Backup hangs at 14%

linuxuser1 · August 3, 2025, 2:17pm

I can’t make a backup - it always hangs at 14%. Nothing has changed in 2 hours. All my VMs take up 52 gb of disk. I tried backing up with dom0 and without it - but it’s always only 14%. I don’t see any errors in the log. journalctl | grep qubes-backup shows nothing. Please write all possible commands where I can find the logs and journal of qubes-backup

whoami · August 3, 2025, 2:33pm

Try without compression.

rustybird · August 3, 2025, 2:43pm

If you’re still using a legacy ‘file’ driver pool, all of the VMs stored in it that are selected for inclusion in the backup must remain shut down until the backup completes. Other than that,

linuxuser1 · August 3, 2025, 5:32pm

I disabled active vm from varlibqubes and backup was completed successfully!

corporateblush · June 21, 2026, 10:11pm

I have the same problem. How to backup sys-usb then when backing up to an external USB drive, attached to a dispVm that is not to be backed up?

rustybird · June 22, 2026, 9:01am

You could back up sys-usb separately (while it’s shut down) to some temporary place, then move the backup file to your backup drive afterwards. Or clone sys-usb (again, while it’s shut down) and include the clone instead of the original in your backup run.

But the real solution is to migrate away from the legacy ‘file’ driver, e.g. to the ‘file-reflink’ driver.

github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues

Deprecate 'file' storage driver in R4.1, remove in R5.0

opened 02:15AM - 12 Feb 21 UTC

marmarek

C: core release notes P: default C: storage

**Qubes OS version (if applicable)** R4.1 **Affected component(s) or fun…ctionality (if applicable)** core **Brief summary** 1. Add some verbose notification about using deprecated storage driver in R4.1. I think this can be a notification at the system startup (can be added to the code of one of the widgets, for example qui-updates one). Also, add a warning when creating new "file" pool. Maybe also when listing storage pools? 2. Do not create "file" pool automatically during system installation. But do create file-reflink for `/var/lib/qubes` directory, for compatible filesystems. 3. Document migration off the file driver (either to file-reflink or to lvm), and link to it from release notes and the notification. In-place migration is preferred if possible, otherwise document reinstall method. **Additional context** The file storage driver is very inefficient and also some features are impossible to achieve using its old architecture (it simulates CoW volumes using dm-snapshot, which limits snapshots levels to 1). Example issues caused by its inferior features: - #4324 - #6329 - #3255

corporateblush · June 23, 2026, 6:33am

Thanks. I thought and did the same in the meantime. Actually, it made me realize that instead of a full backup in a single file, to back the Qubes up in chunks, according to priorities while making notes which qubes were in which chunk. Less time to restore when needing specific qubes only.

rustybird · June 23, 2026, 11:28am

You can selectively restore certain qubes from a big backup file that contains other qubes as well. Restoring will just skip over those other qubes, it doesn’t need to process their data. (There’s maybe a small delay at the beginning to process their metadata for the qube listing.)

corporateblush · June 23, 2026, 1:04pm

That. When the backup is several TB, to extract only certain qube(s) is real pain. Also, spreading to chunks reduces the risk of all the qubes gone, when the backup file itself is unreadable or whichever way damaged.