QubesOS under VMware - I know I know ...

[p.@.com]

Hi all,

I am thinking of installing Qubesos on my laptop but before that I would like to play with it before installation. The only option I know is to install it under Vmware. I know this solution is not supported but for educational and learning purposes it would be good to be able to do that.
Does anybody know if this is possible ? I tried to install it under Vmware but it failed. Any workarounds ? I can even lower the security of QubesOS (if this is somehow possible) to achieve it - this is just for educational purposes.
Any help ?

Best regards
Przemek

[Darko Vuković]

I have managed to do this once but I wasn't able to repeat it for some reason...

[Andrew David Wong]

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Note that Qubes can be installed to a portable USB drive. It will run
more slowly from such a device, but it can make testing more
accessible, since it doesn't disturb your existing OS.

At least one user has reported success with booting Qubes under
VMware, but others have not been able to replicate these results:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2249

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[Drew White]

If you want to put Qubes under VMWare, I recommend 3.0, it installs every time.

If you have a server, then install Qubes under ESXi, it's what I did, and I've not had issues doing it many times before I then put it onto my actual PC.
Qubes 2 also installs easily under VMWare, even on Player or Workstation on local PC. Just be sure you have enough Virtual HDD space for it. (32 GB+)

As for 3.2 I'm not sure, I just put it on my Laptop using an HDD I had lying around.

So that is 1 way you can accomplish this too.
- Get another HDD that you have lying around.
- Install onto that on your PC.
- Mount HDD under VMWARE.
- Clone HDD to virtual disk.

- Boot and start the VM with only the virtual disk.

This method has to sometimes be used, as I was told when I had issues at one point on my particular hardware (My laptop).

I did that, and it worked fine under VMWare Player 6.

On ESXi I installed directly on ESXi 5.5, worked first time.

So there are many options to get it working under VMWare.

[p.@.com]

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 7:20:45 PM UTC+1, Andrew David Wong wrote:
> Note that Qubes can be installed to a portable USB drive. It will run
> more slowly from such a device, but it can make testing more
> accessible, since it doesn't disturb your existing OS.
>
> At least one user has reported success with booting Qubes under
> VMware, but others have not been able to replicate these results:
>
> https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2249

Thanks Andrew for the hint with USB. I imagine every time you reboot your laptop to run your disk installed OS you loose everything you configured in your USB-based Qubes ?

[p.@.com]

On Friday, September 2, 2016 at 2:55:42 AM UTC+1, Drew White wrote:
> On ESXi I installed directly on ESXi 5.5, worked first time.

Which QubesOS version did you install on ESXi ?

Best regards
Przemek

[Andrew David Wong]

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No, the installation is persistent. It's a standard installation, only with a
removable USB storage device as the installation target instead of an internal
drive. There's also a Live USB option, which is not persistent, but it hasn't
been updated in a while, so I recommend using a current release instead.

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[Drew White]

On Friday, 2 September 2016 16:51:27 UTC+10, p.@.com wrote:
>
> Thanks Andrew for the hint with USB. I imagine every time you reboot your laptop to run your disk installed OS you loose everything you configured in your USB-based Qubes ?

No, not at all. It was an installation, not a snapshot or anything, completely full.

On Friday, 2 September 2016 16:53:33 UTC+10, p.@.com wrote:
> Which QubesOS version did you install on ESXi ?

It was ESXi 5.5 IBM custom.

[Drew White]

Also, if you install onto USB you can go to any PC and run it up.

You can take everything everywhere you go and have a secure system no matter what.