qubes 4.0


youtube-dl does not work properly on Qubes 4.0 – Fedora 26

While working on a GNU/Linux Fedora 26 virtual machine running under the Qubes 4.0 OS, we installed youtube-dl through dnf to download some media off the net.


sudo dnf install youtube-dl;

When we tried to use it, we got the error youtube_dl.utils.RegexNotFoundError: Unable to extract Initial JS player signature function name. This issue was resolved years ago, so it led us to the conclusion that our version of youtube-dl was out of date. To test this hypothesis, we updated youtube-dl with pip.


sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl;

After the update was complete, we tried to use youtube-dl, this time with success!!

Full Logs:

[george@local Music]$ youtube-dl
bash: youtube-dl: command not found...
[george@local Music]$ sudo dnf install youtube-dl
Last metadata expiration check: 0:52:47 ago on Sat Nov 10 10:43:46 2018.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================================================
Installing:
youtube-dl noarch 2018.04.16-1.fc26 updates 2.6 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install 1 Package

Total download size: 2.6 M
Installed size: 11 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
youtube-dl-2018.04.16-1.fc26.noarch.rpm 270 kB/s | 2.6 MB 00:09 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 258 kB/s | 2.6 MB 00:10 
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
Preparing : 1/1 
Installing : youtube-dl-2018.04.16-1.fc26.noarch 1/1 
Running scriptlet: youtube-dl-2018.04.16-1.fc26.noarch 1/1 
Running as unit: run-rfddd15fff2d14d109826a90f59325e97.service
Verifying : youtube-dl-2018.04.16-1.fc26.noarch 1/1 
Notifying dom0 about installed applications

Installed:
youtube-dl.noarch 2018.04.16-1.fc26

Complete!
[george@local Music]$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=r6akoO34yUvK8ddtjnzL
 r6akoO34yUvK8ddtjnzL: Downloading webpage
[download] Downloading playlist: How to cook a banana
 playlist How to cook a banana: Downloading 18 videos
[download] Downloading video 1 of 18
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Downloading webpage
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Downloading video info webpage
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Extracting video information
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Downloading js player vfls4aurX
ERROR: Signature extraction failed: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1191, in _decrypt_signature
video_id, player_url, s
File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1102, in _extract_signature_function
res = self._parse_sig_js(code)
File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1163, in _parse_sig_js
jscode, 'Initial JS player signature function name', group='sig')
File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 808, in _search_regex
raise RegexNotFoundError('Unable to extract %s' % _name)
youtube_dl.utils.RegexNotFoundError: Unable to extract Initial JS player signature function name; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
(caused by RegexNotFoundError('Unable to extract \x1b[0;34mInitial JS player signature function name\x1b[0m; please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.',)); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; see https://yt-dl.org/update on how to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
[george@local Music]$ sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl
WARNING: Running pip install with root privileges is generally not a good idea. Try `pip install --user` instead.
Collecting youtube_dl
Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/6c/a4/c2e3fbd8b9c7ccbca3f220c4fb0914926669bf9080fb8f2f4db4811706be/youtube_dl-2018.11.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.8MB)
100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.8MB 355kB/s 
Installing collected packages: youtube-dl
Successfully installed youtube-dl-2018.11.7
[george@local Music]$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=r6akoO34yUvK8ddtjnzL
 r6akoO34yUvK8ddtjnzL: Downloading webpage
[download] Downloading playlist: How to cook a banana
 playlist How to cook a banana: Downloading 18 videos
[download] Downloading video 1 of 18
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Downloading webpage
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Downloading video info webpage
 ir86d1hTSv1r: Downloading js player vfls4aurX
WARNING: Requested formats are incompatible for merge and will be merged into mkv.

Qubes 4.0 with Fedora 26: Setup RPM Fusion and ffmpeg

Recently we wanted to process some media on a Fedora 26 running under a Qubes OS 4.0 installation, we decided to use ffmpeg which is not part of the default repositories but it can be found in the RPM Fusion repositories. To do so, first we updated our system and enabled the RPM Fusion repositories as follows:


sudo dnf update;

sudo dnf upgrade -y;

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm;

sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled rpmfusion-free rpmfusion-nonfree;

By default DNF on the template VM did not enable the rpmfusion repositories so we had to enable them manually with the last command above or else we would get the following error:

$ sudo dnf install ffmpeg;
Last metadata expiration check: 0:17:49 ago on Tue Oct 16 09:09:22 2018.
No match for argument: ffmpeg

Then, we updated the system once more so that the information from the new repositories would get downloaded to our system and then we performed the installation of ffmpeg. While installing ffmpeg, since it was the first time that we were using the new repositories we were asked to verify the keys that were imported. We were able to manually verify the keys from this page.

The commands used to install ffmpeg are the following:


sudo dnf update;

sudo dnf install ffmpeg;



Qubes 4.0: Installation crashes when installing qubes-mgmt-salt-base-topd.noarch 5

Solution

  1. Disable Secure Boot from BIOS
  2. On boot order, select Legacy Devices first, again from BIOS
  3. At the first screen of the installer (like the image below), press the e button to edit the boot arguments, disabling the graphics card driver. For us what worked is the following:
    mboot.c32 xen.gz console=none --- vmlinuz inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=Qubes-R4.0-x86_64 i915.alpha_support=1 mapbs=1 noexitboot=1 modprobe.blacklist=nouveau rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau -- initrd.img
  4. Enjoy!

Back Story

Recently, we were trying to install Qubes GNU/Linux version 4.0 on a Lenovo Legion Y520 that has NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti installed. After disabling secure boot from the BIOS and then setting the default boot to be on Legacy Devices, we were able to boot the anaconda installer.

We proceeded into configuring the installation (set the timezone, the keyboard layout, created the administrator user and selected the disk for the installation) and we waited for the system to install. After some serious amount of time, we realized that the installer had crashed completely while installing qubes-mgmt-salt-base-topd.noarch. We restarted the process and tried again, this time the installed did not crash but it would get stuck at the same step. Following, we gave it a few more tries just in case it would work but unfortunately it would always result either crashing or getting infinitely stuck.

Following the guide at https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/uefi-troubleshooting/ and https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/nvidia-troubleshooting/ we modified the boot parameters of the installer to add mabps and noexitboot, then disable the nouveau driver for the graphics card and it worked like a charm.