delaying total shutdown of disposable qube

[Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson]

Hi

When we open an attachment from emails, like .odf files and such, and
start writing in them, meaning to send the edited file back to the
sender. Then there is a slight chance of a person saving the file,
closing the editor and then loosing the file because the qube has shut
down.

We would like to add a new disposable template in which the disposable
vm's will be shut down with a delay of a few minutes, just enough for
the person to start replying to the email and finding that they need the
file and then open up the file manager from that disposable qube that
was almost shut down and thus saving the file.

How would we do this? Is there some option in Qubes-OS that supports this?

If no option exists then I would like to know what happens when you
close an app like librewriter that is opened in a dispvm. How does the
dispvm know that it is supposed to shut down when the app is closed?
Perhaps we can find a way through there to implement some kind of delay.

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Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson
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[Rusty Bird]

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Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson:

> We would like to add a new disposable template in which the disposable vm's
> will be shut down with a delay of a few minutes, just enough for the person
> to start replying to the email and finding that they need the file and then
> open up the file manager from that disposable qube that was almost shut down
> and thus saving the file.
>
> How would we do this? Is there some option in Qubes-OS that supports this?

I'm not aware of a built-in option, but you could cobble two things
together:

1. To make the destination qubes.OpenInVM service wait indefinitely
after the launched program is done, create an executable file at
/usr/local/etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.OpenInVM in e.g. fedora-delayed-dvm
containing:

#!/bin/sh
/etc/qubes-rpc/"${0##*/}" "$@"
exec sleep inf

Maybe also link it at /usr/local/etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.OpenURL to
get the same behavior for URLs.

2. To automatically shut down DisposableVMs based on
fedora-delayed-dvm when they have been running with no windows for 15
minutes, install the qubes-app-shutdown-idle package in the TemplateVM
(e.g. fedora-33), and:

$ qvm-service --enable fedora-delayed-dvm shutdown-idle

Rusty
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[Rusty Bird]

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Hash: SHA512

Rusty Bird:

> Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson:
> > We would like to add a new disposable template in which the disposable vm's
> > will be shut down with a delay of a few minutes, just enough for the person
> > to start replying to the email and finding that they need the file and then
> > open up the file manager from that disposable qube that was almost shut down
> > and thus saving the file.
> >
> > How would we do this? Is there some option in Qubes-OS that supports this?
>
> I'm not aware of a built-in option, but you could cobble two things
> together:

Umm, but also: If you open the file in a DisposableVM for editing,
don't you already get the modified file back if you just press save
and close the DisposableVM window?

> 1. To make the destination qubes.OpenInVM service wait indefinitely
> after the launched program is done, create an executable file at
> /usr/local/etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.OpenInVM in e.g. fedora-delayed-dvm
> containing:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> /etc/qubes-rpc/"${0##*/}" "$@"
> exec sleep inf
>
> Maybe also link it at /usr/local/etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.OpenURL to
> get the same behavior for URLs.
>
> 2. To automatically shut down DisposableVMs based on
> fedora-delayed-dvm when they have been running with no windows for 15
> minutes, install the qubes-app-shutdown-idle package in the TemplateVM
> (e.g. fedora-33), and:
>
> $ qvm-service --enable fedora-delayed-dvm shutdown-idle

Rusty
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[Sven Semmler]

On 4/21/21 9:07 AM, 'Ólafur Jens Sigurðsson' via qubes-users wrote:
> When we open an attachment from emails, like .odf files and such, and
> start writing in them, meaning to send the edited file back to the
> sender. Then there is a slight chance of a person saving the file,
> closing the editor and then loosing the file because the qube has
> shut down.

How do you do this?

a) Qubes Attachments (thunderbird-qubes)
b) qvm-open-in-dvm configured under Files & Attachments in Thunderbird
c) saving the file to a folder and invoking qvm-open-in-dvm or
equivalent context menu option

Your question makes sense with a) & b)

On 4/21/21 3:07 PM, Rusty Bird wrote:
> Umm, but also: If you open the file in a DisposableVM for editing,
> don't you already get the modified file back if you just press save
> and close the DisposableVM window?

This would be scenario c) ... in which case there is no issue as the
sending qube now has an updated (edited) version of the file as Rusty
Bird points out.

> We would like to add a new disposable template in which the
> disposable vm's will be shut down with a delay of a few minutes,

You could achieve this by combining a named disposable qube [1] with the
shutdown script [2] earlier linked by Rusty Bird.

[1] see
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/disposablevm-customization/#create-custom-sys-net-sys-firewall-and-sys-usb-disposablevms
as an example. These qubes are disposable (no persistence) but will
remain running until you shut them down.

[2] https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-app-shutdown-idle ... available as
a package from the standard Qubes OS repo.

/Sven

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