Qubes menu failing. Come on guys

[Ryan Tate]

I don't know what is going on with 4.0.1 but suddenly my machine is haywire.

The latest is everything above and below the VMs is gone from the Qubes menu. The bottom of the menu where I'd go to shut down just says "No applications found." The top where I would go to find settings, Qubes Manager, even the dom0 Terminal is just gone. So I don't even know how to debug. I've rebooting several times, it keeps happening.

I know Qubes is fairly high maintenance but I had a nice groove going with qubes 4 finally. Whatever updates you are pushing down with 4.0.1 updates are breaking my workflow left and right. First whonix got borked now the Qubes menu is broken. I shudder to think what will be next to fail. This is frustrating. Some of us are actually trying to get work done in the OS.

[Andrew David Wong]

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

Hi Ryan,

Sorry for the frustrating problems. Would you mind filing a bug report
in qubes-issues so that the devs can look into it?

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/reporting-bugs/

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

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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=8UAd
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[unman]

Hi Ryan

Are you using Xfce? (The default desktop environment in Qubes)

Had you made any changes to the menu system?
Can you check the contents of /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu to
make sure you still have a Menu item for System Tools. If you're not
sure just post the contents here.

There was a problem in the past with .desktop files disappearing.
can you make sure that you have .desktop files in
/usr/share/applications ?

unman

[pieter lems]

I don't mean this in a bad way but isn't 4.0.1 a testing release? if you are using qubes for important things you should stick with 4.0 as of now. (it's also mentioned in the release notes) Devs are no wizards.  :)

I hope you get it working.

Op do 8 nov. 2018 om 13:45 schreef unman <un...@thirdeyesecurity.org>:

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to qubes...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/20181108124520.52omyiakelmg6x4b%40thirdeyesecurity.org.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[cooloutac]

I just lost all my system menus. It might have been from me trying to delete and reinstall a template. not sure what happened as I was having difficulties updating whonix-gw and took drastic measures lmao....

But an easy fix to add all the menu items back was to enter the command found here posted by jpouellet:

sudo qubes-dom0-update --action=reinstall $(rpm -qal | grep /usr/share/applications | xargs rpm -qf | sort -u)

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/2952

[cooloutac]

pretty sure i'm using R4.0 how do i check from console I'm only getting this from qube-manager

[cooloutac]

I think it happened from before the update for me. Losing all the system menu items happened from me deleting something myself I believe lol. but the not being able to fully load or an app to the gui from whonix-gw happened on its own.

[cooloutac]

but at this point I would like to just remove it and reinstall it but the same thing keeps happening. pretty sure only testing repos I use would be security one.

[unman]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 07:27:02PM -0800, cooloutac wrote:
> On Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 11:55:45 AM UTC-5, pieter lems wrote:
> > I don't mean this in a bad way but isn't 4.0.1 a testing release?
> > if you are using qubes for important things you should stick with 4.0 as
> > of now. (it's also mentioned in the release notes) Devs are no
> > wizards.  :)
> > I hope you get it working.
> >
> >
> > Op do 8 nov. 2018 om 13:45 schreef unman <un...@thirdeyesecurity.org>:
> > On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 08:14:23PM -0800, Ryan Tate wrote:
> >
> > > I don't know what is going on with 4.0.1 but suddenly my machine is haywire.
> >
> > >
> >
> > > The latest is everything above and below the VMs is gone from the Qubes menu. The bottom of the menu where I'd go to shut down just says "No applications found." The top where I would go to find settings, Qubes Manager, even the dom0 Terminal is just gone. So I don't even know how to debug. I've rebooting several times, it keeps happening.
> >
> > >
> >
> > > I know Qubes is fairly high maintenance but I had a nice groove going with qubes 4 finally. Whatever updates you are pushing down with 4.0.1 updates are breaking my workflow left and right. First whonix got borked now the Qubes menu is broken. I shudder to think what will be next to fail. This is frustrating. Some of us are actually trying to get work done in the OS.
> >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Ryan
> >
> >
> >
> > Are you using Xfce? (The default desktop environment in Qubes)
> >
> >
> >
> > Had you made any changes to the menu system?
> >
> > Can you check the contents of /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu to
> >
> > make sure you still have a Menu item for System Tools. If you're not
> >
> > sure just post the contents here.
> >
> >
> >
> > There was a problem in the past with .desktop files disappearing.
> >
> > can you make sure that you have .desktop files in
> >
> > /usr/share/applications ?
> >
> >
> >
> > unman
> >
>

> pretty sure i'm using R4.0 how do i check from console I'm only getting this from qube-manager
>

You can check in /etc/fedora-release.

