Linux HVMs boot without network, hi-res capabilities

[cprise]

Recently I've tried the following distros as Qubes HVMs:

* Fedora 20

* Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

* Ubuntu 14.10

* Mint 17.1

If they boot at all, they come up with no networking ability and the
display resolution is stuck at 800x600 or 1024x768. I am configuring
them with 1.5GB memory.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ran great in HVM 'out of the box'. But I'm not sure
what to do with these newer Linux releases.

[WhonixQubes]

Isn't this just because Linux distros installed into HVMs, by default,
lack the Qubes agent tools and are simply unaware of Qubes?

I believe Qubes tools handle:

- Seamless fullscreen vs. letterboxed windows

- Networking configuration

- Inter-VM copy/paste and file transfer

- etc


https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/LinuxHVMTips


Anyone got Qubes agent tools working in Fedora HVM or other Linux HVMs?
Instructions?


WhonixQubes

[Frank]

There are drivers for graphics and networking that come with XEN and should provide this kind of functionality even without the Qubes Tools. Unfortunately the graphics driver is very inflexible...

I am running a Windows Server 2008 quite successfully without any Qubes Tools - bar the maddening small screen resolution.

Installing Qubes Tools improves graphics support immensely and deliver copy/paste functions on top. Not sure, if there are actually specific network drivers in the Qubes Tools...

Regards, Frank

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 01:39:07PM +0200, Frank wrote:
>
> > On 23.04.2015, at 08:46, WhonixQubes whonixqubes-at-riseup.net |qubes-mailing-list/Example Allow| <uywgn...@sneakemail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 2015-04-22 8:57 pm, cprise wrote:
> >> Recently I've tried the following distros as Qubes HVMs:
> >> * Fedora 20
> >> * Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
> >> * Ubuntu 14.10
> >> * Mint 17.1
> >> If they boot at all, they come up with no networking ability and the
> >> display resolution is stuck at 800x600 or 1024x768. I am configuring
> >> them with 1.5GB memory.
> >> Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ran great in HVM 'out of the box'. But I'm not sure
> >> what to do with these newer Linux releases.
> >
> >
> > Isn't this just because Linux distros installed into HVMs, by default, lack the Qubes agent tools and are simply unaware of Qubes?
> >
> > I believe Qubes tools handle:
> >
> > - Seamless fullscreen vs. letterboxed windows
> >
> > - Networking configuration
> >
> > - Inter-VM copy/paste and file transfer
> >
> > - etc
> >
> >
> > https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/LinuxHVMTips
> >
> >
> > Anyone got Qubes agent tools working in Fedora HVM or other Linux HVMs? Instructions?

Take a look here:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/HvmCreate/#setting-up-networking-for-hvm-domains

> >
> >
> > WhonixQubes
>
> There are drivers for graphics and networking that come with XEN and should provide this kind of functionality even without the Qubes Tools. Unfortunately the graphics driver is very inflexible...

It isn't entirely true for graphics. You're probably talking about QXL
driver which is optimized to support remote (via network) management,
especially spice protocol. It isn't the case in Qubes in two ways:
1. We are not using spice protocol to access VM graphical console.
2. We still use old qemu (because it is the only supported in
stubdomain), which do not support such device.

In case of the network - you're correct. There are PV drivers for
windows, which will speedup network and disk access - those drivers are
also part of Qubes Windows Tools - together with a tool to configure
network parameters (described in above link). Such drivers for Linux are
already in mainline Linux kernel for a long time, so no need to install
any "guest addons" (as in VirtualBox). But you still need to configure
network parameters somehow - if not done by Qubes scripts (because you
haven't installed anything in the VM), you need to do it manually.

Theoretically it is possible to compile and install Qubes agent (core +
gui) in Linux HVM, it is actually preferred first step in creating new
template. But it isn't straightforward task. Details here:
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/BuildingNonFedoraTemplate/

>
> I am running a Windows Server 2008 quite successfully without any Qubes Tools - bar the maddening small screen resolution.
>
> Installing Qubes Tools improves graphics support immensely and deliver copy/paste functions on top. Not sure, if there are actually specific network drivers in the Qubes Tools...
>
> Regards, Frank
>

- --
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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[cprise]

I shouldn't try to troubleshoot while I'm running a fever... I become
very myopic with my searches:
"qemu graphics resolution" "xensource network driver ubuntu" etc. But
"qubes hvm resolution" yields the wiki page near the top.
:p

Speaking of xensource, it looks like there were drivers for
hardware-emulated devices in Ubuntu 12.04, but they are unfree and not
released with newer versions? I think that's why Ubuntu 12.04 just worked.

The 'X -configure :1' command as root is segfaulting: Address 0x0.
Caught signal 11, server aborting.

X log shows it trying a bunch of drivers, then it says something like:
(II) modesetting [...] kms
(II) VESA: driver [...]
(II) FBDEV: driver [...]

Then it states which config file is being generated and which config dir
is used, then it warns about missing fonts, then it tries to open
/dev/dri/card0 twice and fails (no such file) then segfault.