Why is there no qubes manager in V4.0?

[Tai...@gmx.com]

While I do know how to use the cli tools I enjoy a gui for at a glance
viewing and tasks, it is much easier to press start/stop on a nice list
rather than type two commands.

Thanks ADW!

[[799]]

Hello,

While I appreciate the new features in Qubes 4, the lack of a graphical frontend like Qubes Manager is a step backwards, as Linux is always about choice.
Can't someone program a very simple GUI which offers the following functions:

1) show all VMs with the option to hide:
- internal VMs (I really hope to get this setting back from Qubes 3.2)
- Template VMs
- all VMs which are not running

2) indicate which VMs are running

3) offer the option to do the following actions on a VM:
- start
- restart
- shutdown
- kill
- open preferences

Nice to have:

4) maybe also: attach/remove USB and Block-Devices

5) show an icon if an USB/Block-Device is mounted

I think that having the options 1 - 3 is perfectly fine, as this will make the interaction with VMs easier (also for newbies who come from any other OS).

Please don't get me wrong, I like the new widgets as they offer additional options, but a central cockpit to do basic tasks is missing.

I can live without additional features like performance metrics in Qubes Manager, but the basic tasks would be great.

Can maybe someone outside of the Qubes Team program this?

[799]

[Yethal]

What original Qubes Manager did wrong:
Didn't expose all per-VM settings (qvm-prefs)
Didn't expose all global settings (guid.conf)
Didn't expose all device options (USB mostly, block devices were available)
Duplicated some functionality of the Applications menu
Was non-resizable (serious issue when screen real estate is at a premium)

Those are some of the reasons it was scrapped.

[[799]]

Hello,

> What original Qubes Manager did wrong:
> Didn't expose all per-VM settings (qvm-prefs)
> Didn't expose all global settings (guid.conf)
> Didn't expose all device options (USB mostly,
> block devices were available) Duplicated
> some functionality of the Applications menu
> Was non-resizable (serious issue when
> screen real estate is at a premium)
> Those are some of the reasons it was
> scrapped.

Thanks for the feedback, the most annoying thing was the non-resizable window, specifically when using a tiling window manager.

Still I think dropping Qubes Manager totally is a not the best solution as everyone who didn't like Qubes Manager had the choice to close it or not use it at all.

All other users who could live with the above 'problems' and would like to use Qubes Manager or something similar are now lost.
As mentioned I understand if Qubes Team thinks (!) that Qubes Manager is not that good and that they drop support for it, but I just a bad taste as it currently seems that the loss of Qubes Manager is trying to be sold as a good feature.
It's not. Users should always have the choice, that's what is so great about Linux.

Thereof I just want to raise my voice that a replacement for Qubes Manager (maybe with less options) would be great.

I'm fine with using the CLI to setup machines. Change complicated options etc. but for daily use Qubes Manager was great.

Maybe we should start to collect voices to bring a Qubes GUI App back to 4.0.

Thereof:
My vote for Qubes GUI-Manager.
Willing to pay 40 eur for a good replacement.
Who is joining this "campaign"?
Maybe someone likes to program this, if we throw in some budget.

[799]

[cooloutac]

pretty sure it had all options? I thought single usb device was added maybe I'm wrong. Don't see why it couldn't be. I thought qubesmanager was removed for cosmetic reasons. I never have to use cli in 3.2 unless I accidentally shut down instead of restarting sys-usb which I use mouse proxy with.

If things popped up in task manager to alert us that would indeed be better then having to keep qubes manager on screen all the time to glance at, but if we lose user friendly options in favor of terminal commands, I don't think thats a good idea. Even if commercializing. Similar to how I initially thought moving to xfce was a good idea, but realizing afterwards that kde's customization was very fitting for qubes shortcuts and menus. Seems like Qubes keeps getting less user friendly instead of more so.

I thought Joanna addressed all my concerns in a blog post regarding qubes manager, I didn't think we would lose any gui options but I guess we have to see what happens.

[cooloutac]

One of the reasons I always have Qubes manager on screen, not just to see updates, but to see if an orange triangle pops up, What vms using cpu/memory, etc.. always wanted i/o and network activity as well.

[cooloutac]

I mean maybe there is security implications? I dunno does gui automatically equal risk? lol but like 799 say options is good.

