Symlinks for "some" AppMVs to other partition in Qubes 4.x?

[Teqleez Motley]

Hi all, I want to store only some AppVMs (and some custom TemplateVMs) on a different ext4 partition.

Is there a documentation page for the recommended way to do this?

Cannot seem to find this in the docs pages.

(The existing one only describes partitioning, but not this use case of using symlinks to an existing, standard ext4 partition.)

--
Regards,

[Rusty Bird]

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Teqleez Motley:

> I want to store only some AppVMs (and some custom TemplateVMs) on a
> different ext4 partition.

See <https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/secondary-storage/>, with the
exception that if you want to store your VMs in files on ext4, you'd
use the 'file' storage driver instead of 'lvm_thin':

$ qvm-pool --add <pool name> file -o dir_path=/mnt/your-partition/subdir

But note that 'file' is not in the best state. It has the fewest
features (online TRIM/discard unsupported; doesn't show which VMs
should be restarted to pick up template upgrades; can store only one
revision and can't revert to it) and yet the most complex code. So
consider just adding a regular 'lvm_thin' pool, like on the webpage.

Another, more bleeding-edge alternative - if you can set up your
partition as btrfs rather than ext4 - would be the 'file-reflink'
driver. In my biased opinion (having written it) it's solid. Though
you may want to wait for the qubes-core-dom0-4.0.30 package, which
will presumably include lots of recent improvements and a safety
check* before 'qvm-volume revert'.

Rusty


* 'qvm-volume revert' on a 'file-reflink' volume of a running or not
cleanly stopped VM used to essentially throw away the revision.
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