Beginner questions

[sonnenfinsternis]

Hi there :)

I've only been using QubesOS for two weeks and so far I'm totally thrilled! Thanks to all who contribute to this wonderful project :-)
But there are a few questions that I have not been able to clarify online or with friends, so I would like to try here:

1) Is there somewhere in the GUI an overview of the real processor load of the device? I think the percentage display in the upper right corner of the Qube overview shows this relative to the allocated cores. The task manager in dom9, however, only shows the load of dom0. Or have I misunderstood this?

2) I have a Windows Qube as a standalone VM. The integration works fine thanks to qubes-windows-tools. But is there something similar for standalone Linux VMs? Assuming there is a LinuxMint in a standalone qube: What is the best way to exchange files or pass the clipboard to other "normal" Qubes? Via a USB stick? Surely there is a software solution :)

3) How do I know that there is a new template, e.g. Fedora 38? Do I have to check this myself regularly under qvm-template-gui? And while we are at it: Do I reach qvm-template-gui also somehow with the mouse over the gui?

4) I got to thinking when I saw that there is his fedora-37-xfce template. Is it possible to start the desktop in an app VM based on it? Does this actually work in general in a qube that is not a standalone installation? Or can I always start only individual programs?

5) And why does the tab completion in the terminal often not work in the Debian templates? Especially when installing software with "sudo apt install xyz" I have problems, because I have to know exactly what the packages are called.

I hope that I have not outed myself as a complete idiot with these questions. But I honestly haven't been able to figure them out for myself so far, so I wanted to put them up for debate here. Maybe there are other newbies like me with similar questions.

Regards and thanks for reading :)

Eichennarr

[Kamil Aronowski]

Thanks for being part of our community!

I don't know everything but can provide some hints.

> 2) I have a Windows Qube as a standalone VM. The integration works fine thanks to qubes-windows-tools. But is there something similar for standalone Linux VMs? Assuming there is a LinuxMint in a standalone qube: What is the best way to exchange files or pass the clipboard to other "normal" Qubes? Via a USB stick? Surely there is a software solution :slight_smile:

I haven't seen an ISO file or such a friendly distribution of the tools Qubes uses for integration for Linux qubes. The tools do run in AppVMs (run `sudo ps aux | grep qubes` to see for yourself) and if they were to be ported to the target distro, I assume we'll be home then.

There's the [qubes-builder](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-builder) framework the developers wrote that can do this but this assumes building the tools for the supported distros. I can't provide further assistance because while the project is great and I was able to compile the officially supported templates along with everything they require, I failed when trying to add an unsupported system - some old Fedora and Debian releases.

> 3) How do I know that there is a new template, e.g. Fedora 38? Do I have to check this myself regularly under qvm-template-gui? And while we are at it: Do I reach qvm-template-gui also somehow with the mouse over the gui?

Currently it looks like it needs to be ran from commandline but I can help writing a `.desktop` shortcut/launcher for this.

> 4) I got to thinking when I saw that there is his fedora-37-xfce template. Is it possible to start the desktop in an app VM based on it? Does this actually work in general in a qube that is not a standalone installation? Or can I always start only individual programs?

Yes and no.

Keep in mind that Qubes has these tools and a custom X11 config provided for this integration. They would have to be rewritten for a proper support, I guess.

Maybe it's a good idea to connect to a qube remotely via VNC or something and instantiate an xfce4-session there. But in a regular case this will cause visual mess. I'll attach a screenshot for this.

> 5) And why does the tab completion in the terminal often not work in the Debian templates? Especially when installing software with "sudo apt install xyz" I have problems, because I have to know exactly what the packages are called.

Seems like this is Debian-related and outside of the scope of Qubes community. Maybe its `bash-completion` doesn't work as intended? I'd contact the Debian team directly for that, since I suppose the same would be happening even if installing Debian on a bare-matal environment.

> I hope that I have not outed myself as a complete idiot with these questions. But I honestly haven't been able to figure them out for myself so far, so I wanted to put them up for debate here. Maybe there are other newbies like me with similar questions.

