Re: [qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

On Monday, October 7, 2019 at 3:42:38 PM UTC+2, Claudia wrote:
>
> Tomáš Vondra: 
> > 
> > 
> > On Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 7:45:40 PM UTC+2, Tomáš Vondra wrote: 
> >> 
> >> On Friday, October 4, 2019 at 4:36:57 PM UTC+2, Claudia wrote: 
> >> 
> > ... 
> >>   
> >> 
> >>> There is a pre-release 4.1 iso available. 
> >>> https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/3021 
> >>> <
> https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fopenqa.qubes-os.org%2Ftests%2F3021=D=1=AFQjCNEtwV-7EB_Hj9-89w3F8kL7XBW3pA>
>  
>
> >>> - this is a kind of old link so 
> >>> newer builds may be available. I could not get it to install on my 
> >>> machine so I couldn't test suspend on it, but it might work for you. 
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >> Thanks for the link. I gave it a try and there seems to be some 
> >> improvement compared - the installer now works out of the box, without 
> >> having to tweak it like I had to with Qubes 4.0. Unfortunately, the 
> >> suspend/resume issue is still there, although maybe it actually gets to 
> >> sleep this time (but still does not wake up). 
> >> 
> >> I've tried looking for a newer build (the one you posted is from July, 
> so 
> >> a couple of months ol), but I haven't found anything. I've been trying 
> to 
> >> build ISO locally over the past two weeks, but I keep running into 
> issues 
> >> so I haven't been successful in that. 
> >>   
> >> 
> > 
> > OK, I've noticed there actually is a link to the latest job for that 
> > scenario, leading to https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/3737 (which is 
> > 2019/08/22 instead of 2019/07/01). Unfortunately the suspend behavior is 
> > the same as for the older build :-( 
> > 
> > regards 
> > 
> >   
> > 
>
> You mean out of the box? Or when dom0 is brought fully up to date? Odds 
> are slim, but updating might fix the problem. Also enabling 
> testing/unstable repos might help. 
>
>
After updating dom0. Unfortunately I'm unable to switch to testing repos 
because dnf started complaining about a missing config file for some 
reason, and I haven't managed to fix that (yet).
 

> As far as building your own iso, I'm afraid I don't know anything about 
> that, but there are plenty of people on this list who could help if you 
> start a thread about the specific problems you're having. 
>
>
Yeah, I plan to try again and I'll start a new thread here (or maybe on 
qubes-devel, that seems like a better match).
 

> In general, debugging suspend/resume is quite difficult unless you're a 
> kernel developer with a serial console. However there are a couple of 
> things you can do that might get you a step further. 
>
> First, it's helpful to know if the machine is actually going into 
> suspend. Open a few terminals and run `sha256sum /dev/urandom` and wait 
> for the fans to start running. If you hear them stop, you know it 
> suspended. If, on resume, you hear them start up again, then it could be 
> that the machine is partially resuming but just the screen is not coming 
> back on (possibly indicative of a GPU or WiFi driver problem). Playing a 
> repeating sound probably has the same effect. You can also hit caps lock 
> and num lock after resume and see if the lights change. 
>   
>
Try shutting down all VMs before suspending. I think the command is 
> `qvm-shutdown --all --force --wait` or something like that. Make sure 
> they're all stopped (e.g., `qvm-ls`). This can tell you if something 
> with PCI passthru is causing a problem, such as (most likely) the NetVM 
> or UsbVM (wifi card, wifi driver, usb controller). 
>
> Another idea, try disabling VT-x and VT-d in BIOS, then boot Qubes and 
> try suspend. This might tell you if it's a Xen problem, or a firmware 
> bug related to VT-x, for example. 
>
> If the option is present, try disabling the onboard WiFi card in BIOS. 
> It's worth trying this for any other hardware too (dGPU, etc). 
>
>
Thanks, I'll do more experiments like this with it.
 

> Try upgrading your machine's firmware. On dell you can do this via 
> fwupd, Freedos, or using the boot-menu option to upgrade from USB drive. 
> On my Dell, option 3 was simply broken, so I had to do it from Freedos. 
>
>
That was the first thing I did after getting the laptop. I've managed to 
upgrade the BIOS only to 2.4.0, though. There is 2.5.0 but upgrading that 
from USB did not work. Unfortunately, fwupd does not seem to be supported 
for this laptop (at least that's my undestanding).
 

> Try installing Fedora with Xen (the basis of Qubes) and see if it 
> r

Re: [qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

On Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 7:45:40 PM UTC+2, Tomáš Vondra wrote:
>
> On Friday, October 4, 2019 at 4:36:57 PM UTC+2, Claudia wrote: 
>
...
>  
>
>> There is a pre-release 4.1 iso available. 
>> https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/3021 
>> <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fopenqa.qubes-os.org%2Ftests%2F3021=D=1=AFQjCNEtwV-7EB_Hj9-89w3F8kL7XBW3pA>
>>  
>> - this is a kind of old link so 
>> newer builds may be available. I could not get it to install on my 
>> machine so I couldn't test suspend on it, but it might work for you. 
>>
>>
> Thanks for the link. I gave it a try and there seems to be some 
> improvement compared - the installer now works out of the box, without 
> having to tweak it like I had to with Qubes 4.0. Unfortunately, the 
> suspend/resume issue is still there, although maybe it actually gets to 
> sleep this time (but still does not wake up).
>
> I've tried looking for a newer build (the one you posted is from July, so 
> a couple of months ol), but I haven't found anything. I've been trying to 
> build ISO locally over the past two weeks, but I keep running into issues 
> so I haven't been successful in that.
>  
>

OK, I've noticed there actually is a link to the latest job for that 
scenario, leading to https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/3737 (which is 
2019/08/22 instead of 2019/07/01). Unfortunately the suspend behavior is 
the same as for the older build :-(

regards

 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/d999f9d3-c4b5-4a4c-ac0c-03121e947ea2%40googlegroups.com.

Re: [qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

On Friday, October 4, 2019 at 4:36:57 PM UTC+2, Claudia wrote:
>
> Tomáš Vondra: 
> > Hi, 
> > 
> > I'm still struggling with the suspend issue, unfortunately, and I'm 
> kinda 
> > stuck so I'd appreciate some ideas what to try. 
> > 
> > Everything else seems to be working, but during suspend the laptop gets 
> > stuck (black screen, but I can hear the fans still spinning). And then 
> it 
> > does not wake up, of couse. 
> > 
> > I've tried installing new kernel, as described on 
> > https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/software-update-dom0/ and I've even 
> switched 
> > to qubes-dom0-current-testing, but neither of that helped :-( 
> > 
> > I'm now on kernel 5.2.16, which is newer than what the Fedora/Ubuntu 
> > installs used (and suspend works fine with them), so there has to be 
> > something else, specific to qubes. But I have no idea what, and I'm not 
> > sure how to debug suspend. 
> > 
> > Any ideas? 
> > 
> > (I've been trying to build Qubes 4.1 as described on 
> > https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/qubes-iso-building/, but I keep running 
> into 
> > various issues with that too, so I haven't been able to actually test 
> it.) 
> > 
> > thanks 
> > 
>
> I have the exact same suspend/resume problem on an Inspiron 5975, and 
> another user here recently had the same issue with a different laptop. 
> So it's pretty common I guess. 
>
>
OK. Good to know I'm not the only one affected by this.
 

> Qubes is stuck on F25 right now, and the hardware is too new for the 
> software. Same as you, I had it working under F30 with an older kernel, 
> but not under Qubes (F25) with a newer kernel, so it appears that maybe 
> userland has something to do with it too, not just the kernel. 
>
>
Yeah, that's my impression as well.
 

> I haven't been able to find any general remedy for this. I remember 
> reading somewhere that upgrading dom0 to F30 is more or less impossible. 
> You might be able to narrow down the userland components and upgrade 
> them individually, but I have no idea how to go about that. If you find 
> anything out, please let me know! 
>
>
Not sure, but I suspect running a F25 with some random subset of packages 
randomly updated to current version is going to be a major pita, or perhaps 
even impossible (because of dependencies with other packages). I'd much 
probably prefer running a pre-release version of Qubes 4.1 than such a 
hybrid.

 

> There is a pre-release 4.1 iso available. 
> https://openqa.qubes-os.org/tests/3021 - this is a kind of old link so 
> newer builds may be available. I could not get it to install on my 
> machine so I couldn't test suspend on it, but it might work for you. 
>
>
Thanks for the link. I gave it a try and there seems to be some improvement 
compared - the installer now works out of the box, without having to tweak 
it like I had to with Qubes 4.0. Unfortunately, the suspend/resume issue is 
still there, although maybe it actually gets to sleep this time (but still 
does not wake up).

I've tried looking for a newer build (the one you posted is from July, so a 
couple of months ol), but I haven't found anything. I've been trying to 
build ISO locally over the past two weeks, but I keep running into issues 
so I haven't been successful in that.
 
thanks

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/62421622-606f-4baa-bc4f-12c41be49762%40googlegroups.com.

[qubes-users] Re: Should I Continue?

[Tomáš Vondra]

On Saturday, October 5, 2019 at 6:10:54 PM UTC+2, JimmyJames wrote:
>
> Hello:
>
> I want to install Qubues (for the first time) on a *LENOVO Thinkpad T430* 
> .
>  
> The hardware compatibility IOMMU column for that device says "no." The top 
> of the page tells me a IOMMU is required for effective isolation of network 
> VMs and PCI passthrough .""
>
> Does this mean my hope of running Qubes is doomed on this device, and I 
> shouldn't even try to continue?
>
>
I'm no security expert, but I don't think that's what it means. AFAIK 
without iommu it's impossible to prevent some types of attack, but there's 
still plenty of other attacks that Qubes prevents.

regards

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/1cee13f8-b66d-4033-a28c-75ed70df6f3a%40googlegroups.com.

Re: [qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

Hi,

I'm still struggling with the suspend issue, unfortunately, and I'm kinda 
stuck so I'd appreciate some ideas what to try.

Everything else seems to be working, but during suspend the laptop gets 
stuck (black screen, but I can hear the fans still spinning). And then it 
does not wake up, of couse.

I've tried installing new kernel, as described on 
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/software-update-dom0/ and I've even switched 
to qubes-dom0-current-testing, but neither of that helped :-(

I'm now on kernel 5.2.16, which is newer than what the Fedora/Ubuntu 
installs used (and suspend works fine with them), so there has to be 
something else, specific to qubes. But I have no idea what, and I'm not 
sure how to debug suspend.

Any ideas?

(I've been trying to build Qubes 4.1 as described on 
https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/qubes-iso-building/, but I keep running into 
various issues with that too, so I haven't been able to actually test it.)

thanks

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/8c6251f3-1ca6-4207-8ffc-eb8cc9f4bccf%40googlegroups.com.

Re: [qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

OK,

a quick update from me - I ended up buying this laptop and after much 
struggling I managed to get Qubes 4.0 running on it. I'm not done with it 
yet, so I plan to send HCL after (hopefully) solving the remaining issues.

The laptop is fairly "clean" (integrated GPU, etc.) and comes with Ubuntu 
16.04. I've upgraded it to Ubuntu 18.04, which also worked fine.

Installing Qubes 4.0 turned out to be pretty difficult, though. The 
graphical installer was failing to start, and the text mode does not work 
as it does not allow setting passphrase for disk encryption :-( So to use 
the text mode I'd have to automate the install using a kickstart script, 
but I've never done that before so I've tried other things first.

Firstly, I've tried to install current Fedora 30 (regular and then the Xfce 
spin), because those uses the same installer. And in both cases it works 
just fine - apparently there's something different in the Qubes installer 
that makes it fail when starting the graphical environment. A bit of 
searching lead me to this:

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/

Removing the noexitboot and mapbs options from the xen.cfg did the trick, 
and after that the installation went mostly smoothly. The touchpad does not 
work during installation, but I had the same issue on the previous laptop 
(Dell Precision 5510) so I wasn't particularly worried about it knowing 
it'll start working after reboot. After that, the installation completed 
OK, Qubes do boot just fine and the touchpad works.