[Franz]

On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 10:02 AM, cooloutac <raah...@gmail.com> wrote:

I mean maybe there is security implications?  I dunno does gui automatically equal risk?  lol  but like 799 say options is good.

It may be better to wait that something like google manager appears before installing version 4.  I cannot live without it.

[Andrew David Wong]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Thanks for your feedback in this thread, everyone. Just to briefly
address the original question in the subject line, the reasons for
removing the Qubes VM Manager from Qubes 4.0 are discussed in this
issue:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2132

However, na-- recently opened a new issue that reflects many of the
same concerns as in this thread:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3241

We're looking into what can be done to improve the user experience in
4.0. Thank you for testing, everyone!

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

There is many of those requests ready. The running vms you can see using xfce bar with generic monitor (ls --fields ip,name,state). Look these pictures.

[mikih...@gmail.com]

I personally won't upgrade since there is no qubes-manager, for reasons already mentioned here and on github. Is there a possibility of people doing a fork of qubes-manager for 4.0?

[Ray Joseph]

...

>
> There is many of those requests ready. The running vms you can see using xfce bar with generic monitor (ls --fields ip,name,state). Look these pictures.

This solution looks appropriate. I am new to quebes and found the vm manager challenging using v3.2. I have not tried v4. But I am not familiar with the xfce bar and the pictures didn't look like the xfce panel on v32.

I will move to v4 this coming week. I did not getting anything working on v3.2, I would like to get to a better start on v4. I would apprecitate any suggestions on how to better use the tools provided to manage vms.

[David Hobach]

> There is many of those requests ready. The running vms you can see using xfce bar with generic monitor (ls --fields ip,name,state). Look these pictures.

conky can be used to obtain similar results.

[Sergio da Matta]

Dear David, Thank you for your information. I did not know conky. I liked it but I did not find the repo. Did you installed on dom0?

"7126 52E0 5754 8FEA BA46  9318 A3E7 BA7C 6D76 B8D7

gmail/hangouts/skype/instagram/twitter/sip.justvoip.com : sergiomatta

 whatsapp 031998050020, 06140639186" <Ser...@daMatta.com.br>

[David Hobach]

On 10/29/2017 03:36 PM, Sergio da Matta wrote:
> Dear David, Thank you for your information. I did not know conky. I liked
> it but I did not find the repo. Did you installed on dom0?

Yes, sudo qubes-dom0-update conky does it.
I attached my config for your convenience.

KR
David

[P x]

There's no qubes manager in V4?
Then I'll stick with V3.2 until support ends.
To me it's pretty much vital.

[Steffen Hartmann]

Please rethink disabondon of qubes manager. Thank you.

[Ray Joseph]

David,

Thank you for sharing your config for conky. I am going to install v4 and then conky.

Ray

[David Hobach]

On 10/30/2017 12:40 AM, Ray Joseph wrote:
> On Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 1:52:53 PM UTC-5, David Hobach wrote:
>> On 10/29/2017 03:36 PM, Sergio da Matta wrote:
>>> Dear David, Thank you for your information. I did not know conky. I liked
>>> it but I did not find the repo. Did you installed on dom0?
>>
>> Yes, sudo qubes-dom0-update conky does it.
>> I attached my config for your convenience.

P.S.: Just found out about xentop yesterday thanks to a guy mentioning
it on github. Basically it displays CPU usage etc. for your VMs.

This line should get you going with that in conky:
-- apparently xentop doesn't get the CPU % in the first run, so we do two
${execp xentop -f -b -i2 -d0 | tail -n+2 | sed -r -n '/NAME/,$ p' | sed
-r -n 's/^\s*([^ ]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+([^
]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+([^ ]+)\s+.*$/\1${goto 140}\4${goto
220}\9${goto 300}\6${goto 400}\8/p'}

Happy to hear that you guys find it useful as well. :-)

[Fun Zork]

Remember when Microsoft got rid of the start menu for a lot of reasons that sounded really compelling and revolutionary in PowerPoints presentations and articles, but just annoyed users? Same sort of deal I think.

I like seeing the status of all my VMs, not just when I go and seek that information out, but all the time. It just gives me more insight into what my computer is up to. It makes me feel more confident that it isn't doing anything it isn't supposed to be doing. It reminds me to be conscious of which qube I am in when I'm performing different tasks. I like having a sense that I am more aware of what my computer is up to, like I notice that sys-net's CPU bumped up a bit and maybe that alerts me to an issue, or I notice that my personal VM is taking longer to shut down than it used to, and maybe there is an issue there.

