Lenovo Thinkpad P50 Qubes

[Peter M]

I have been using Qubes for about 2 months now and loving it. I currently run it on a Thinkpad X220T but it is getting a bit long in the tooth and looking at a future upgrade. I am thinking about the upcoming Thinkpad P50 but wanted to make sure that I am looking at the compatibility in the right way.

Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1505v5 (has vPro)
SSD: Sata 3 SSD (not likely to be a concern)
         PCIe SSD NVMe (Not sure on Qubes support here)
Graphics: Nvidia Quadro M2000M (has VGA passthrough)
Optimus: Not expecting support here will stick to discrete
WLAN: Intel 8260 (Typically had good experiences with intel wireless)
Battery Life: It has a 170W power supply so if I get 20 minutes battery life I will be happy
TPM 3.0: Qubes seems to support lenovo TPM pretty well
BT 4.1: Not likely to be supported but a security risk so dont care
Camera: Again security risk

What I wanted from the forum is to see if anyone else had there eye on the laptop and whether I was looking at compatibility in the right way. I looked at it from a Xen, Virtualbox compatibility viewpoint.

My only disapointment with Qubes is that you dont make a phone OS. :) Multiple VMs in a phone would be absolutely amazing from a security and privacy standpoint.

[derfa...@gmail.com]

hi peter,

i went to a store today and tested qubes 3.1rc3 on a P70 - the one with the 4k display and the xeon processor. it worked nicely - (after adding the i915.preliminiary_hw_support=1 kernel option), including IOMMU and TPM :)

i ordered the P50 (with the i7-6820HQ and full-hd display, i think 4k is a waste on a 15" notebook), it should arrive later this week.

did you go for one? read: should i panic-cancel my order? ;-)

best,

fake

[Achim Patzner]

> i went to a store today and tested qubes 3.1rc3 on a P70 - the one with the 4k display and the xeon processor. it worked nicely - (after adding the i915.preliminiary_hw_support=1 kernel option), including IOMMU and TPM :)

As long as you don’t try activating the Intel TPM…

> did you go for one? read: should i panic-cancel my order? ;-)

You might have tested some more things (like the Type-C connectors); you’re in for quite some fun.


Achim

[Peter M]

I have not put much effort into it but I have not had much luck getting Qubes to run on my P50. Having issues trying to get the kernel options in but this is inexperience. Let me know how you go with it. 

[derfa...@gmail.com]

hi,

On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 5:08:30 AM UTC+1, Peter M wrote:
> I have not put much effort into it but I have not had much luck getting Qubes to run on my P50. Having issues trying to get the kernel options in but this is inexperience. Let me know how you go with it. 

i spent last weekend giving the P50 a good test run - i'll definitely keep it ;)

here's my roundup:
- vanilla Qubes R3.1 iso works in UEFI as well as in Legacy mode :D
- HVM and IOMMU work as expected
- after the installation, you'll be greeted with a black screen after firstboot - if you move the mouse to the very bottom, the screen would show, but it turns
black again when you move the mouse up. this does not occur after a reboot,
but it does if you log out of a session.
- wifi does not work out of the box. you can install kernel-qubes-vm from qubes-
dom0-unstable and set the netvm to use that to get it up and running
- installing kernel-qubes from qubes-dom0-unstable fixes the display glitch
mentioned above, and also gave me working sleep/wake \o/
- the nasty: the nouveau kms driver does not work as expected, so switching to
"discrete graphics only" in bios is not an option. it has to be hybrid..
- the nouveau xorg driver crashes when used - read: when an external display is
connected during x start. this is caused by a fault in the GLAMOR acceleration
- if you need multimonitor, you have two options:
1) run X -configure and add Option "AccelMethod" "exa" to the nouveau device,
be prepared to set up Xinerama manually (dropping XRandR support)
2) rename /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so to something else (this
keeps XRandR support, but won't survive xorg updates)
- nouveau output is somewhat dirty, redraw regions seem to be missed (yet,
this also still happens on a 4.4 kernel baremetal). it's usable though.

i did not try TPM, USB Type-C (no hardware), or the GSM modem.

i still have an issue with usbvm not accepting a keyboard i plug in (mouse works fine though), but that's not related to the device.

cheers!

[Achim Patzner]

On 03/14/2016 07:41 PM, derfa...@gmail.com wrote:
> hi,
>
> On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 5:08:30 AM UTC+1, Peter M wrote:
>> I have not put much effort into it but I have not had much luck getting Qubes to run on my P50. Having issues trying to get the kernel options in but this is inexperience. Let me know how you go with it.

