attached device to /media and allow file access. If it is
a luks-encrypted system, do

sudo crypsetup luksOpen /dev/xvdi MYSSDVOL
sudo mount /dev/mapper/MYSSDVOL /media

cheers

[Andrew Sullivan]

Many thanks for that, works exactly as described!  Seems a bit strange that the partition isn't mounted at the time it was attached (not sure why you'd want to attach it if you didn't plan to read or write to it?).   Anyways...

Is there any way the attachment and mounting can be made permanent?

Next challenge - access files on another Linux laptop on the same network!

[haaber]

like any device that lurks in your machine(say a WIN partition. Unless
you ask for mounting in fstab it won't be done.

> Is there any way the attachment and mounting can be made permanent?

no clue. never tried that.

> Next challenge - access files on another Linux laptop on the same network!

use scp to copy individual files and use

rsync -auv --rsh=ssh user@anotherlinuxmachine:path/ new-qubes-path/

is your friend to mass-copy data.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Thanks for that - useful to know but not exactly what I need right now.  I want to be able to access a folder on another Linux laptop on the same network (like I can access another disk in the same laptop).  I currently do this (in Linux Mint) using Samba.  I'll give that a try in Qubes and if I get problems I probably ought to start a new  thread (I got into trouble before when I raised a new topic in a thread...). 

[unman]

You may want to read/write *without* mounting - for example, when using
dd to write a disk image.

>
> Is there any way the attachment and mounting can be made permanent?
>

`man` is your friend - specifically `man qvm-block`.
You will see that there is indeed a `--persistent` option.

Mounting could be a simple (and standard) entry in /etc/fstab - nothing Qubes
specific here. Or simply a call to `mount`.
Make sure that you use a good identifier - /dev/xvdi may or may not work
- a label or UUID would be much better.
Again `man fstab` and `man mount` will help.

The Qubes specific part will be to make sure that any changes you make
to /etc/fstab are persistent - you could do this using bind-dirs or by
an entry in /rw/config/rc.local

> Next challenge - access files on another Linux laptop on the same network!
>

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[Andrew Sullivan]

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Thanks, that's very helpful, I'll give it a try.

[brenda...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, June 7, 2020 at 12:29:28 PM UTC-4, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

...

On the fedora-based VMs, the tool `gnome-disks` is a gui way of manually mounting filesystems.

[I tend to forget the order of operations and/or flags for things like mount (which is the mountpoint? which is the source device?) so either script it or use GUI tools when my brain is a bit fuzzy.]

Brendan

[Andrew Sullivan]

Brendan - that certainly is an easy way to do it (even if it doesn't present the mental challenges of the method described earlier!).  It can be made permanent, and it can use the UUID as recommended above.  Thanks.