qubes-os

Qubes-OS 3.2: Setup Windows 7 64bit 1

1 February 2018 in GNU/Linux tagged glowing logo / hvm / qubes / qubes-os / stuck / vm / windows / windows tools by Tux

Based on the following resources, we were able to create a Windows 7 64bit virtual machine on our Qubes OS 3.2 installation.

The following steps are to be executed in the dom0 terminal emulator, unless explicitly mentioned otherwise.

1. Create the empty Windows VM


qvm-create win7 --hvm --label purple;

2. Start the Windows VM using the Windows ISO


qvm-start win7 --cdrom=/home/bytefreaks/ISOs/W7.iso;

If it proceeds as normal, no worries.
Start the Windows VM (qvm-start win7) as many times as needed to finish the setup and skip to step 5.

If it gets stuck at the glowing Windows Logo:

kill the Windows VM from the dom0 terminal emulator and
then follow step 3.


qvm-kill win7;

3. Copy the configuration file to a temporary location that you can edit


cp /var/lib/qubes/appvms/win7/win7.conf /tmp/;

Modify the configuration file to change the model type of the video card from xen to cirrus

Original part of win7.conf

<video type='vga'>
  <model type='xen' vram='16384'/>
</video>

Modified part of win7.conf

<video type='vga'>
  <model type='cirrus' vram='16384'/>
</video>

4. Start the Windows VM using the custom configuration file as many times as needed to finish the installation


qvm-start win7 --custom-config=/tmp/win7.conf;

5. Enable auto-login on Windows using the netplwiz

At the Windows 7 start menu, type netplwiz, it will pop-up a configuration window from which we need to disable the option Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer. and click the OK button to apply the change (it may request for your password to verify the action).

6. Disable driver signing using bcdedit /set testsigning on

Then, we need to disable driver signing as the Windows Tools Drivers are not digitally signed but we still need to install them.
To do so, we need to start a command prompt (cmd) as an administrator as seen in the images below and execute the command bcdedit /set testsigning on

7. Shut down the Windows VM and start it again using the Install Windows Tools directive


sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-dom0-current-testing qubes-windows-tools;
qvm-start win7 --install-windows-tools;

If it starts normally go to step 8, if it gets stuck again then

kill the Windows VM and
repeat step 3 and step 4 before step 8.


qvm-kill win7;

8. In My Computer you will see fake CD-ROM drive, install the application found in the image.

When you get prompted to restart by Xen PV Network, ignore it!
Also, when prompted to format the disk in drive E:, press cancel.
Finish the whole installation of all tools before restarting the Windows VM (it could create serious problems including crashing your VM completely on restart).
Once the setup is complete, shut down the Windows VM.

9. Increase the execution timeout for the Windows VM


qvm-prefs -s win7 qrexec_timeout 300;

As soon as the Windows VM starts for the first time after Windows Tools were installed, it will perform some time consuming actions like moving the user profiles to a different drive. We need to execute the above to give enough time to the system to complete its tasks.

10. Finally, start the Windows VM with no extra parameters

Qubes OS 3.2: Resize fedora-23 TemplateVM Root Image 1

22 January 2018 in GNU/Linux tagged fedora-23 / qubes / Qubes OS 3.2 / qubes-os / resize / Root Image / root.img / TemplateVM by Tux

Recently, we needed to increase the size of the root image for the fedora-23 TemplateVM.
We had to do this as we wanted to install in /opt a few IDEs, including android-studio which takes a lot of space when accompanied by the Android SDK.

Following the excellent guide at https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/resize-root-disk-image/, we did the following:

Made sure that the fedora-23 TemplateVM and all VMs based on that template were shut down.
This included stopping the sys-firewall and sys-net VMs as well (in this order).
Then, in the VM Settings window at the Basic tab for the fedora-23 TemplateVM, we disabled the networking by selecting none on the NetVM: drop-down list and pressed OK to apply the settings changes.
Following, in dom0 Terminal Emulator we run the following command:
truncate -s 40G /var/lib/qubes/vm-templates/fedora-23/root.img;
Afterwards we started the fedora-23 TemplateVM and run the following in the terminal:
sudo resize2fs /dev/mapper/dmroot;
Please note that if your output is Nothing to do! then most likely you forgot a VM that is based on the fedora-23 TemplateVM running. Normally your screen should print something along the lines of Resizing the filesystem...
Next, we shut down the fedora-23 TemplateVM, and went to the VM Settings window to enable networking by selecting whatever we had there before (for us it was default (sys-firewall)).
Finally, we could start using our VMs, their root.img were of the new extended size.

Qubes OS: Connect to Wi-Fi or Ethernet or another network 1

4 January 2018 in GNU/Linux tagged Dom0 / ethernet / network / qubes / qubes-os / sys-net / wi-fi / wifi by Tux

A couple of days ago we decided to give Qubes OS a go and see what it could do for a regular user. The installation was easy as it uses the same installer as Fedora, so we just created a live USB and formatted a laptop that had built in Wi-Fi.

To our surprise, we could not figure out how to change the network settings and activate an internet connection! Going to the NetworkManager (nm), even with root, would show us all fields as disabled when trying to create any new connection!

Some time passed before we realized that the NetworkManager of XFCE4 was not the way to go. After inspecting the Virtual Machines on the Qubes VM Manager, we saw that the sys-net VM was the only one that had in its hardware settings to access the Ethernet and Wi-Fi modules. So we got the hint, we needed to modify sys-net in order to connect the entire OS with its VMs to the network.

To modify the settings of the sys-net VM we needed access to the Settings Application, which was not available in the application menu. So the first thing we did, was to use the sys-net: Add more shortcuts... option under the group ServiceVM: sys-net to enable the Settings application shortcut.

In the [Dom0] Settings: sys-net window, we went to the Applications tab, on the left list we scrolled down to find the Settings option.

After selecting the Settings option, we clicked on the > button to move the Settings option to the right list.

Then we clicked on the OK button to apply the changes.

Going back to the application menu and the group ServiceVM: sys-net we could see the new option for sys-net: Settings.

Clicking on the sys-net: Settings showed us the usual settings manager for Gnome.

From there on, our job was easy, we just clicked on the Network option that gave us the window to modify all network settings. Then we selected the Wi-Fi network that we wanted to connect to, which worked without a hitch!

Finally, we had to test if the configuration was working as expected. From the application menu, under the group Domain: personal, we selected the option personal: Firefox to start the Firefox application on the personal VM.

Once Firefox started we could see that internet connection was active and everything was working as expected!

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