> - after the installation, you'll be greeted with a black screen after firstboot - if you move the mouse to the very bottom, the screen would show, but it turns
> black again when you move the mouse up. this does not occur after a reboot,
> but it does if you log out of a session.

Are you sure that you're not running the EFI frame buffer driver but the
Intel driver? I've got even stranger result with that driver at HiDPI...

> - wifi does not work out of the box. you can install kernel-qubes-vm from qubes-
> dom0-unstable and set the netvm to use that to get it up and running

You could also go the long way and add the latest iwl driver (that would
support the 8260) to the default kernel but that's quite a bit of work
as you have to mangle the qubes-builder environment accordingly.

> - installing kernel-qubes from qubes-dom0-unstable fixes the display glitch
> mentioned above, and also gave me working sleep/wake \o/
> - the nasty: the nouveau kms driver does not work as expected, so switching to
> "discrete graphics only" in bios is not an option. it has to be hybrid..
> - the nouveau xorg driver crashes when used - read: when an external display is
> connected during x start. this is caused by a fault in the GLAMOR acceleration
> - if you need multimonitor, you have two options:
> 1) run X -configure and add Option "AccelMethod" "exa" to the nouveau device,
> be prepared to set up Xinerama manually (dropping XRandR support)
> 2) rename /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so to something else (this
> keeps XRandR support, but won't survive xorg updates)
> - nouveau output is somewhat dirty, redraw regions seem to be missed (yet,
> this also still happens on a 4.4 kernel baremetal). it's usable though.
>
> i did not try TPM, USB Type-C (no hardware), or the GSM modem.

I could not yet even *order* the modem yet but got a few Type-C USB
devices and had the surprise of my life. I'm waiting for some
Thunderbolt and some graphics adapter now to assess the rest of the damage.

> i still have an issue with usbvm not accepting a keyboard i plug in (mouse works fine though), but that's not related to the device.

I've got similar problems right now (Marek: Even if I disconnect all
pointer devices from the Logitech dongle I still don't get the keyboard
working -- would you please try it once yourself?).


Achim

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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Make sure you have:
1. Latest updates installed (both dom0 and template)
2. Enabled keyboard service in qubes rpc policy
(/etc/qubes-rpc/policy/qubes.InputKeyboard).

It looks like Logitech dongle remember devices connected in the past, so
it still is advertised as keyboard+mouse. But with the latest updates
installed it should just work.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Achim Patzner]

On 03/15/2016 01:35 PM, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:
> It looks like Logitech dongle remember devices connected in the past,
> so it still is advertised as keyboard+mouse. But with the latest
> updates installed it should just work.

I just replaced the USB dongle by one which received a firmware upgrade
(remider: do the upgrade, too), connected a keyboard to it and it
worked. I guess I really have to reset them all... *grmbl* Why is
firmware always written by *censored*?


Achim

[Peter M]

I played around with it a bit and got it to work no problem.  I would really like to get the Nvidia driver working but am having a few issues. I installed the driver using (https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/install-nvidia-driver/) and the manual installation method. This is a test setup so I am not as concerned with malicious code in the driver.... yet. The problem that I have is that I cannot disable the Nouveau driver. I am used to working with grub.cfg but I dont have grub.cfg and grub2-mkconfig. It may have something to do with having an encrypted EFI install but it is a little out of my league.

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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In EFI installation, kernel parameters are in
/boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Thomas "fake" Jakobi]

hi peter,

> On 24 Mar 2016, at 04:07, Peter M <pjm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I played around with it a bit and got it to work no problem. I would really like to get the Nvidia driver working but am having a few issues. I installed the driver using (https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/install-nvidia-driver/) and the manual installation method.

i'm afraid the nvidia driver doesn't support running under XEN anymore for quite a while now. i tried on two occasions, one of them being the P50. in both cases, x would not start, and the error in the log file states:

NVIDIA(0): Failed to allocate software rendering cache surface: out of memory.

which, when stuck into google, points to nvidia not supporting xen since the ~310ish driver version (and no, there is plenty of memory left).

i have hopes though that the new beta driver (364.12) released a couple of days ago might change the game here - it has, among other new stuff, KMS support.. but i'm no longer on a test setup and i'm afraid to kill my dom0 ;-)

> [... grub vs. efi ...]

marek was faster shouting xen.cfg ^^

good luck,

fake

[Peter M]

Agreed, I have had little luck getting Nvidia to work. A shame since the P50 is otherwise a perfect Qubes laptop.  Now to start playing around with it and learn the intricacies.