Almost everything works fine - wifi, sound, ... (haven't tried the rj45, 
but I don't really care). The one exception is suspend (and poweroff seems 
a bit wonky too).

1) During suspend, the laptop simply does not wake up. I'm not sure if it 
"hangs" during the suspend or when waking it up, all I see is a blank 
screen. IIRC it worked just fine in both Ubuntu and Fedora, although I 
don't recall if I tried it explicitly (it's be weird if it did not work in 
ubuntu, which was preinstalled). So my guess is this is due to something 
being obsolete in dom0, which is still on fc25 in Qubes 4.0. Not sure what 
to do about this - how/what to investigate :-( I'd appreciate suggestions 
that to do about this. I'm considering trying to build Qubes 4.1 which I 
think uses fc29 (at least judging by 
https://ftp.qubes-os.org/repo/yum/r4.1/current-testing/dom0/) but that 
seems more like an experiment than a reliable solution.

2) During poweroff/reboot, the laptop prints a lot of messages from 
device-mapper about ioctl failures, missing reboot-parameter file and then 
hangs after printing "Restarting system". It might be intermittent, though, 
or maybe it depends on something else.

regards

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/d9e64bf0-ef97-48af-9d1e-5fb437468dcf%40googlegroups.com.

Re: [qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 12:57:41 PM UTC+2, 799 wrote:
>
> Hello Tomas,
>
> Tomáš Vondra > schrieb am Sa., 14. Sep. 
> 2019, 12:07:
>
> has anyone tried running Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581 laptop? I've been using 
> a different Dell laptop until now, but I may need a replacement and this 
> seems reasonable.
>
>
> The Dell Vostro 5581 is not on the Qubes Hardware Compatible List (HCL)
> https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/
>
>
Yes, I know - checking HCL was the first thing I did, sorry for not 
mentioning that.
 

> But it seems to work with Linux:
> https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201808-26383
>
>
Yup. It seems to be a somewhat different configuration, though. It has an 
i3 CPU (although from the same generation and with the same feature set) 
and Atheros wifi (the model I'm looking at seems to use Intel).
 

> Therefore I think it _should_ work fine with Qubes.
> If you test Qubes on it, please submit a HCL Report, so that users might 
> get an answer to your question.
>
>
Sure. Long time ago I've submitted HCL for the laptop I've been using until 
now, I'll do the same with the new one.

regards

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/11bff770-52b6-4ae1-9654-f4f4f5281538%40googlegroups.com.

[qubes-users] Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581?

[Tomáš Vondra]

Hi,

has anyone tried running Qubes on Dell Vostro 5581 laptop? I've been using 
a different Dell laptop until now, but I may need a replacement and this 
seems reasonable.

The specification seems reasonable - i5-8265U does include the VT-x/VT-d 
features, it should have Intel 9560/9462 wifi, which seems to be supported 
since kernel 4.14.

Dell does not offer it with Linux, though, so I wonder if there might be 
some gotcha.


thanks
Tomas

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/fe0df813-f62c-420c-9ed6-2a80cd085fe4%40googlegroups.com.

[qubes-users] status of USB devices in "Qubes Devices" not updated

[Tomáš Vondra]

Hi,

I'm struggling with a strange issue with USB devices for the last couple of 
days - not exactly sure when it started, though. I'm running up to date 4.0 
without sys-usb (because of USB keyboard etc.) and when I connect a USB disk / 
SD card I get notifications about the device being available, but it's not 
visible in the "Qubes Devices" list (in the tray).

However, if I kill the qui-devices process in dom0, it gets automatically 
restarted after a couple of seconds and the devices are there and I can attach 
them to a VM. But then again - the status of the device does not change, it's 
still listed with the plus sign, so I can't detach it from the VM. So I kill 
the process again, it gets restarted, this time it's correctly listed with the 
eject button.

I wonder what went wrong. Any ideas?

Tomas

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"qubes-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to qubes-users@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/963cff37-ab58-426e-b688-ec2a6b74e812%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.