And not just that. If I'm being honest, it is also because it makes me feel more like I am running a cool, unique, complicated OS. The qubes manager is kind of Qubes' signature look. It's

I agree that the UI for it is kind of meh in 3.2, but that's mostly a graphical issue IMO. Personally, I'd rather see 4.0 have a qubes manager that is functionally the same as in 3.2, but with a more modern look. Darker, new icons.

[Elias Mårtenson]

On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 11:32:58 UTC+8, Fun Zork wrote:

> And not just that. If I'm being honest, it is also because it makes me feel
> more like I am running a cool, unique, complicated OS. The qubes manager is
> kind of Qubes' signature look. It's
>
> I agree that the UI for it is kind of meh in 3.2, but that's mostly a graphical > issue IMO. Personally, I'd rather see 4.0 have a qubes manager that is
> functionally the same as in 3.2, but with a more modern look. Darker, new
> icons.

I agree with you, but at the same time it is very clear that the team are very resource-constrained. I'm sure they would love to implement a better replacement but there is only so much they can do in a day, and there are plenty of other issues that I'd rather see them work on.

I have considered working on such a tool myself, but it's a lot of work and I have other projects I need to work on as well.

[Desobediente]

Just felt like I have to say that I would love to stop everything I'm doing in my life to write a proper Qubes Manager for 4.

But I don't see that happening. It sounds trivial at first, but it requires a lot of testing and it will have bugs as the current one does.

On the other hand, the more people demanding, the more likely someone would at least start something.

--

iuri.neocities.org

[Elias Mårtenson]

On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 12:23:22 UTC+8, Desobediente wrote:
> Just felt like I have to say that I would love to stop everything I'm doing in
> my life to write a proper Qubes Manager for 4.
>
> But I don't see that happening. It sounds trivial at first, but it requires a
> lot of testing and it will have bugs as the current one does.

I agree. It wouldn't take long to put something together that does the basic stuff, but to make it as feature complete as the Qubes Manager in 3.2 let alone implement all the cool features we all want would take more time than one might think.

[yura...@gmail.com]

While I initially didn't like the loss of the Qubes Manager either, I've grown pretty used to not having it in Qubes 4. Refusing to upgrade due to not having the old Qubes Manager, is imho just being conservative stubborn to old habits, refusing change. While true change can go from better to worse, refusing change altogether is not always a good thing. One should try give the layout in Qubes 4 a chance.

While true Qubes 4 has its interface shortcomings compared to Qubes 3.2, I think it's interface isn't far from being superior to Qubes 3.2. too, with some tweaks here and there.

For example, expanding the widget to allow for more details, similar to how the old Qubes Manager worked. Perhaps even put in an option to make it detachable/moveable/sizeable from the widget icon to the desktop for those who prefer a window over a widget.

Either way, despite the loss from the extras in the old QUbes Manager, despite it was a major pain to get the templates to work properly in the start from a fresh install, despite all that, I still enjoy Qubes 4 more than I did Qubes 3.2. And if anything, Qubes 4 is more secure than 3.2., so refusing to upgrade for such minor things, seems to me quite weird. Albeit the complaints are understandable, but it doesn't make Qubes 4 inferior to Qubes 3.2, when counting all the pros and cons together.

We also have to remember Qubes 4 is laying the foundations to more features in the future. At least to my understanding, a lot in Qubes 4 is foundation work for more things to come in the future. Don't be so unsatisfied, it's work in progress, Qubes 4 is not a finished project. Think long-term, not short-term.

Imho, the Qubes team did a fantastic job with Qubes 4. They didn't have much time with the interface layout, given all the other things that was implemented in Qubes 4. After all, security takes president, and practical use is also a serious priority. Cosmetics and lesser user-ability have to take a second seat, given the paradigm and goals that's being followed, with so few resources.

Just give it time people, the Qubes team did an amazing job. Being frustrated to such a high degree though, is uncalled for. We should at the very least appreciate their hard work.

[Desobediente]

Could the Qubes 4 users ellaborate what things I should be doing on Qubes 3 to get used to not having the Qubes Manager available all the time?

--

iuri.neocities.org

[Richard Musselwhite]

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For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

I donate monthly to the Qubes OpenCollective fund. My understanding is that it is dedicated to paying for user-friendly improvements such as the ones being discussed in this thread. When there's some feature I wish were included in a Qubes release, donating to the project helps me to feel more confident that the Qubes team will be able to pay someone to write them someday. https://opencollective.com/qubes-os.

[yura...@gmail.com]

Sure, though I might not be able to cover it all, but here are some things to start with.

- Qubes 4 uses terminal to create or restore backups, there is as of yet no graphic menu anymore. It might seem frightening at first, but it's not that difficult to use. The most annoying thing is if you want to exclude some Templates or AppVM's, since it'll otherwise restore all your VM's. After you type in your backup password, just put -x "AppVM name" -x "AppVM name" without the exclamation markers. It takes a few minutes of concentration the first time around, but it's not exactly "difficult", just different and takes a bit longer.
Type in "qvm-backup-restore -h" for help on commands if needed, or find a Qubes doc guide on the official website. The commandline appears the same in Qubes 3.2 as it is in 4.0-RC2, so you can practice in Qubes 3.2 with a few test AppVM's.

- Also, from what I hear, it takes a lot longer to restore backups if you run it through Dom0. Apparently it goes a lot faster if you i.e. make a USB-Qube and restore your backup through an AppVM. I cannot verify if it goes faster since my touch-screen on my laptop is tied to my USB, therefore I cannot create a USB-QUbe. Which meant I had to go for the slow one through Dom0. It took about 10 hours or so for about 60-70 GB of backup data.

- Be sure to turn off suspend or hibernate while you run your backup.

- Qubes 4-RC2 appears to have some template difficulties, primarily debian and whonix, but also sometimes fedora. The way I solved it was during the install, I allowed the install of Whonix templates. However during the last-step for configuration setup, I removed Whonix in the configuration setup. I also removed the automatic easy "Personal, Work" AppVM setup configuration. I only selected the first line. For whatever reason, if I selected any other configurations below the first, it causes python code errors. Afterwards fedora template works fine, and Whonix is easily fixed with the Qubes official Whonix install guide on the official website. It's basically just to create the sys-whonix and tie the whonix-gw and whonix-ws to the syswhonix for networking.

- debian won't run for me, I still haven't found a way to fix it. Instead I just made an extra copy of my Fedora template, and use that template for my packages etc. that I don't want installed in my more secure template/AppVM's.

- Qubes 4-RC2 sometimes freezes during install, it'll depend on your hardware. For my case, it only froze once. I restarted and started over, no changes to settings. This time it made it through. Qubes 4-RC1 always froze for me, no matter how many times I tried. The takeaway is, it sometimes helps to restart and try again.

- If Qubes 4 succesfully installs, but you get python errors or templates don't appear despite that you installed them, try re-install everything. I believe the late-stage Qubes configuration is what makes the difference. See above step a few steps up.

- Find another way to monitor your RAM/CPU use. For example I use "Xl list" in Dom0 to see how much memory Dom0 and all the other Templates/AppVM's are using. The widget shoes Template/AppVM memory use, but it doesn't show you how much memory you got in Dom0. The Dom0 RAM may be nice to know, so you know how much memory you got left for new VM's you plan to start up.

- There appears to be a new method to update Templatee VM's. Fedora still works the old way. But Debian and Whonix doesn't. I haven't found any Qubes guides or post about this yet, and haven't had the time to experiment to find out how it works now. But basically, Fedora template updates work. Whonix might also work. I had a lot of trouble with the Debian template system though. Either way, just go with Fedora for now until a guide or post is availale on this matter, or till the error is fixed (if there is any errors and it simply is just a user mistake).

- Given the situation, without insider knowledge (aka I simply dont know, this is just a guess), I believe there will be a Qubes 4-RC3 release. All these python errors and template nightmare, and careful picking Qubes configuarion to minimize these issues, seems to be too much to fix with just some updates. However if you can get the Fedora template working, you can just re-install the other templates whenever a fix becomes available.

