[Qubes-4.0] Vanishing Packages on TemplateVMs

[Modprobe]

** General intro stuff, not terribly important, tl;dr as appropriate **

Hi, all! Qubes newbie here; I installed Qubes on my new laptop just to see what happens and now I'm bumbling my way along, using it and reading docs, trying to get a feel for how things get done. For the most part, it's kind of awesome, but every now and then there's something that confuses me, and right now the most seriously confusing thing is that packages which I installed have a nasty tendency to uninstall themselves, and I'm not sure why...

Now a relevant bit of context is that I'm one of those nasty users who never does things according to the official guidelines and stuff, so I've made a number of tweaks to my installation to fit my habits. I'll do my best to keep track of what's unusual on my box and make those things clear up front, but I might forget something I've done, so please bear with me.

** Quirks about my Environment **

Right now, the main quirk on my box, I think, is that I really, really don't seem to like Fedora, and I really, really do like Arch, so I'm using the Arch template for most of my AppVMs. Building and installing the Arch template on Qubes 4 was a bumpy process (I used the instructions for Qubes 3.2 here, and had to improvise a fair bit as things didn't work), and I'm not 100% sure it went totally right, but I got to the end of the instructions and mostly it seems to work...

** My actual issue **

Except for the vanishing packages. So every now and then, I install a package into the TemplateVM (NOT the AppVM; I expect those packages to vanish when I reboot the AppVM, but packages in the TemplateVM should stick around until I remove them, yeah?) and it works and shows up correctly for a while, but some time later (often, I'm pretty certain, without any kind of reboot in the interim), the package is simply gone. I have to reinstall it cuz it's just not there anymore. I'm pretty darn sure this is not expected behavior, but maybe I'm just not understanding something.

It seems to be more prevalent for some packages than others; for instance, I've had AUR builds fail because `patch` wasn't installed, so I install patch and try again, and it works. The automake and autoconf packages do it too, but less often than patch. I've installed patch several times on my Arch TemplateVM by now, but it keeps disappearing behind my back:

[user@archlinux ~]$ history | grep patch

   57  pikaur -S patch

  200  pikaur -S patch

  204  pikaur -S patch

  276  pikaur -S patch

  291  pikaur -S automake patch autoconf

  292  history | grep patch

So that's my main confusion with Qubes right now; I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on. Am I making some dumb mistake? Thanks for your time! =)

--

Nathan

[Stuart Perkins]

On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 19:14:01 +0000
"'Modprobe' via qubes-users" <qubes...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>** General intro stuff, not terribly important, tl;dr as appropriate **
>Hi, all! Qubes newbie here; I installed Qubes on my new laptop just to see what happens and now I'm bumbling my way along, using it and reading docs, trying to get a feel for how things get done. For the most part, it's kind of awesome, but every now and then there's something that confuses me, and right now the most seriously confusing thing is that packages which I installed have a nasty tendency to uninstall themselves, and I'm not sure why...
>
>Now a relevant bit of context is that I'm one of those nasty users who never does things according to the official guidelines and stuff, so I've made a number of tweaks to my installation to fit my habits. I'll do my best to keep track of what's unusual on my box and make those things clear up front, but I might forget something I've done, so please bear with me.
>
>** Quirks about my Environment **

>Right now, the main quirk on my box, I think, is that I really, really don't seem to like Fedora, and I really, really do like Arch, so I'm using the Arch template for most of my AppVMs. Building and installing the Arch template on Qubes 4 was a bumpy process (I used the instructions for Qubes 3.2 [here](https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/building-archlinux-template/), and had to improvise a fair bit as things didn't work), and I'm not 100% sure it went totally right, but I got to the end of the instructions and mostly it seems to work...

>
>** My actual issue **
>Except for the vanishing packages. So every now and then, I install a package into the TemplateVM (NOT the AppVM; I expect those packages to vanish when I reboot the AppVM, but packages in the TemplateVM should stick around until I remove them, yeah?) and it works and shows up correctly for a while, but some time later (often, I'm pretty certain, without any kind of reboot in the interim), the package is simply gone. I have to reinstall it cuz it's just not there anymore. I'm pretty darn sure this is not expected behavior, but maybe I'm just not understanding something.
>
>It seems to be more prevalent for some packages than others; for instance, I've had AUR builds fail because `patch` wasn't installed, so I install patch and try again, and it works. The automake and autoconf packages do it too, but less often than patch. I've installed patch several times on my Arch TemplateVM by now, but it keeps disappearing behind my back:
>
>> [user@archlinux ~]$ history | grep patch
>> 57 pikaur -S patch
>> 200 pikaur -S patch
>> 204 pikaur -S patch
>> 276 pikaur -S patch
>> 291 pikaur -S automake patch autoconf
>> 292 history | grep patch
>
>So that's my main confusion with Qubes right now; I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on. Am I making some dumb mistake? Thanks for your time! =)
>
>--
>Nathan
>

In Qubes, the Templates are where software is installed. If you install software in an appVM, it will go away when you shutdown the appVM. This is to implement a separation of software and data, and is one of the foundations of Qubes.

