Global updates question

[Fabrizio Romano Genovese]

Hello all,

I'm trying to write a little script to globally update my qubes templates.
It should work more or less like this:

- It prepares a window layout for i3, so that all the opening terminals from the various templates will occupy the right place in a dedicated desktop;
- Then it launches the terminal in every template vm, feeding it a nice 'sudo dnf update'
- When the update is finished, one should have the chance to close the vm by pressing enter like it happens now on qubes manager.

I already implemented the first point (window layout) but I'm having problems at launching the terminals in the right way. I'm basically passing to the vm commands like 'xterm -e "sudo dnf update"', but what happens is that the terminal opens up, checks for updates and then closes without giving me the chance to say y/n.

As I mentioned above, in qubes manager when one clicks on "update vm" a nice terminal window opens up, does everything it has to do and then asks you if you want to shutdown the vm or not by pressing enter or control+c, respectively, if I remember well.
Since I would really like to have a similar feature in my script, I am wondering if qubes-manager calls some script to behave like it does.

If this is the case, I could just call the same script once for every template and solve my problems without struggle.

Thanks for your Time,
Fab

[Andrew David Wong]

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Have you considered not starting terminals in the TemplateVMs? By
using --pass-io and not starting the GUI of each TemplateVM, you can
save resources and hassle. Here's an example:

https://gist.github.com/andrewdavidwong/d0b109186de65835255d467ae103c289

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

Well, I have considered it, yes, and it's true that launching many terminals can be resource intensive. But it's also faster:  Using & I can launch all the terminals at the same time, while cycling as in the script you linked I should wait for the previous update process to finish.

Moreover, I confess that staring at the terminals for 5 mins every couple of days relaxes me, so I like it better :)

Anyway I feel like I'm missing something, what I want to do doesn't look so difficult and I'm not sure why it doesn't work!

Cheers,

Fab

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 10:51 PM, Fabrizio Romano Genovese
<themastero...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, I have considered it, yes, and it's true that launching many terminals
> can be resource intensive. But it's also faster: Using & I can launch all
> the terminals at the same time, while cycling as in the script you linked I
> should wait for the previous update process to finish.

Not if you just background the process, like:

for dom in templateA templateB ...; do
qvm-run -p -u root some-template 'dnf update' &
done

Anyway... the code you're looking for is here:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-core-agent-linux/blob/master/qubes-rpc/qubes.InstallUpdatesGUI

[Fabrizio Romano Genovese]

Thanks everyone, that code does exactly what I wanted. Calling

bash /etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.InstallUpdatesGUI

with qvm-run for a given VM produces the same result of uptating the VM via qubes-manager.

Thanks for your Time,

Fab

T