- Qubes 4 appears to come with SALT enabled by default. I haven't ventured too much into this new area much yet, however it seemingly adds a security layer to VM and VM files so that they can't be changed (Possibly? It's still new to me after all, I can't say for sure). Presumably as long it's on the SALT configuration list, you can't change certain things in this VM. Supposedly it's to make Qubes more hack-proof. I haven't yet discovered when this SALT protection applies and when it doesn't. But it can be a real pain if you try to change something, and you don't realize it's the SALT protection preventing you to do it.
So it's good to know about it and read up about it. I certainly plan to when I have the time. There is a Qubes developer discussion somewhere on github about it somewhere as well. You should be able to play around with it in Qubes 3.2. before moving to Qubes 4. Apparently its pre-installed in Qubes 3.2, but it's pre-enabled in Qubes 4 for VM's. So Qubes 3.2. has it installed, but not enabled. Something like that.

- These are the issues I personally encountered during Qubes 4-RC1 and Qubes 4-RC2, in comparison to Qubes 3.2. I Can't think of more things to watch out for at the moment. I still need more time to mess around with fixes and solutions, reading up and learning, though this is what I gathered for now.

[yura...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, November 1, 2017 at 12:54:23 PM UTC, Desobediente wrote:

I forgot to mention, in addition to the above, Qubes-Windoes-Tools appears to not have been updated for Qubes 4 yet. Which means it's tricky to start your Windows due to memory management, and you can't transfer text of files outside or into Windows. You may perhaps be able to get internet working if you can tweak it yourself, but I haven't personally ventured there yet, so I don't know if it's easy or a lot of work to do yourself.
You can find out more about the RAM issue in my post here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/i48rHs1rBfU

[CF]

On 11/01/2017 10:27 AM,

yura...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, October 28, 2017 at 4:51:52 PM UTC, Andrew David Wong wrote:
> On 2017-10-27 23:24, Tai...@gmx.com wrote:
>>>> While I do know how to use the cli tools I enjoy a gui for at a
>>>> glance viewing and tasks, it is much easier to press start/stop on
>>>> a nice list rather than type two commands.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks ADW!
>>>>
>
> Thanks for your feedback in this thread, everyone. Just to briefly
> address the original question in the subject line, the reasons for
> removing the Qubes VM Manager from Qubes 4.0 are discussed in this
> issue:
>
> https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2132
>
> However, na-- recently opened a new issue that reflects many of the
> same concerns as in this thread:
>
> https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3241
>
> We're looking into what can be done to improve the user experience in
> 4.0. Thank you for testing, everyone!
>

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

> While I initially didn't like the loss of the Qubes Manager either, I've grown pretty used to not having it in Qubes 4. Refusing to upgrade due to not having the old Qubes Manager, is imho just being conservative stubborn to old habits, refusing change. While true change can go from better to worse, refusing change altogether is not always a good thing. One should try give the layout in Qubes 4 a chance.
>
> While true Qubes 4 has its interface shortcomings compared to Qubes 3.2, I think it's interface isn't far from being superior to Qubes 3.2. too, with some tweaks here and there.
>
> For example, expanding the widget to allow for more details, similar to how the old Qubes Manager worked. Perhaps even put in an option to make it detachable/moveable/sizeable from the widget icon to the desktop for those who prefer a window over a widget.
>
> Either way, despite the loss from the extras in the old QUbes Manager, despite it was a major pain to get the templates to work properly in the start from a fresh install, despite all that, I still enjoy Qubes 4 more than I did Qubes 3.2. And if anything, Qubes 4 is more secure than 3.2., so refusing to upgrade for such minor things, seems to me quite weird. Albeit the complaints are understandable, but it doesn't make Qubes 4 inferior to Qubes 3.2, when counting all the pros and cons together.
>
> We also have to remember Qubes 4 is laying the foundations to more features in the future. At least to my understanding, a lot in Qubes 4 is foundation work for more things to come in the future. Don't be so unsatisfied, it's work in progress, Qubes 4 is not a finished project. Think long-term, not short-term.
>
> Imho, the Qubes team did a fantastic job with Qubes 4. They didn't have much time with the interface layout, given all the other things that was implemented in Qubes 4. After all, security takes president, and practical use is also a serious priority. Cosmetics and lesser user-ability have to take a second seat, given the paradigm and goals that's being followed, with so few resources.
>
> Just give it time people, the Qubes team did an amazing job. Being frustrated to such a high degree though, is uncalled for. We should at the very least appreciate their hard work.
>

As Qubes is open-source, the door is still open for a
community-supported VM Manager (even though that would be a huge amount
of work).

What seems important is that the documentation of Qubes should be fully
updated to reflect this change. For instance, in
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/backup-restore/ the creation and
restoration of a backup is solely made with the VM manager.