Create a new qubes-vm starting from scratch

General Discussion
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Is there any manual or howto for creating a new qubes vm starting from scratch, getting a layout for the virtual machine, similar to the standard fedora / debian templates?

It would be nice to have a description just for creating a new fedora or debian minimal qube.

Idea behind is, to adopt this to any other distro like Arch, Manjaro or anything else.

It’s totally clear, that the fedora or debian packages will not work directly on this other distro, but it will prepare a starting point for porting and testing the existing packages.

2

The following has links to Qubes builder:

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sorry, this link is dead …

4

sorry about that, it’s fixed now. I had grabbed the original link from the .onion version of the docs, but didn’t realize that it’s organized differently than the clear URLs.

https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/r4.3/user/templates/templates.html#important-notes
vs.
http://doc.qubesos...onion/user/templates/templates.html#important-notes
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Thanks for the updated Link.

It’s not completely what I thought of. - If you know VirtualBox:

There one has to prepare the VMs virtual hardware and in the next step you can install whatever you want. You just need an installer medium what has the needed drivers.

Here we are on Xen and mostly all distributions have the needed drivers onboard.

What I’m looking for, is how to build the needed (virtual) hardware skeleton for the vm-qube and possibly some hints, what qubes-packages need to be installed later in the vm-qube to get the special qubes features working:

  • networking: the fixed IP-address settings, DNS and routing
  • partitioning: to get the template / application connection running
  • …

I found nothing about this in the docs. Maybe there’s a SALT solution for this, maybe I’ve overseen some docs describing these first steps or at least there is possibly a script in dom0 what creates the Xen parameter files for a new vm.

6

I’m not quite sure what it is you are asking. A concrete example
would help.

This is quite outdated but contains a fair approximation of how you
could approach this for a NEW template:

If you just want to know what packages are needed, look at the page on
minimal templates:

Partitioning is handled as part of the creation and template process -
you already have a link for this.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

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Thanks for this:

The first link seems to be exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll take a deeper look at it and report later.

The second will be the right for getting the network and some other tasks running. It is the last piece of the puzzle.

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Following from the second option of the Community guide linked by @unman, there is some more information for HVM/Standalone qubes :

HVM allows to boot and install from a DVD, with no Qubes facilities built in. QEMU runs inside a Xen “stubdom” to provide the “hardware”, which is all configured automatically by Qubes. It provides everything necessary for common Linux and Windows installation. Some changes to the virtualised hardware are possible, using qube “Features” - for example, UEFI vs BIOS booting, and others. It gives less flexibility than Virtualbox, but it is enough for use in Qubes. (Corrections or my bad memory may be necessary from more knowldgeable people!)

Then, I think it is generally possible to install the needed packages and transition to fully integrated use of the Qubes infrastructure, but my memory of trying is that it was hard work. Either you need a source of compatible Qubes packages for your qube, or you must recompile them, and maybe package them, yourself.

My experience was building “Gentoo from scratch”, but I switched to using the official Qubes Gentoo repo to provide easy compilation and dependency resolution.

It was a big help to have the help of working Qubes virtualised hardware and all the hard work of Fepitre and others…

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