Qubes Manager Feature Requests: Connect to not-running NetVM, restart NetVM with connected machines, force-restart a NetVM

[r.wie...@web.de]

Hello fellow Qubes users,

I have 3 feature requests today regarding Qubes Manager:

1) Connect to not-running NetVM
If a not-running NetVM is chosen there should not be an error message
but a choice between "Start NetVM" and "Abort"

2) restart netVM with connected machines
Sometimes NetVMs have issues that are easily solved by a restart.
Nastily Qubes prevents restarting the netVM if VMs are connected. What
should optionally happen is either that the connected VMs are
disconnected, the NetVM is restarted and the VMs are reconnected (that
is what I do manually whenever this is needed) or alternatively that all
connected VMs are restarted as well.

3) force-reboot a VM
Users can kill a VM, but this way the user has to wait until the VM was
terminated and then start the machine again (kill + start). It would be
useful to have a single option for both tasks. That happens to me almost
daily with the USB-VM.

Thank you.

[donoban]

Hi,

On 2/15/21 12:44 PM, r.wie...@web.de wrote:
> Hello fellow Qubes users,
>
> I have 3 feature requests today regarding Qubes Manager:
>
> 1) Connect to not-running NetVM
> If a not-running NetVM is chosen there should not be an error message
> but a choice between "Start NetVM" and "Abort"

This is already done in R4.1 version.

> 2) restart netVM with connected machines
> Sometimes NetVMs have issues that are easily solved by a restart.
> Nastily Qubes prevents restarting the netVM if VMs are connected. What
> should optionally happen is either that the connected VMs are
> disconnected, the NetVM is restarted and the VMs are reconnected (that
> is what I do manually whenever this is needed) or alternatively that all
> connected VMs are restarted as well.

Respect this there is a "Cascade shutdown" that will power off all the
connected VM's in recursive mode. I understand that is not what you
mean, you want a option for restart this VM without touching any others...

I understand that you find it helpful for some kind of hardware problem
(sleep / wake up?) but it seems more a hack than a real solution.

> 3) force-reboot a VM
> Users can kill a VM, but this way the user has to wait until the VM was
> terminated and then start the machine again (kill + start). It would be
> useful to have a single option for both tasks. That happens to me almost
> daily with the USB-VM.

Uhm more than a force-reboot option, ideally the restart option should
trigger a timeout and if it expires ask you if you want to kill it or
keep waiting (same that shutdown option). Is it not the current behavior?

[Mike Keehan]

I use a simple shell script to restart my sysnet sometimes after the
system is suspended, as it does not restart correctly occasionally.

This is it:-
--------------------------------------------------
#
# reboot-sys-net
#

# Have to restart sys-net after suspend sometimes.

qvm-prefs sys-firewall netvm none
sleep 1
qvm-shutdown --wait sys-net
sleep 2
qvm-start sys-net
sleep 1
qvm-prefs sys-firewall netvm sys-net
---------------------------------------------------

All I can say is it works for me.

Mike.

[r.wie...@web.de]

> On 2/15/21 7:51 PM, donoban wrote:
>> On 2/15/21 12:44 PM, r.wie...@web.de wrote:
>>> 1) Connect to not-running NetVM
>>> If a not-running NetVM is chosen there should not be an error message
>>> but a choice between "Start NetVM" and "Abort"
>>
>> This is already done in R4.1 version.

Beautiful!

>> Respect this there is a "Cascade shutdown" that will power off all the
>> connected VM's in recursive mode. I understand that is not what you
>> mean, you want a option for restart this VM without touching any
>> others...
>>
>> I understand that you find it helpful for some kind of hardware problem
>> (sleep / wake up?) but it seems more a hack than a real solution.

In my scenario it is a workaround for a bug and I would not use the
cascading shutdown, however if this option is reworked I think this
option should be available as well as there are definitely usecases for
that (e.g. if you leave the office you shutdown lan-office and all
office-VMs that are connected to it as well)

>> Uhm more than a force-reboot option, ideally the restart option should
>> trigger a timeout and if it expires ask you if you want to kill it or
>> keep waiting (same that shutdown option). Is it not the current
>> behavior?
>>

There is a 20 second timeout and a "kill?" dialogue for VM shutdown, I
don't think there is for restart. The timeout and question is useful in
many cases, however if you already noticed that the VM is dead (e.g. you
start a program and nothing happens) then you don't want to wait the
extra 20 seconds.

> I use a simple shell script to restart my sysnet sometimes after the
> system is suspended, as it does not restart correctly occasionally.

Thanks, that is a nice approach that I could use with the kill. For my
specific issue I can also think of a menu entry which kill-restarts the
sys-usb. Just need to find out how to manually add entries to the quebes
menu, I think that can be done rather easily.

[Ulrich Windl]

On 2/15/21 8:51 PM, donoban wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2/15/21 12:44 PM, r.wie...@web.de wrote:
>> Hello fellow Qubes users,
>>
>> I have 3 feature requests today regarding Qubes Manager:
>>
>> 1) Connect to not-running NetVM
>> If a not-running NetVM is chosen there should not be an error message
>> but a choice between "Start NetVM" and "Abort"
>
> This is already done in R4.1 version.
>
>> 2) restart netVM with connected machines
>> Sometimes NetVMs have issues that are easily solved by a restart.
>> Nastily Qubes prevents restarting the netVM if VMs are connected. What
>> should optionally happen is either that the connected VMs are
>> disconnected, the NetVM is restarted and the VMs are reconnected (that
>> is what I do manually whenever this is needed) or alternatively that all
>> connected VMs are restarted as well.
>
> Respect this there is a "Cascade shutdown" that will power off all the
> connected VM's in recursive mode. I understand that is not what you
> mean, you want a option for restart this VM without touching any others...
>
> I understand that you find it helpful for some kind of hardware problem
> (sleep / wake up?) but it seems more a hack than a real solution.

Well, actually: Is there an internal management problem when restarting
the NetVM (or Firewall VM) while dependent VMs are running? If not I'd
expect some temporary "network outage" until those VMs are restarted,
Actually I feel it would be nice to restart Net or firewall while other
VMs are open.