If you are missing the desktop files in /usr/share/applications, then
you can reload them from the installation disk - cooloutac has already
told you how to do that.

unman

[Steve Coleman]

On 11/8/18 7:45 AM, unman wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 08:14:23PM -0800, Ryan Tate wrote:

>> The latest is everything above and below the VMs is gone from the Qubes menu. The bottom of the menu where I'd go to shut down just says "No applications found." The top where I would go to find settings, Qubes Manager, even the dom0 Terminal is just gone. So I don't even know how to debug. I've rebooting several times, it keeps happening.

> Had you made any changes to the menu system?
> Can you check the contents of /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu to
> make sure you still have a Menu item for System Tools. If you're not
> sure just post the contents here.
>
> There was a problem in the past with .desktop files disappearing.
> can you make sure that you have .desktop files in
> /usr/share/applications ?
>
> unman

There is one consistently reproducible way to destroy the Qubes menu, by
simply using the built in xfce/other menu editor to reorganize your menu
entries, if you happen to be the impatient type in trying to get it
done. I have tried every menu editor I could find, and they all seem to
do pretty much the same damage.

Example:
1) Right click on the xfce/Qubes menu button.
2) Select properties from the popup menu
3) Select the edit menu button.
4) Select a sub-menu for any VM to edit
5) Select an entry on the right to move an application up/down in the list
6) Press the up or down button quickly in succession, say to move an
entry from the bottom of the list, up to the top of the list.
7) Save the menu.

Congratulations, you now have no Qubes menu at all, so lets hope you
still have a dom0 command window open.

To recover the menu, start a template vm via qvm-run, and run dnf to
update or make any change that in turn forces a dom0 resync of the Qubes
menu items. Or perhaps you can just force a resync from the dom0 command
line (qvm-sync-appmenus), but I have not tested that.

I believe (a wild *** guess, base on only visual clues and behavioral
evidence) the problem is that the editor rewrites a file upon each
'move' button click, and if you do it too quickly there is a concurrency
problem with re-opening the menu files that have not yet been
closed/flushed to disk. They may be reading and updating a partially
written menu file.

Do the same thing slowly and count-to-3 between mouse clicks, and there
is no problem. If you can hear your disk drive churning when clicking
the up/down button, when its quiet again, then it is ok to push the
button again.

I'm guessing this is an upstream xfce read/write/thread locking problem,
but the added complexity of the Qubes menu might be the reason for the
concurrency/timing issue due to more complexity overhead and Xen CPU
latencies. I'm guessing if you had a very simple xfce menu (e.g. the
default/simple xfce OS installation), and without Xen overhead, this
would likely not happen, thus the proper locking had never been
implemented. I have not yet had the luxury of the time to chase this
thread, to actually confirm my suspicion, so your mileage may vary. On
my system this is 100% reproducible.

Bottom line, don't be too quick with changes to the menu, or you will be
spending even more time repairing your system. The first time this
happened I had no clue how to recover.


Steve

[brenda...@gmail.com]

On Friday, November 9, 2018 at 9:56:22 AM UTC-5, steve.coleman wrote:
> There is one consistently reproducible way to destroy the Qubes menu, by
> simply using the built in xfce/other menu editor to reorganize your menu
> entries, if you happen to be the impatient type in trying to get it
> done. I have tried every menu editor I could find, and they all seem to
> do pretty much the same damage.
>
> Example:
> 1) Right click on the xfce/Qubes menu button.
> 2) Select properties from the popup menu
> 3) Select the edit menu button.
> 4) Select a sub-menu for any VM to edit
> 5) Select an entry on the right to move an application up/down in the list
> 6) Press the up or down button quickly in succession, say to move an
> entry from the bottom of the list, up to the top of the list.
> 7) Save the menu.
>
> Congratulations, you now have no Qubes menu at all, so lets hope you
> still have a dom0 command window open.
>
> To recover the menu, start a template vm via qvm-run, and run dnf to
> update or make any change that in turn forces a dom0 resync of the Qubes
> menu items. Or perhaps you can just force a resync from the dom0 command
> line (qvm-sync-appmenus), but I have not tested that.

...

> Bottom line, don't be too quick with changes to the menu, or you will be
> spending even more time repairing your system. The first time this
> happened I had no clue how to recover.

Hi Steve,

I know this was posted long ago, but would an alternate fix be to right click on the desktop, open terminal here, and then execute the following:

qvm-appmenus dom0

?

B