Help am not able to backup on ext hdd or ext ssd

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1

Need help backing up… every time i run into this error message after attaching ext hdd lacie 2tb or my samsung t9 1tb ssd to sys-usb then going to qubes backup

dom0 failed to select path!
Error Command 'qubes.SelectDirectory' returned non-zero exit status 125. occured.

i attach the data block 1863gb lacie hdd to sys-usb, i then try to back up to sys-usb and click the three dots to browse to select the path to my lacie drive for the back up then dom0 gives this error. any help would be great. thx!!

also it shows up in usb controller w/ partitions of my ssd and hdd. shows EFI 200mb w my lacie, they were both formatted for exFAT GUID on a mac. thru terminal, shows 1863gb available w lacie even tho only 20 gb on there of storage. also shows lil less storage although brand new samsung ssd - is this normal for it to show like this? i tried formatting the lacie in mac disk management but it wouldnt let me set it to guid so i used mac terminal to erase and reformat the drive to exFAT and GUID. Idk if its able to do this successfully without issues. its a usb-c to micro usb type b lacie.

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Sys-net is a service qube, you aren’t really meant to do work in it. It has like 300MB of memory (not enough for most processes)

Use an appVM. Allocate the external USB drive to that appVM (maybe a devault dvm disp or the personal qube) then run backup to that qube NOT sys-usb

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But backing up directly to sys-usb is not an unusual thing to do. If it doesn’t work out of the box (whether due to memory settings or something else) I would consider that a bug.

What do you see if you run qvm-run --service --pass-io sys-usb qubes.SelectDirectory in a dom0 terminal?

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Going the other way, I went looking for a simple way to prevent any way of mounting devices in sys-usb, because of the memory problems.

Without memory ballooning, I found it needing ever increasing amounts of dedicated memory to avoid annoying lockups (it wasn’t for backups, but some other purpose)

I failed, although udevctl seemed like one way to go.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find it simple… although I am thinking to go back to it some time, to also get automounting of my /dev/xvd devices.

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@corny this sounds like an easy way to avoid the memory limit issues. I’ll attach my backup drive to a dedicated backup appvm made from fedora. and let you know how it goes. thx - saw a yt video on backup of qubes and they said it attach it to sys-usb so thought that was the normal way.
EDIT so i get the same error about type journalctl in dom0 when i create backup qube and try to attach it

@rustybird when i type that

I get

qrexec-client[22256]: vchan_timeout.c:46:qubes_wait_for_vchan_connection_with_timeout: vchan connection timeout
qrexec-client.c:320:main: qrexec connection timeout

i keep having trouble with attaching usb’s to things it seems like. takes long then doesn’t work.
@rustybird
when i try to attach the lacie hdd to sys-usb now it keeps saying


> Qubes daemond access error - got empty response from Qubesd - see journalctl in dom0 for details

which gets me highlighted in yellow along with many other things in white that look ok…
localhost kernel: [Firmware Bug] : TSC doesn't count with P0 frequency!
also im on kernel version 6.6.77-1.qubes.fc37.x86-_64 running on lenovo thinkpad e15 gen3 1tb hdd nvme 40gb ram

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so did you create an appvm or what do you use now? what have you learned?

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For your problem, the error code 125 is not obvious to me, and the later errors also.
Did you try again to send the disk to an AppVM, after restarting sys-usb (might upset other qubes, usb keyboard, etc), or the whole system?

Then I have only questions:

  • What method do you use to mount the disk?
  • Is sys-usb based on a regular, not minimal, Fedora template?
  • Which version?
  • etc

I use the method of @corny :

Almost always a disposable for all usb storage, except for backup where I use an AppVM with no network, because I trust my backup disks fully.
I suppose it should be a named disposable, to protect me from mistakes.

I have a “prepare for backup” script in the AppVM, to mount the /dev/xvdi device on the /mnt/backup directory and check the free space on it. I think that the backup destination directory must be writable by the default user (rwx permissions?).

My sys-usb has (iirc) no applications in the “Q” menu to help me remember not to use it. If I must, then I can open the console, or use qvm-run. I have given it a little more than the usual amount of memory, after playing with some unusual devices in it.

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so i was in process of updating templates and qubes and maybe that messed with it. i shut down my computer restarted it and i was able to easily choose my storage device by going thru sys-usb. when i tried attaching to the backup qube i didnt see the storage device in the file manager when going thru the qubes backup pathway. thx for the help anyways!!