No, you haven't. We're humans and have limited resources, especially when coming to a new project. And just because something is intuitive for one person, doesn't mean it will be intuitive for another one.
We're here to assist each other and have a great time.

[sonnenfinsternis]

First of all, thank you Kamil Aronowski for the long answer. There was a lot in it that helped me. :)

It might be clearest if I sort my answer by the numbering of my original questions:

1) I am still looking for a way to display the real global processor load and the real total global RAM usage in Qubes. Unfortunately I haven't found anything yet -_-.

2) I'll just stick with the existing ready-made templates for Linux then. If there is a clickable solution at some point, I would still be very interested in it though!

3) Too bad, but could have been. Then we just stick to opening qvm-template-gui via the terminal in dom0. It's not witchcraft, I just thought that maybe I missed the link in the GUI.

4) Interesting, thanks!

5) The question about autocomplete in the terminal has been resolved. This was indeed not due to QubesOS but to the fact that the bash-completion package is not pre-installed by default in Debian. But this can be easily fixed: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/312456/debian-apt-not-apt-get-autocompletion-not-working

Best regards :)

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[haaber]

Hi

> 5) The question about autocomplete in the terminal has been resolved. This was indeed not due to QubesOS but to the fact that
the bash-completion package is not pre-installed by default in Debian.
But this can be easily fixed:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/312456/debian-apt-not-apt-get-autocompletion-not-working

I have a nice working auto-complete for dom0. It allows usual
qvm-commands (qvm-start, qvm-stop, etc) in dom0 terminal and
distinguishes between running and non-running VM's according to what the
command expects. Like:  qvm-shutdown [TAB] proposes only running VM's to
be shut down. etc.

Works like charm since qubes 3.2. You find the code attached.

Bernhard

[sonnenfinsternis]

Sounds helpful, I'll try it when I get a chance, thanks :) After reading this [1], I can now even use my USB mouse directly after booting, without having to assign it to dom0 first. So slowly but surely I'm warming up to QubesOS. A wonderful system :) Now if I can just find a way to see how much processor load and memory is currently being used globally, I'll have all the pressing open construction sites taken care of for the time being. Over the weekend I will switch to a QubesOS installation as my new device for daily use. I am excited and glad that this project exists with this great community :)

1: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/usb-qubes/#usb-mice

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[Stuart Perkins]

Bottom post is the standard on this list. See my response at the bottom... :)

Welcome to Qubes OS. Personally, I love it. Even with the occasional awkward way of doing something which is "point and click" on other OS's. The added security of separation of programs and data plus template based VM's is great. I've been a Qubes OS fan since 3.2. Add in a coreboot'd platform and it is about the most secure PC available on the planet. A friend of mine who built me such a laptop...2 actually (Lenovo T520 and a T420) was asked by the country of Spain to build them 40. He has since dropped off the radar for some reason. My current platform is marginally Qubes compatible...a Lenovo W540...with no SSD it is very slow to come up, but works well once running. I don't believe it can be coreboot'd though, so I will be creating another T420 for daily use. I am limited to pre "blob" architectures if I want coreboot with no "blobs"...encrypted microcode "black box" portions of the BIOS, but that is really separate from Qubes OS. I actually wore out the T520 and previous T420 I had...but mine is "on" 16 hours a day or more...sometimes I just leave it on when I go to bed...that is not really a surprise.

I found myself synthesizing the basic concept of template VM's manually with VirtualBox before I discovered Qubes.

In a Dom0 terminal, the command "xentop" will list running qubes and the resources they are consuming. It is a faster refresh than the GUI Qube Manager.

Stuart
42 years in IT.

[sonnenfinsternis]

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Oh, I overlooked that. I will from now on also always answer below 0:-)

I did not know "xentop" yet, thanks. I had given up looking in the dom0 terminal, since "top" does not display globally, but only from the view of dom0. Very good that xentop can look beyond the edge of the plate! But am I wrong, or does xentop (analogous to the Qube overview on the top right behind the blue cube) show the theoretical maximum RAM and ignores the memory balancing?