User issues with Qubes 4.0

[Philippe Doublet]

Dear community,

I have been a happy user of Qubes 3.2 for a year or so now, was eagerly
waiting for R4.0 and now switched to it. And for the moment it seems
like it's a disaster... I am not sure if this is the right place to post
my several issues but here there are :

- slow execution of everything. Startup is slower, most of the actions
(starting a VM, working in several spaces). I found out (in dmesg of
dom0) I had a problem with a pci express component reporting regularly
with AER (advanced error reporting - never seen in R3.2), so after a
couple of searches, I turned it off by adding "pcie_aspm = off" in grub.
It helps with speed but the system is still slower than before and I
have no clue why at the moment. (Watching an online video becomes a real
pain...)

- no volume control is permitted on whonix-ws-based VMs (including DVMs)
using dom0's audio mixer. Is this expected ? I read nothing about it...

- import of win7 previously saved and perfectly working hvm (on R3.2)
causes windows not to work : booting seems ok (from time to time...) but
once on the windows desktop, it crashes (the window disappears without
leaving any message, which I had when painfully installing win7
previously but thought it was gone).

- the Qubes Manager is slow and has problems with refreshing (I've read
it appears also for some other users). I really enjoyed working with it
because it is really making my life easier but now I avoid all possible
actions with it...

I am not sure my configuration is problematic (it seems intel core
i5-6200 and 16 GB memory have all the expected hardware features). I can
give more details if needed. I think the major problem is the speed,
then other things may be lived with. Maybe going to PVH was too much ?

So this is my user's experience so far and I'm thinking about switching
back to 3.2 since these problems don't seem documented. But if anyone
can help and if this can help others, let's try to improve things
(hopefully I'm the only one with such experience which is sad for me but
doesn't harm Qubes reputation ;) ).

Regards,

Philippe

[sdflkjd...@gmail.com]

After the first installation of Qubes, I immediately had problems with the sound. In PHV domains it does not work, only in dom0 or in HVM machines. Rather a big problem is the lack of normal documentation like Gentoo or FreeBSD.

Also with a fairly small set of packages and applications for work. I do not know if TOR needs people at all, it's slow and not necessary. also the systemd and fedora cause a lot of pain.

[Ivan Mitev]

Hey,

On 04/02/2018 05:34 PM, Philippe Doublet wrote:
> Dear community,
>
> I have been a happy user of Qubes 3.2 for a year or so now, was eagerly
> waiting for R4.0 and now switched to it. And for the moment it seems
> like it's a disaster... I am not sure if this is the right place to post
> my several issues but here there are :
>
> - slow execution of everything. Startup is slower, most of the actions
> (starting a VM, working in several spaces). I found out (in dmesg of
> dom0) I had a problem with a pci express component reporting regularly
> with AER (advanced error reporting - never seen in R3.2), so after a
> couple of searches, I turned it off by adding "pcie_aspm = off" in grub.
> It helps with speed but the system is still slower than before and I
> have no clue why at the moment. (Watching an online video becomes a real
> pain...)

I find that R4.0 feels a bit slower compared to R3.2 but not by a
significant margin. There was a ML post some time ago about a huge
performance drop in 4.0rc something but I don't think there was any
resolution; you may ask the OP.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-users/YSeDcd91v-s/ZMu9x8NBAgAJ

> - no volume control is permitted on whonix-ws-based VMs (including DVMs)
> using dom0's audio mixer. Is this expected ? I read nothing about it...
>
> - import of win7 previously saved and perfectly working hvm (on R3.2)
> causes windows not to work : booting seems ok (from time to time...) but
> once on the windows desktop, it crashes (the window disappears without
> leaving any message, which I had when painfully installing win7
> previously but thought it was gone).

windows is a PITA, more so in Qubes.

my imported R3.2 win7 vm also crashes randomly - usually within the
first 10-20 seconds after it boots. I didn't have time to debug it.

fwiw, make sure that memory = maxmem (use qvm-prefs or the GUI), and
allocate enough ram (like 4G).

you may be better off re-installing the whole thing though; see the
following issue for more info:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3592

> - the Qubes Manager is slow and has problems with refreshing (I've read
> it appears also for some other users). I really enjoyed working with it
> because it is really making my life easier but now I avoid all possible
> actions with it...

the problem is that the "new" qubes manager (actually, a stripped down
version of the previous one) was introduced late in the rc stage so it's
still rough around the edges.

for now you're probably better off using the widgets (even they have a
few bugs) and a qvm-* commands in a terminal.

>
> I am not sure my configuration is problematic (it seems intel core
> i5-6200 and 16 GB memory have all the expected hardware features). I can
> give more details if needed. I think the major problem is the speed,
> then other things may be lived with. Maybe going to PVH was too much ?

I have more or less the same hardware (12G but i7 cpu) ; cpu/ram
shouldn't be the issue.

> So this is my user's experience so far and I'm thinking about switching
> back to 3.2 since these problems don't seem documented. But if anyone
> can help and if this can help others, let's try to improve things
> (hopefully I'm the only one with such experience which is sad for me but
> doesn't harm Qubes reputation ;) ).

switching back to R3.2 and waiting for 4.1 might be the right path if
you don't have time to debug ...

Ivan

>
> Regards,
>
> Philippe
>
>

[frkl...@gmail.com]

Hey guys,

I have also some of your problems. I have an Asus notebook i7 6500 U, 8GB ram, SSD Qubes os 4 is much slower than qubes os 3.2.

I noticed also that the Qubes Manager has problems with refreshing.

The biggest problem which I have at the moment are graphical issues. When I watch a video and I move with the cursor the video jerkys. If it is a fast Video (for example a car video) it jerkys also whitout moving the cursor. I didn't have this problem at os 3.2 - even when I was playing videos simultaneously.

I looked at the qubes os homepage for a solution:

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/intel-igfx-troubleshooting/

The solution would be to add a line (iommu=no-igfx) to the /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg .

This line (iommu=no-igfx) was already in the .cfg file, so I had nothing to add.

Maybe someone has an other solution - feel free to help :-)

I'm still a big fan of qubes os and I'm thanksful for this os!

I hope the issues will be fixed

Regards,

Mat

[awokd]

On Thu, April 5, 2018 3:45 pm, frkl...@gmail.com wrote:

> The biggest problem which I have at the moment are graphical issues. When
> I watch a video and I move with the cursor the video jerkys. If it is a
> fast Video (for example a car video) it jerkys also whitout moving the
> cursor. I didn't have this problem at os 3.2 - even when I was playing
> videos simultaneously.

This? https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3622

You could maybe try a Debian template instead.

[frkl...@gmail.com]

Yes it seems to be the same problem!

I tried also with debian 9. The same problem.

During watching Youtube Videos with 720p it's jerkying.

For the moment I'm watching at 480p and I'm trying not moving the cursor. Than it's not jerkying a lot.

[awokd]

On Sun, April 8, 2018 2:23 am, frkl...@gmail.com wrote:
> Yes it seems to be the same problem!

If you don't get any other suggestions from this list, probably best thing
to do is to add your own note to that issue saying you also have it in
debian-9 templates. That way, you will get notified if there is any
progress on it...