How to install sys-net/usb/firewall after in-place upgrade to 4.2?

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1

I did the in-place upgrade from Qubes 4.1 to 4.2. That worked well but I now realize that that process neither upgraded my default Debian 11 templates to Debian 12, nor did it install the Debian 12 templates at all. So basically it seems I need to install every single qube from scratch - including net qubes, firewall qubes, USB qubes etc. That seems rather daunting to me! What’s the best way to get this done?

What I did so far was to install the Debian 12 template. I’m OK re-installing all my other template VMs and app qubes (data is backed up) but I have no idea how to upgrade sys-net, sys-usb, sys-firewall. Beyond not knowing how to configure these qubes, some of them (firewall and usb) are based on debian-11-dvm but I don’t know how to set up a corresponding debian-12-dvm.

Any help would be appreciated!

2

You can use Qubes Template Switcher to switch your qubes template from debian-11 to debian-12.

You can create new disposable template debian-12-dvm like this:

Then switch your named disposables (sys-usb, sys-firewall) from debian-11-dvm to debian-12-dvm using Qubes Template Switcher.

1 Like
3

Thank you, that worked!

TBH that should be listed on the in-place upgrade docs page, along with some support on how to upgrade the sys-usb without temporarily breaking your USB mouse/keyboard and also with some pointers on how to upgrade the existing disp VMs. Maybe the following two snippets are helpful for people who find this:

Change sys-usb to template debian-12:

qvm-shutdown --wait sys-usb; qvm-prefs sys-usb template debian-12-dvm; qvm-start sys-usb

Change all default disp VM to debian-12-dvm:

for q in $(qvm-ls --raw-data | awk -F '|' '{print $1}'); do
    qvm-prefs $q default_dispvm debian-12-dvm
done
4

It’s better to test it before changing it:

5

oh wow that’s such a good point actually, well I guess I was lucky in my case. Thanks to the many thoughtful people here!