If you want software available in a template based appVM, you need to install it in the template. You can install uncertain software in an appVM for evaluation and not worry if it doesn't work, as it will go away when you poweroff the appVM...but then you need to install that same software in the Template in order to make it available in the appVM.

Stuart

[Modprobe]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Wednesday, October 10, 2018 3:13 PM, Stuart Perkins <perkins...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 19:14:01 +0000
> "'Modprobe' via qubes-users" qubes...@googlegroups.com wrote:
>
> > ** General intro stuff, not terribly important, tl;dr as appropriate **
> > Hi, all! Qubes newbie here; I installed Qubes on my new laptop just to see what happens and now I'm bumbling my way along, using it and reading docs, trying to get a feel for how things get done. For the most part, it's kind of awesome, but every now and then there's something that confuses me, and right now the most seriously confusing thing is that packages which I installed have a nasty tendency to uninstall themselves, and I'm not sure why...
> > Now a relevant bit of context is that I'm one of those nasty users who never does things according to the official guidelines and stuff, so I've made a number of tweaks to my installation to fit my habits. I'll do my best to keep track of what's unusual on my box and make those things clear up front, but I might forget something I've done, so please bear with me.
> > ** Quirks about my Environment **

> > Right now, the main quirk on my box, I think, is that I really, really don't seem to like Fedora, and I really, really do like Arch, so I'm using the Arch template for most of my AppVMs. Building and installing the Arch template on Qubes 4 was a bumpy process (I used the instructions for Qubes 3.2 here, and had to improvise a fair bit as things didn't work), and I'm not 100% sure it went totally right, but I got to the end of the instructions and mostly it seems to work...

> > ** My actual issue **
> > Except for the vanishing packages. So every now and then, I install a package into the TemplateVM (NOT the AppVM; I expect those packages to vanish when I reboot the AppVM, but packages in the TemplateVM should stick around until I remove them, yeah?) and it works and shows up correctly for a while, but some time later (often, I'm pretty certain, without any kind of reboot in the interim), the package is simply gone. I have to reinstall it cuz it's just not there anymore. I'm pretty darn sure this is not expected behavior, but maybe I'm just not understanding something.
> > It seems to be more prevalent for some packages than others; for instance, I've had AUR builds fail because `patch` wasn't installed, so I install patch and try again, and it works. The automake and autoconf packages do it too, but less often than patch. I've installed patch several times on my Arch TemplateVM by now, but it keeps disappearing behind my back:
> >
> > > [user@archlinux ~]$ history | grep patch
> > > 57 pikaur -S patch
> > > 200 pikaur -S patch
> > > 204 pikaur -S patch
> > > 276 pikaur -S patch
> > > 291 pikaur -S automake patch autoconf
> > > 292 history | grep patch
> >
> > So that's my main confusion with Qubes right now; I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on. Am I making some dumb mistake? Thanks for your time! =)
> > --
> > Nathan
>
> In Qubes, the Templates are where software is installed. If you install software in an appVM, it will go away when you shutdown the appVM. This is to implement a separation of software and data, and is one of the foundations of Qubes.
>
> If you want software available in a template based appVM, you need to install it in the template. You can install uncertain software in an appVM for evaluation and not worry if it doesn't work, as it will go away when you poweroff the appVM...but then you need to install that same software in the Template in order to make it available in the appVM.
>
> Stuart

Hi, Stuart, and thanks, but as I described in the second sentence of the ** My actual issue **, I am aware of this and I am talking about packages installed into the TemplateVM, NOT the AppVM. I apologize if this got lost in the mix; I confess I am a tad verbose sometimes. :)

[awokd]

'Modprobe' via qubes-users wrote on 10/10/18 8:40 PM:

Haven't experienced this on the built-in Debian or Fedora templates.
Could the root image on the Arch template be rolling back to a previous
version on shutdown? See if the automake and autoconf packages disappear
along with patch next time.