I am configuring VMs based on the debian-11-minimal template. I created my first AppVM based on these templates and set its default network connection to sys-firewall.
There is no internet connection in the AppVM. Running ping qubes-os.org gives Temporary failure in name resolution, and ping 172.67.208.186 gives Network is unreachable.
The output of ip addr show:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:16:3e:5e:6c:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
I ran ip link set dev eth0 up to bring eth0 to the UP state. The DOWN was changed to UP but networking still didn’t work.
I have installed these qubes-* packages on top of the default debian-11-minimal packages (technically, I cloned the template and am installing the packages in the clone):
qubes-core-agent-passwordless-root
qubes-core-agent-thunar
qubes-core-agent-dom0-updates
qubes-menus
qubes-desktop-linux-common
qubes-pdf-converter
qubes-img-converter
The debian-11-minimal TemplateVM can reach the internet via the typical proxy method ($ export http_proxy=127.0.0.1:8082 or something to that effect).
An AppVM based on fedora-33-minimal has the same problem.
Any ideas why networking might not work on a fresh debian-11-minimal VM?
On a whim, DuckDuckGo saw fit to serve me this reddit post (teddit link). I figured I’d install the various qubes-core-agent-* packages alluded to in the post which I hadn’t already installed.
I started with qubes-core-agent-networking, and lo-and-behold, ping works again!
Currently, the Qubes documentation on minimal templates seems to only lists qubes-core-agent-networking as necessary for FirewallVM and NetVMs, and not for any VM’s internet connections. Perhaps the docs should be changed to reflect that you do need qubes-core-agent-networking to access the internet? Or maybe I’m reading them wrong and they do in fact mean that any internet access requires this package? @adw
On a whim, DuckDuckGo saw fit to serve me this reddit post (teddit link). I figured I’d install the various qubes-core-agent-* packages alluded to in the post which I hadn’t already installed.
I started with qubes-core-agent-networking, and lo-and-behold, ping works again!
You are right - the docs are deficient.
On the other hand minimal templates are for advanced users only - there
are prominent warnings to this effect, yet I see users without any
understanding trying to use them.
Nothing wrong with this - reach should exceed grasp. But it doesn’t test
abilities too much to reason that if you want to use networking you have
to install a networking package.
Perhaps it is a useful test to see if users should be using minimal
templates.