How Internal SSDs Are Handled

User Support General
,
21

Seems like no block devices are connected to your work qube then.
Are you sure that you’ve connected your block devices from dom0 to work qube?
Try to detach and attach them again and rerun the command.

22

I just noticed that the previously attached drives were gone from the personal and work file managers. Also, the Qubes Devices listing was now full of all the drives and partitions.

So I chose Storage to attach, and the fdisk results were:
Disk /dev/xvdi: 223.57 GiB, 240055746560 bytes, 468858880 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

However, it did not appear in the file manager, even after refreshing and reloading it.

23

When trying to attach, the pop-ups always state attaching and then drive removed.

24

As stated in the doc linked in the first post:

If not specified otherwise, block devices will show up as /dev/xvdi* in a linux VM, where * may be the partition-number. If a block device isn’t automatically mounted after attaching, open a terminal in the VM and execute:

cd ~
mkdir mnt
sudo mount /dev/xvdi2 mnt

where xvdi2 needs to be replaced with the partition you want to mount. This will make your drive content accessible under ~/mnt.

Not sure about this one. Maybe you’re reattaching the same block device? Then it’d make sense if it’ll remove the block device and then attach it back.

25

Okay, here’s a couple points. When I display the block devices in Qubes Devices, it shows the normal and conventional naming of sda1 or sdb2 or sdc1, etc… These are always prefaced by dom0: and then the drive designation.

Also, the suggested command does not use those designations.

Making it all worse is the fact that attaching an already attached drive removes it from the first qube and mounts it in the second. Therefore, normally shared information on the given drive cannot be shared.

26

It’s intentional since it could lead to the data corruption:

27

If you want to have shared folder between qubes then you can use this:

28

I will look at that last method, but first the darn drive must show up in Xfce file manager. Do you think that the programmers missed this issue when integrating Thunar?

29

I’m not sure how Thunar integration works, maybe you need to have some additional packages installed in template for it to work with some filesystems. Or maybe there is some other issue.

30

Thanks Apparatus for all your good help. It was much appreciated.

I believe that this just became a no-go for me. I use Debian and when I must then fool around with building from source without a GUI to solve a simple drive sharing problem, the system is just not ready for prime time, as far as I view it. QubesOS is a wonderful and marvelous system, but many of us use secondary drives for our own long-term storage, and plugging these drives in after the OS installation just makes life so easy. I’m not going back to any other method. There simply is no percentage in it.

As much as I desire a robust and fool-proof environment, I can continue with my own security measures going forward.

Thanks again. This journey has taught me a lot, and your help has been invaluable.