[derfa...@gmail.com]

hey,

On Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 5:21:09 AM UTC+2, Peter M wrote:
> Agreed, I have had little luck getting Nvidia to work. A shame since the P50 is otherwise a perfect Qubes laptop.  Now to start playing around with it and learn the intricacies.

i tried the new beta driver on another system (with a 900 series card in it), but unfortunately still with the same result :(

i'll try building the 4.6-rc kernel for qubes, it should have better support for the P50's card.. i hope. now if only there were documentation on how to build the qubes dom0 kernel... ;-)

fake

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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There is some:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/qubes-builder/

The right component is "linux-kernel". You'll find there "version" file
(place kernel version) and "config" (kernel configuration).

But if you want to build just some kernel to test, you can simply use
standard "make all modules_install install" way, in dom0. Be sure to
verify tarball signature before. You'll probably need also compiler etc
installed there (qubes-dom0-update be your friend).

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Peter M]

Ok so I have played around with Qubes with the P50. Finding that nearly everything works.

Yes when the computer comes back from logout the screen is black and you have to reboot. This is really the biggest bug that affects daily usage.

I loaded up a windows 7 HVM and it worked fairly well. I was able to get windows tools installed from the testing branch. It installed cleanly and the performance is good. Seamless mode does not work (it just hangs).

Can anyone identify what the likely cause of the problem is?

If I switch debugging mode on where would the output log be stored?

[piitb...@gmail.com]

Hello Peter,

Am Montag, 28. März 2016 03:40:03 UTC+2 schrieb Peter M:

[...]

I loaded up a windows 7 HVM and it worked fairly well. I was able to get windows tools installed from the testing branch. It installed cleanly and the performance is good. Seamless mode does not work (it just hangs).
Can anyone identify what the likely cause of the problem is?
If I switch debugging mode on where would the output log be stored?

I have also problems getting seamless to work with windows 7.
I've tried various things and documented them here:

Some Progress: Windows 7 (with Qubes Windows Tools) in Qubes OS 3.1 (Full Desktop Mode works)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/jc5-yZaTTos

As I would like to demo Qubes OS at our company I would like to get seamless work running.

The question is:
Are these problems related to our lenovo notebooks (I own a W540) or is it a genral problem, as such I would to hear if others have the recent Qubes OS running with the newest Qubes Tools and got seamless mode running. If not I would suggest opening a new specific topic for that.

So, who has seamless mode running and with what setup?
(Notebook modell / Qubes OS version / Windows Version / Qubes Tools Versoin / Display Resolution)?

In an older post I have found through the google group search, it seems that the resolution from the windows HVM must equal the resolution of the host VM (Dom0).

Re: No windows showing up from seamless win7 appVM
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/qubes-users/seamless$20windows/qubes-users/huZs9iq4Sr4/Uy23ETDPNv8J

Is this still valid as my Windos HVM has a smaller resolution?

Last Question:
A suggestion was to enable a VNC server in the windows HVM to access it, when no windows is coming up.
Question: How do I access this VNC Server from the untrusted HVM?

regards

- Piit

[piitb...@gmail.com]

Am Montag, 28. März 2016 10:31:25 UTC+2 schrieb piitb...@gmail.com:

[...]

In an older post I have found through the google group search, it seems that the resolution from the windows HVM must equal the resolution of the host VM (Dom0).

Re: No windows showing up from seamless win7 appVM
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/qubes-users/seamless$20windows/qubes-users/huZs9iq4Sr4/Uy23ETDPNv8J

Is this still valid as my Windos HVM has a smaller resolution?

(somewhat) sucess regarding seamless mode under Qubes OS 3.1 and Qubes Tools under Windows 7 Pro.
I have reduced my native resolution so that the Windows HVM and Qubes are running the same resolution.

xrandr shows

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2880 x 1620, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected primary 2880x1620+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 340mm x 190mm
   2880x1620     59.96*+  50.00 
   2048x1536     60.00 
   1920x1440     60.00 
   1856x1392     60.01 
   1792x1344     60.01 
   1600x1200     60.00 
   1400x1050     59.98 
   1280x1024     60.02 
   1280x960      60.00 
   1024x768      60.00 
   800x600       60.32    56.25 
   640x480       59.94 
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

I've run xrandr --output eDP1 --mode 1600x1200 to set the display resolution in Dom0
Then I started the windows VM changes the resolution to 1600x1200 and installed the Qubes Tools Windows GUI Agent.
With that seamless was working, even after switching back to the native resolution in Dom0.
Starting applications from the Qubes Start Menu also works.

