qubes 3.2: qubes-vm-manager not consistent

[ludwig jaffe]

Problem after some diskfull errors:
see my post: "data panic (disc full) / want to mount nas with nfs and backup all in /var/lib/cubes", where I managed to recover the data and to repair the file systems.
--
the box is up and running, but ....
--
The Qubes-VM-Manager only shows running VMs and not all the VMs that are
there, but from the menue button one can start the shells of these VMs,
which causes the vms to be started.

Also I can not change the disk size of private.img in the shutdown
personal vm. And maybe others.

What happened to qubes-vm manager?
-> Disk got full and maybe, it could not write configs correncty
-> I deleted some not needed VMs by hand
rm -rf /var/lib/qubes/appvm/some_stupid_appliance in order to get space,
before I started the recovery with the nas and kali linux

so could be, that qubes vm manager did not like this.

How to fix qubes vm manager?!

[ludwig jaffe]

Also there is a bug in the qubes-vm manager:
The dom0 disk can become full, as one can set a size for private.img that is bigger then the size of dom0 disk!
So if one is not careful, a bigger download in one of the app-vms can render
the qubes-os box unusable and one has to recover the data using kali and mounting the file system images.

[Yuraeitha]

Now I know you're talking about Qubes 3.2. here, but this issue might possibly be related to Qubes 4. The Qubes VM Manager was originally planned to be out-phased in Qubes 4 and was supposed to become a relic of the past. But due to many people having an easier time having a visual GUI that the VM Manager provides, the Qubes developers brought it back recently in Qubes 4. However it still needs some updates and fixes before it can run a bit more smooth.

So here's thhe thing. Due to limited time and busy schedules to make everything for Qubes, I suspect that some of the updates designed for Qubes 4 has also arrived and mixed in with Qubes 3.2. to some extent. For example updates in qvm-usb, updates to the Qubes-tools, and so forth.

Now that doesn't mean all packages that resides on both Qubes 3.2. and Qubes 4 are equally updated. All I'm suspecting here, is that "some" might slip through to Qubes 3.2.

Basically, in Qubes 4 the Qubes mechanics has become so different, that the VM-Manager will take major re-work to make it work properly again. However it's already been brought back to a state where it's useful, albeit a bit slow. But the cool thing with the Qubes 4 VM-Manager is that the window now can be re-sized, although it doesn't yet remember the previous window size, but hopefully that's fixed sometime soon.

Either way, this could be a possible explanation, but I'm no expert, and this is only and merely a suspicion. Qubes 4 required a lot of work, and they're not quite done yet either. They're busy with it, and it's probably taken longer than anyone ever expected, although it has brought about some really good results so it's imho been well worth it.

Thing is though, Qubes 3.2. was probably not meant to be around this long, and it might be starting to show. But that's just be postulating, there might be another possible explanation.

But for what it's worth, having used Qubes 4 since RC-2, it's actually become quite stable now. If RC-4 is not out soon, then maybe upgrade to Qubes 4 RC-3? Also updates meant for RC-4 has been posted to Qubes 4 RC-3 current-testing too. Although it reamins to be seen whether a re-install is recommended between RC-3 and the yet to be released RC-4, the developers will tell us on the release day in the release news article, if any of the previous releases procedures is to go by.

[ludwig jaffe]

Hi, as there is RC-4 of something, it is clever to stick with qubes3.2 until there will be 4.1.
Also I would like to know how the qubes manager works, in order to fix it my self (maybe, I need to edit some XML), if nobody wants to help.

[awokd]

On Mon, January 29, 2018 10:25 pm, ludwig jaffe wrote:
> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 9:14:38 AM UTC-5, Yuraeitha wrote:
>
>> On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 1:06:13 PM UTC+1, ludwig jaffe wrote:

>>> The Qubes-VM-Manager only shows running VMs and not all the VMs that
>>> are there, but from the menue button one can start the shells of these
>>> VMs,
>>> which causes the vms to be started.
>>>
>>> Also I can not change the disk size of private.img in the shutdown
>>> personal vm. And maybe others.

> Hi, as there is RC-4 of something, it is clever to stick with qubes3.2
> until there will be 4.1. Also I would like to know how the qubes manager
> works, in order to fix it my self (maybe, I need to edit some XML), if
> nobody wants to help.

I'm sticking with 3.2 on my primary system until 4.0 is released, but rc4
is looking like it will be pretty close to ready.

Are you talking about your two questions above?
In Qubes Manager, go to the View menu and click Show/Hide Inactive VMs.
If you are trying to enter a smaller number to shrink it, I don't think
you can. Back up the personal VM's data, delete the VM, create a new one,
and restore the data.

[ludwig jaffe]

Yes, I want to repair my qubes-vm-manager.

When I say at dom0:

qvm-ls, then I see my VMs also the vms that I deleted in order to get space

by saying rm -rf /var/lib/qubes/appvm/asterisk-now (some stupid appliance, I tested,

and wanted to dispose, in order to free up space, which was not successfull because

of file system errors.

So I cleaned the file system and made a back-up and I want to modify config files

by hand so the tools do what they should do.

So I need to de-register the vms I deleted by hand,

and I need to tell qubes-vm-manager which vms are there. I wonder if it

uses the tools qvm-xxxx in order to do its work.

So I want to fix my old qubes 3.2 and then see if qubes 4 is really stable.

So any help is welcome on fixing my qubes 3.2 to give it the last polish to

remove the last traces of the disaster

Thanks,

Ludwig

[awokd]

On Mon, January 29, 2018 10:53 pm, ludwig jaffe wrote:
> Yes, I want to repair my qubes-vm-manager.

Did you In Qubes Manager, go to the View menu and click Show/Hide Inactive
VMs?

> made a back-up and I want to modify config files by hand so the tools do
> what they should do. So I need to de-register the vms I deleted by hand,
> and I need to tell qubes-vm-manager which vms are there. I wonder if it
> uses the tools qvm-xxxx in order to do its work.

If you are sure you want to manually edit the qubes config, it's in
/var/lib/qubes/qubes.xml. Make sure to make a backup of it first.

[ludwig jaffe]

Oh thank you I am a bit stupid,

I did not try the show hide button! Shame on me :-)

But still I have that zombie-VMs that I removed the hard way.

So I need to de-register them.

Ok I found the file, backed it up and want to edit it.

Do you know an xml ediitor with folding to edit this with more comfort,

as there is no <cr> in the xml, just spaghetti.

A vim for xml with folding or something like that with curses text gui woud be best.

[Tom Zander]

On Tuesday, 30 January 2018 00:19:58 CET ludwig jaffe wrote:
> Ok I found the file, backed it up and want to edit it.
> Do you know an xml ediitor with folding to edit this with more comfort,
> as there is no <cr> in the xml, just spaghetti.
> A vim for xml with folding or something like that with curses text gui
> woud be best.

$ xmllint -format < in.xml > out.xml
$ vim out.xml
:set foldmethod=syntax

--
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel

[ludwig jaffe]

Hi thanks,

I edited

/var/lib/qubes/qubes.xml

and removed the lines with the names of the VMs I deleted by hand before,

and needed to kill qubes-manager and to restart it, so the file gets read

and parsed.

Now my system behaves like before.

But there should be a warning if one configures the private.img size bigger

than the disk array holding the /var/lib/qubes stuff.

So qubes-manager should summarize the space used by the private.img and

warn the user not to take more space then the disk array can provide.

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 6:01 PM, awokd <aw...@danwin1210.me> wrote: