Docs: "dom0 vm-auth prompt" and "yubikey auth" instuctions don't in 4.1

[fiftyfourthparallel]

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I’m using the right technical term to refer to the issue, but the issue definitely exists nonetheless.

For example, on the passwordless root page:

Adding Dom0 “VMAuth” service:

 [root@dom0 /]# echo "/usr/bin/echo 1" >/etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.VMAuth
 [root@dom0 /]# echo "@anyvm dom0 ask,default_target=dom0" \
 >/etc/qubes-rpc/policy/qubes.VMAuth
(Note: any VMs you would like still to have passwordless root access (e.g. Templates) can be specified in the second file with “<vmname> dom0 allow”)

The /etc/qubes-rpc/qubes.VMAuth and /etc/qubes-rpc/policy/qubes.VMAuth mentioned here no longer exist in R4.1, and creating it doesn’t solve the issue as the system no longer uses it.

Similarly, in the Yubikey documentation, the user is supposed to:

First configure the qrexec service. Create /etc/qubes-rpc/custom.LockScreen with a simple command to lock the screen. In the case of xscreensaver (used in Xfce) it would be:

I haven’t tried this out myself, but chances are the qrexec changes have made this outdated in the same way it made the previous verified example outdated.

 

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@adw

Since 4.0 is still supported, is it true that they’re “no-longer-existent qrexec policies”? That is, don’t they still exist in 4.0? I’m afraid that removing that doc content could harm 4.0 users who are still relying on it.

I don’t mean to antagonize, but R4.1 is the current release and support for R4.0 will end in around five months. New users who will be the biggest beneficiaries of the documentation (in terms of both the amount of help and the amount of people helped) will naturally adopt the newer version. This also isn’t to say that older documentation should be immediately scrapped–keeping them in the same documentation under a subsection or tagged with a warning would work.

 

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^{Not technically-trained; consume with salt.}