Unfortunately I ran into some issues after restarting, but setting Debug Mode in the VM Manager I was able to restart in Fullscreen mode.

@Peter:
Try to switch the display resolution in the Windows HVM to match your dom0 resolution and see if this makes seamless work mmode working.

- Piit

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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Thanks for detailed info, I hope this will help a lot with fixing GUI
agent on Windows.

I can confirm exactly the same - the same VM booted with dom0 resolution
of 1600x1050 does work with seamless mode, but when booted with dom0
resolution of 2880x1620 - it does not.

Rafał, any idea? Maybe some memory allocation failure? qga log is empty.

You can get resolution bigger than physical screen size by using xrandr
- --output OUTPUT_NAME --panning 2880x1620

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Peter M]

I can confirm this is likely the issue as well. I examined the resolution on my windows vm  and it was 1920x1024 for some reason while dom0 was 1920x1080. I created a new windows vm with 1920x1080 (I messed up the original one). I can confirm that seamless mode now works perfectly.

fake: if you need help testing any solution to the nvidia issue let me know.

[Rafał Wojdyła]

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That's pretty strange, I remember removing the resolution limitations
in the windows agent. I've tested full desktop mode with some pretty
high resolutions and it worked fine, but admittedly I don't have a
machine with high native resolution to test that scenario.

> Rafał, any idea? Maybe some memory allocation failure? qga log is
> empty.
>
> You can get resolution bigger than physical screen size by using

> xrandr --output OUTPUT_NAME --panning 2880x1620
>
Yeah, allocation failure is the first thing that comes to mind but the
agent should at least start, and fail to connect to the (not correctly
initialized) driver in such case. If the log is totally empty then the
agent fails to start at all. Is there anything in the QgaWatchdog log?
That's the service which (re)starts the gui agent.


- --
Rafał Wojdyła
Qubes Tools for Windows developer
https://www.qubes-os.org/
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[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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Just a couple of lines "Process 'qga.exec' not running, restarting it".
I found also that after VM shutdown (or maybe some other action...)
there is something in qga log (that's the whole log):
[20160329.002420.735-1496-E] QvUnregisterWatchedDC:
ExtEscape(QVESC_STOP_WATCHING_SURFACE) failed, error 0
[20160329.002420.751-1496-E] WinMain: WatchForEvents failed with error
6: The handle is invalid.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[piitb...@gmail.com]

Am Dienstag, 29. März 2016 02:25:47 UTC+2 schrieb Marek Marczykowski-Górecki:

Thanks for detailed info, I hope this will help a lot with fixing GUI
agent on Windows.

Hello Marek,

... somewhat glad to hear that it is not me who was failing getting Seamless work to mode.

If I can assist with some more logs or testing, send me an email, I'm happy to help.

What about the 2nd topic, that it not possible to shutdown the windows machine after Qubes Agent GUI has been installed?

To me this looks like another topic (maybe bug).

- Piit

[Peter M]

I have not noticed an issue with shutting down the Windows machine myself.

I have had issues with certain applications constantly crashing in seamless mode (wordpad, internet explorer). in particular I tried to maximize wordpad and it maximized the window (the qubes part) but not the window holding wordpad.

[Peter M]

I am hoping that this article may give us insight into solving the problem (www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide) combined with the latest beta nvidia 264.12 driver.

I got up to step 2.6 but because I have EFI/encrypted system I have to deal with xen.cfg instead of grub. I added the nouveau blacklist at the end of grub, removed nouveau and did the initrafms step. End result was an unbootable system.

Any pointers?

[piitb...@gmail.com]

Slightly offtopic, but as I would also like to "repair" my nvidia gpu in Qubes.
Isn't it just easier to use Qubes with GRUB (=not using UEFI) or is there anything I miss security or feature wise?

- Piit

[Peter M]

One of the key advantages of the P50 is the ability to run NVMe drives with 1600Mb/s write speeds. The disadvantage is that they require EFI.

[Peter M]

On Monday, March 28, 2016 at 3:34:52 AM UTC-6, piitb...@gmail.com wrote:

Am Montag, 28. März 2016 10:31:25 UTC+2 schrieb piitb...@gmail.com:

[...]

