R3.1 - "Freezing?" sys-usb VM via mkfs.vat command

[Anon]

I'm attempting to encrypt an external drive when experiencing a
freeze/crash:

After running in the sys-usb VM:
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 USBDRIVE001
<drive password>
sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/mapper/USBDRIVE001 -n USBDRV1

the window becomes unresponsive. No application errors are visible.
Also, the VM seems to be unresponsive as I cannot run anything else in
that VM (and any other open windows beccome unresponsive too).

If I have a certain amount of windows open in that VM (3?) e.g. 2
terminals and one file browser, the windows just disappear and the state
of sys-usb in Qubes VM Manager turns yellow.

At this point, I can only restart the VM, which seems then to operate
normally.

I tried it a few times and the last time I tried it I got an exclamation
point in Qubes VM Manager under the state column for sys-usb. When
hovering over it, it says: "qrexec not connected." As usual, restarting
the VM works fine.

I do not think I'm out of memory, as I have closed all other
non-essential VMs and should have 8GB of RAM but might have 6GB (I don't
know how to check physical RAM amounts without rebooting). The drive
itself is 1.8TB.

Is this a bug? Should I be submitting a bug in github or posting this on
the dev mailing list?

I need a next step.

Thank you.

[Andrew David Wong]

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Hash: SHA512

If this is Qubes-related at all, it sounds like a hardware
compatibility issue, so qubes-users is the right place.

Do you have any other USB drives that you can try instead in order to
help determine whether the problem is the drive itself?

Is it possible that the problem is trying to format with vfat instead
of a different filesystem? (How large is the drive?)

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

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Hash: SHA256

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 10:33:17PM +0000, Anon wrote:
> I'm attempting to encrypt an external drive when experiencing a
> freeze/crash:
>
> After running in the sys-usb VM:
> sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 USBDRIVE001
> <drive password>
> sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/mapper/USBDRIVE001 -n USBDRV1
>
> the window becomes unresponsive. No application errors are visible.
> Also, the VM seems to be unresponsive as I cannot run anything else in
> that VM (and any other open windows beccome unresponsive too).
>
> If I have a certain amount of windows open in that VM (3?) e.g. 2
> terminals and one file browser, the windows just disappear and the state
> of sys-usb in Qubes VM Manager turns yellow.
>
> At this point, I can only restart the VM, which seems then to operate
> normally.
>
> I tried it a few times and the last time I tried it I got an exclamation
> point in Qubes VM Manager under the state column for sys-usb. When
> hovering over it, it says: "qrexec not connected." As usual, restarting
> the VM works fine.
>
> I do not think I'm out of memory, as I have closed all other
> non-essential VMs and should have 8GB of RAM but might have 6GB (I don't
> know how to check physical RAM amounts without rebooting). The drive
> itself is 1.8TB.

It may still be out of memory problem, because sys-usb has statically
assigned 300MB, so even if you have no other VMs running, it will not
use free memory. This is mostly requirement to handle PCI devices, which
require continuous memory region. But you can increase this assignment
in sys-usb settings.

- --
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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[Anon]

Andrew David Wong:

> If this is Qubes-related at all, it sounds like a hardware
> compatibility issue, so qubes-users is the right place.

Great thank you.

> Do you have any other USB drives that you can try instead in order to
> help determine whether the problem is the drive itself?

I have USB sticks of the 8-16GB capacity type. This drive that I'm
having issues with is a platter harddrive type.

> Is it possible that the problem is trying to format with vfat instead
> of a different filesystem? (How large is the drive?)

Yes it is possible that the problem is vfat. Do you have any suggestions
of pages for me to read in order to understand the types? Or alternative
commands?

I'm trying to have it be usable in Windows and Linux, though I probably
will never connect it to Windows.

The drive that I'm having problems with is 1.8TB.

Thank you.

[Anon]

Marek Marczykowski-Górecki

> It may still be out of memory problem, because sys-usb has statically
> assigned 300MB, so even if you have no other VMs running, it will not
> use free memory. This is mostly requirement to handle PCI devices, which
> require continuous memory region. But you can increase this assignment
> in sys-usb settings.

Thank you. I see that sys-usb isn't participating in the memory sharing.
I never noticed that before.

I changed the min ram setting for sys-usb to 600MB and reran the
command. It finished in about three seconds; so fast, I almost didn't
believe it worked.

So this seems to be the solution: increase memory to above 300MB (and
600MB is confirmed to work for this).

I know very little about out-of-memory error handling, but it seems like
Qubes could have a little bit more user-friendly information in
instances like this; especially for someone like me.

If there's something more I need to do, please let me know.

Thank you for the help.