Announcement for users experiencing update errors in dom0 and Fedora TemplateVMs

[Andrew David Wong]

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Dear Qubes Community,

The following message is for Qubes users who are experiencing trouble
while trying to update dom0 or Fedora TemplateVMs. If you have no
problems updating, please disregard this message.

If, while attempting to update dom0 or a Fedora TemplateVM, you have
encountered a message of the form "Error: Failed to synchronize cache
for repo 'qubes-vm-r*-current'", performing the steps below may
resolve the issue. Instructions are provided for both dom0 and Fedora
26 TemplateVMs.


Steps for dom0 updates:

1. Open the Qubes Menu by clicking on the "Q" icon in the top-left
corner of the screen.
2. Select "Terminal Emulator".
3. In the window that opens, enter this command:

sudo nano /etc/yum.repos.d/qubes-dom0.repo

4. This opens the nano text editor. Change all four instances of "http"
to "https".
5. Press CTRL+X, then Y, then ENTER to save changes and exit.
6. Check for updates normally.


Steps for Fedora 26 TemplateVM updates:

1. Open the Qubes Menu by clicking on the "Q" icon in the top-left
corner of the screen.
2. Select "Template: fedora-26", then "fedora-26: Terminal".
3. In the window that opens, enter the command for your version:

[Qubes 3.2] sudo gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/qubes-r3.repo
[Qubes 4.0] sudo gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/qubes-r4.repo

4. This opens the gedit text editor in a window. Change all four
instances of "http" to "https".
5. Click the "Save" button in the top-right corner of the window.
6. Close the window.
7. Check for updates normally.
8. Shut down the TemplateVM.


Thank you to awokd for suggesting and testing these instructions!

For further information about this issue, please see:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3737

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

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[john]

Changing both dom0 and the Fed Temp to all https

for Fedora-26 Q4
** (gedit:1959): WARNING **: Set document metadata failed: Setting
attribute metadata::gedit-encoding not supported

Then using the VMM to update Fed-26 there are like 5-6 [Mirror] 404
errors ...... However, it seems to update

Changing https back to http and no warning on saving qubes-r4.repo ,
not sure why I'm telling you this :)

[trueriver]

On Thursday, 26 April 2018 02:16:59 UTC+1, Andrew David Wong wrote:

> The following message is for Qubes users who are experiencing trouble

> while trying to update dom0 or Fedora TemplateVMs. ...

Remember to try the connection-related stuff first. Apols to any readers who think this seems too obvious to say, but it may not be obvious to everyone reading this. Never underestimate the wide range of abilities of people attrcted to Qubes!!

My updates usually work OK, but fail with this message when my wifi disconnects.

If you cannot load a page in firefox nor ping out from a terminal, then Andrew's suggestions could maybe wait till you do have a basic connection out to the web.

One way to check this is as follows

To ping out, open a terminal in any VM that should have a net connection, and type ping 8.8.8.8 (or any other IP address you happen to know - that one is maintained by Google). If the network is connected you will get one line of response every second. If you see nothing, you need to check the network. In my case, does the network manager icon show my wifi is down?

If that has worked, instead of the numeric address type a domain name (like github.com) and see if that gives a result. If there is no response, or a message to the effect that the domain could not be found, then you have a problem with DNS.

If either of the above is the problem then Andrew's otherwise excellent advice will lead you nowhere.

If you are using a wifi hotspot, then try opening a page in firefox - some website you have not visited recently so firefox has to fetch a page. You may instead get a page from the hotbot asking you to log in to that hotspot first.

As a final thought, if you do use public hotspots, for reasonable security you would be using a VPN - and a VPN misconfiguration (at your end) or server failure (at the VPN server farm) can also create this error message.