Unfortunately I ran into some issues after restarting, but setting Debug Mode in the VM Manager I was able to restart in Fullscreen mode.

@Peter:
Try to switch the display resolution in the Windows HVM to match your dom0 resolution and see if this makes seamless work mmode working.

- Piit

I have run into a brain dead moment here. Been stuck with work for the last while and have forgotton how I originally forced the resolution of the windows VM to change from 1920x1024 to 1920x1080.

Can anyone help me manage my blonde moment?

[derfa...@gmail.com]

hi,

On Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 4:24:37 AM UTC+2, Peter M wrote:
> [...]

>
> fake: if you need help testing any solution to the nvidia issue let me know.

i played around some more, but then i saw kernel-qubes 4.4.8 was uploaded to dom0-unstable - i've just tested it and i'm happy to say: no need for the proprietary driver anymore :D

i have the bios set to "discrete graphics only", and my libglamoregl.so is still renamed (did not try enabling it, there was no update yet). i have _no_ xorg.conf, and i'm using two external screens, one connected via HDMI and the other via displayport. no glitches anymore whatsoever, xrandr works fine.

sometimes the screen connected to the HDMI out will not be detected - only a reboot fixes this, but i saw the same issue with the proprietary driver and even on windows.

on another note, i finally ended up deleting my usbvm. it would only come up every third or fourth reboot, and if it didn't, i was not able to start it up manually. i made sure all usb device drivers in dom0 are blacklisted, and i disabled whatever devices i found in the bios, but it was still a gamble. if it came up, the system booted notably faster, and everything worked as expected (keyboard/mouse passthrough, etc). i got too annoyed by the constant reboot jeopardy though ;-)

have fun!

fake

[Achim Patzner]

> Am 16.05.2016 um 12:57 schrieb derfa...@gmail.com:
>
> on another note, i finally ended up deleting my usbvm. it would only come up every third or fourth reboot, and if it didn't, i was not able to start it up manually.

The P70 has the same problem after updating the firmware to version 2.00; there seems to be some race condition affecting bus initialization and management engine/firmware. Waiting with entering the disk passphrase helps, turning the machine off before booting helps, too. Not auto-starting it doesn’t change anything so I’d expect it to be a Xen problem.


Achim

[derfa...@gmail.com]

hi fellow p50ers,

i can happily confirm that this usb-vm issue seems to be resolved in qubes R3.2-rc1. also, i updated the BIOS to 1.26 and, after reading in the lenovo forums, updated the thunderbolt firmware to the latest version, which fixed the HDMI output issue for me.

Qubes R3.2 will fully support the Lenovo P50 out of the box! :D

best,

fake

[Peter M]

Excellent news, I will hold off until R3.2-rc2 at least before taking the plunge but am glad the compatibility has improved.

[Peter M]

On Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 5:08:09 PM UTC-6, derfa...@gmail.com wrote:

Did you install it in EFI mode or without? Did you do clean install or upgrade?
Tried doing clean install of 3.2 RC1 and it installs fine but when I select Qubes on boot list it comes straight back.

Any ideas?

[anton...@gmail.com]

I sloved this issue after a HDD change.
The original disk broke so i swapped it for a Skylake compatible NVMe M.2 SSD.
Turns out, the BIOS will treat this drive slightly differently and there for qubes will as well.

Either it's because the UUID keeps changing each boot and Qubes old core won't deal with this at all, or it's because it's simply the driver that's so "new" Fedora doesn't support it.

Either way, this gave me the looping boot option menu when booting.

-------

Here's also the BIOS settings I've changed since factory defaults:

Config -> Display:
Total Graphics Memory = 512Mb
Graphics Device = Discrete

Security -> Virtualization:
Virt. Tech. = Enabled
VT-d = Enabled

Security -> Secure Boot :
Secure Boot = Disabled

Startup -> UEFI/Legacy Boot:
Mode = Both
UEFI/Leg. Prio = Legacy First
CSM Support = Yes


------

Additional note regarding **hybrid vs discrete** graphics.
You can without any "problems" use dedicated discrete graphics, what you might need to do is to build qubes on your own and edit ./qubes-builder/qubes-src/installer-qubes-os/livecd-creator-qubes and on the "kernel = " line, at the end add "nomodeset" and you should be fine.

Again, this won't give you the nvidia driver per default from what understand but the graphics will be slightly sharper and snappier. It will also drain your battery quicker but hey, quick graphics and no lag is kinda awesome.