Can qubes-core-agent be used in a standalone?

The default kali template is broken so I’m trying to install Kali linux as a standalone. The installer works fine and I get a bootable system, but I want to be able to share files with other qubes so I added the qubes repo and signing keys and installed qubes-core-agent. This made the system unbootable. I get the error “failed to start qubes-rootfs-resize.service” and “failed to start qubes-mount-dirs.service”. The hard drive is not resizable so that could be the problem. Do I need the core agent to do file sharing and clipboard sharing?

Try this to fix the issue with kali template:

Thanks, but I’d still like to get the standalone working. Using Kali as an app qube doesn’t work well.

You can create a standalone qube based on a kali template instead of using an app qube.
What is missing in the kali template that you will have in the standalone not based on a template installed from ISO?

I’m considering doing this, making a standalone from the template. Some of the qubes packages failed to install even with the “fix” of switching the sources.list to trixie from bookworm. vm-recommends and one of the qubes-networkmanager packages. I’m not sure what the effect of that is at this point.

Also I’m noticing a number of other posts having the same problem with qubes-core-agent breaking the install. None of them got a satisfactory response, so I’m thinking there is a larger issue here, which is why I asked the question Can qubes-core-agent be used in a standalone at all or is that not a compatible use case?

The Qubes packages require for system to be configured in a specific way for them to work: specific partitioning, specific username, maybe something else.

That makes sense. Can you point me to any documentation on how to set up a system to use qubes packages?

I don’t think it’s documented, so you’ll have to check hove the templates are built: