How do you back up Qubes 4.3?

User Support
1

How many more months will we have to wait before the “Backup Qubes” feature built into Qubes OS 4.3 works again the way it did a year ago?

Because I haven’t been able to make a single backup in a long time, since the backup process keeps automatically stopping halfway through.

2

Is there enough space for your backup directory? I have been able to use backups in r4.3 without any problems

2 Likes
3

I’m not aware of an open issue about such a thing.
Can you explain in more detail?

Does this happen on every qube?
Does it happen on specific qubes?
Does it happen on specific qubes of particular sizes? Or particular
provenance?

If you have not tested this, please do so: backup qubes individually or
in small groups, and report back.

Before raising an issue we will need more information - at least enough
to reproduce.

2 Likes
4

I have 800 GB of free space on my hard drive; it’s not full.

5

That’s not a lot of space when it comes to backups, especially if you are including templates. Space on the hard drive is not where you should be looking. If you are backing up to a directory in a vm, for example, you will want to make sure you’ve allocated enough private storage to that vm.

1 Like
6

I’m not aware of an open issue about such a thing.

Can you explain in more detail?

  • Yes, of course!

Does this happen on every qube?

  • No, it works on some Qubes but not on others.

Does it happen on specific qubes?

  • It varies.

Does it happen on specific qubes of particular sizes?

  • That varies as well.

Or particular provenance?

  • It’s a mix: “personels, works, debians, fedoras”

If you have not tested this, please do so: backup qubes individually or
in small groups, and report back.

  • personel, errors occur here
  • work, errors occur here
  • debian, errors occur here
  • fedora, errors occur here

Before raising an issue we will need more information - at least enough

to reproduce.

Error message:

Default Boot Device Missing or
Boot Failed.
Insert Recovery Media and Hit any
key
Then Select 'BootManager‘ to
choose a new Boot Device or to
Boot Recovery Media

7

800 GB

8

correcting this to 800GB (from 800MB) above will make the thread harder to follow. 800GB should be plenty of space, if it’s allocated to the backup.

1 Like
9

Yes, the 800 GB is reserved for data backup

10

When and where do you see this message?
What does it have to do with your failing backups?

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

1 Like
11

When and where do you see this message?

  • I see this error message every time the backup stops.
  • The backup has reached about 50%.
  • The computer stops working for a few seconds.
  • The computer shuts down automatically, and then a brown box appears with this error message.
  • I then have to turn off the computer using the power button.
  • I have to turn it on and let it boot up before I can continue working.

What does it have to do with your failing backups?

  • Unfortunately, I don’t know either.
  • I’m not a computer expert.
12

The error message suggests that there is an issue with your Qubes
install. You should not see such a message. I suspect it is unrelated to
your backup problems, unless there is something broken in the computer
you are using.

What you seem to have (from memory, not for the first time) is an issue
that is peculiar to you. Other people do report issues with Backup
stopping but they are usually specific to backups of specific qubes.

What are your specification?
Where are you attempting to back up?
Have you tried to back up to a different medium?

What I would like you to do is to backup your qubes one by one. Note
which ones fail.
Shutdown the computer and leave it for a while.
Start the computer and backup your qubes one by one, but in reverse
order. Note which ones fail.

Change the medium that you are backing up to. Repeat the above
testing. Report back with your findings.

2 Likes
13

That would mean I’d have to create about 100 individual backups.

I don’t have a lot of expertise yet, since I’m not very familiar with QubesOS.

Once the backup is finished, I’ll copy it to the external hard drive.

No, I’ve never tried writing directly to the external hard drive.

14

You have not stated where you are writing the backup currently.
Is it the same disk where Qubes is installed? What partition and how did
you create it and mount it?
Is it a qube?
Is it a disk attached to a qube?
Is it a disk attached to dom0?

If you wont provide this information no one can help you.

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team. When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
2 Likes
15

just to add a visual example to unman’s questions: The following backup should be successful because the total size of the backup (1.3GB) does not exceed the private storage allocated to the destination qube (2GB in sys-usb, in this example). However, if I added more templates to the backup, without increasing private storage, the backup would certainly fail.

backup-size-final
backup-size-final538×196 14.1 KB

backup-size
backup-size860×755 68.8 KB

1 Like
16

You haven’t specified where you’re currently saving the backup.

  • While I’m creating the backup, I save it to an empty 800 GB VM storage space.
  • I always bundle together about 300 GB of data; this should fit into the 800 GB of free space.
  • I just tried to create a backup with 175 GB of VM data, but it stopped at 94%.

Is it the same hard drive where Qubes is installed?

  • Yes, that’s correct.

Which partition, and how was it installed?

  • My hard drive has only a single partition with many VMs (VM apps and VM templates)

Are you creating and mounting it?

  • I copy these to the other hard drive later, yes.

Is it a Qube?

  • No, I need to back up about 100 VM-Qubes.

Is it a disk attached to a Qube?

  • No, they are IC modules

Is it a hard drive connected to dom0?

  • No, it is an internal hard drive.

If you don’t provide this information, no one can help you.

  • Yes, I’m aware of that. I thought I’d test everything first so I could provide an answer afterward.
17

The following VMs with the specified file sizes cannot be backed up using Qubes Tools or Backup Qubes:

180,000.00 MiB

170,000.00 MiB

126,000.00 MiB

etc.

Question: How can these VMs be backed up?

They are not template VMs.

18

I’ve had a similar issue, but for me it disappeared upon upgrading to r4.3, so kinda the reverse of your situation. Related issues:

19

Can anyone help me out here? I haven’t found anything here yet that I can use to fix the errors in my backup.

20

Can you copy & paste the terminal output that you see when you attempt to back up one of those VMs to dom0 using the qvm-backup CLI?

1 Like