I see there have been a number of bugs reported with debian-based network qubes, but I have not been able to find any posts about this specific issue.
I am on a fresh install of 4.2.3 (kernel 6.10.10), and I have been having some issues setting up networking qubes on a debian template. At first, sys-firewall and sys-net did not provide any network connection, despite connecting successfully to wifi. I forget what did to fix that issue, but now I am having another one:
I am trying to setup a vpn qube using the debian-12-xfce template, and when I enable the network-manager service, I am no longer able to connect to the internet at all, despite the adapter being configured correctly. When I disable network-manager, it is able to successfully connect again.
No error messages are thrown, and everything is- to my knowledge- configured correctly, and again, it is a fresh install. I am at least able to connect to openvpn without network-manager, but I prefer to use the applet, at least when using qubes with xfce.
Thank you. I followed the guide for mullvad, but the error persists. It is not a VPN related issue per se, it is that network-manager is preventing the debian qube from connecting to the internet at all, whether I use a vpn or not.
I would just use Fedora like I did before, but network-manager is not working with Fedora either. Instead of preventing all traffic, it just fails when I try to start the ovpn config with network-manager, but still connects via cli.
Create new sys-vpn qube, select ‘provides network,’ enable network-manager as a service in qubes settings, select sys-firewall as network qube (my sys-firewall works for sys-whonix, and qubes connected directly to sys-firewall. it is not configured any special way, and really is just there to prevent other qubes from accessing my local network).
Open xfce terminal for the qube, and try to ping duckduckgo, connect to vpn, ssh into server, etc, and each one throws a name resolution or connection error; no internet connection
This is all before I even try to setup my mullvad VPN, and to be clear it really isn’t a VPN related issue at all.
I am not quite sure what logs to check for this, so if there is anything else that would be helpful to post lmk.
My computer is a thinkpad w530 with an i7 but I forget the specific model.
Did you change anything else in the sys-vpn qube?
I’ve tried to reproduce this on my system and I don’t have this issue:
Create sys-test app qube based on debian-12-xfce template, sys-firewall net qube and enable “provides network” option.
In sys-vpn Settings → Services add network-manager service.
Start sys-vpn and open it’s terminal.
ping debian.org is successful.
Maybe some of your changes in the debian-12-xfce template is causing this issue for you.
Clone your debian-12-xfce template to e.g. debian-12-xfce-custom, then reinstall the debian-12-xfce template and try the same with original debian-12-xfce template without your modifications.
I forgot I had followed the instructions to randomize hostname and mac address on the original debian template, so I think that might be the source of the issue.
I am seeing similar issues…but not with a VPN, rather, it happens when my networking qube (sys-net or in my case sys-net-wifi and sys-net-ether; I split the two networks into different qubes) is set up with the debian-12 kernel in the qube. If I switch to the dom0-supplied kernels, they work; otherwise they simply can’t reach the network at all.
I believe it was switching to dhclient for dhcp that caused network-manager to not work. I would like to continue using dhclient and preventing hostname sending as opposed to using the randomization script, but I cannot figure out how to get dhclient working.