Connecting to WiFi?

[pchi...@gmail.com]

Hi,

New user of Qubes. I have a Lenovo W520 specifically for Qubes - got it installed and running.

The weird thing is I can't find a place to connect to WiFi? It doesn't prompt me anywhere for a connection. The Network Manager is empty, and if I click add everything is grayed out. The sys-net VM shows that I have Ethernet and WiFi devices available, but am totally clueless how to actually get anything connected.

I've searched thoroughly and found little on this issue, making me wonder if this is something specific to me, or if I'm just overlooking something obvious.

Thank you very much for any help,
P.

[Chris Laprise]

This sounds like the problem David Craig recently posted about:

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/20170518024816.GA26986%40dlcz.home

Assuming your wifi is Intel, is the iwlwifi module loading?

--

Chris Laprise, tas...@openmailbox.org
https://twitter.com/ttaskett
PGP: BEE2 20C5 356E 764A 73EB 4AB3 1DC4 D106 F07F 1886

[Stephan Marwedel]

I recently got a new Kaby Lake Thinkpad. It runs fine with Archlinux.

However, I wanted to install Qubes on it and installed a second SSD for
that purpose. Even following the hints from the official Qubes
documentation I was unable to install Qubes 3.2 from the original
installer. It seems that this machine is simply too new for Qubes 3.2.
How can I try it out with newer kernels? May alpha or beta versions of
upcoming release be worth a try??

Any hints appreciated.

[pchi...@gmail.com]

Thanks. I tried plugging in an ethernet cord and that popped up that there was a connection. I tested that by running an update through terminal in one of the VMs and it worked (i.e. it downloaded the files).

So it is working for ethernet!

Sorry if this is noob question, but how does someone normally connect to WiFi using Qubes? Is there a GUI or do you use a terminal? I haven't been able to find any info on this.

[Chris Laprise]

The Network Manager icon is supposed to appear in the "systray" area on
the task bar. It is like a little piece of sys-net and should have a red
border around it. That gives you control over networking.

However, if you installed the KDE desktop with Qubes, there is a bug
that causes some systray icons to appear blank... even though they are
present and usable if you click on the right (blank) spot near the other
icons. Actually you can hover the mouse pointer over the systray area
and it will show a label for each applet underneath.

[pchi...@gmail.com]

Thanks Chris. I did not install KDE desktop with Qubes. I do not see a Network Manager icon in the systray. From reading, it would seem possible I do not have the right drivers.

[cooloutac]

what about baremetal fedora23?, if it work with that should be able to get it working in qubes maybe you need later kernel version from testing repo.

[pchi...@gmail.com]

Update:

I ran a an update on the Dom0, restarted Qubes, and now I have Network Manager available in the systray.

Everything seems to be good now. Huge thanks to the Qubes developers.

[Stephan Marwedel]

I have trouble booting the installer. Using the standard UEFI setup of
the T470p does not work at all. Switching to legacy boot settings boots
into the GRUB menu. However, when I tried to actually boot into the
Qubes installer it immediately performs a reboot. This means that I
never get to the point to actually install Qubes on the machine.

I tried to boot the vanilla Fedora 23 live system. It boots without any
problem using both the standard UEFI setup and legacy boot. What is the
difference between Qubes and Fedora 23 that prevents Qubes from being
booted on that machine? May it be related to Secure Boot or TPM settings?

[cooloutac]

secure boot has to be off.

[Stephan Marwedel]

I turned secure boot off and tried various combinations of boot
settings, like UEFI with CSM and pure legacy boot to no avail. Using
legacy boot, the GRUB menu appears. When I select the menu item "Install
Qubes" I see a message in text mode about the kernel being loaded.
Shortly after, I the screen goes blank and the system performs a reboot.
Nop error message is displayed. Something seems to be fundamentally
wrong with either my setup or the combination of Qubes 3.2 with this
particular machine. Does anybody else have similar experience with a
machine of this type?

[cooloutac]

try legacy boot again, and and test with vt-d off maybe. only difference I can think of. disable secondary gpu and network card too. make sure gpu has enough memory. double check bios options maybe usb settings too.

[Stephan Marwedel]

I tried all the options you have mentioned to no avail. I even tried to
installed using the textmode installer of Qubes. While it starts to show
the initial Xen boot messages, the screen suddenly goes black and a
reboot is performed. This happens so quickly that I cannot see whether
an error message indicating the source of the problem is displayed.
The discrete Nvidia GPU cannot be disabled on this machine as there are
no BIOS options for this. The machine has 32 GB of RAM with 512 MB
assigned to the internal GPU. Memory it should not be a problem.

Maybe the combination of discrete and internal GPU is the source of the
problem. When booting Fedora 23, the Nvidia GPU is detected and the
Nouveau driver is configured. I could not find an option for the Qubes
installer to do the same thing. Can Qubes be installed using the Nouveau
driver?

[cooloutac]

ya it uses nouveau automatically. The qubes installer is basically same thing as fedora 23 installer.

Not sure why its not working for you. so you tried with vt-d off? secureboot off? and tried installing with hdd in ahci mode? I dunno what else to tell you. not sure what else would be diff then fedora 23.

Only time I have gotten reboots like that is incorrect entries in grub.