Hello everyone I want to create multiple new templates from Qubes template manager, but it takes too long. It may be my Wi-Fi fault, but it takes about 3 hours to create one template. Is there a way to reduce the time to download templates?
Switch from sys-whonix to sys-net for your dom0 update VM (go to qubes global settings in the menu).
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I see, it’s certainly been downloaded earlier when I downloaded it via Sys-Net. Now, I have set it to be limited to Sys-Whonix. Thank you for your answer. I’ll try the way you taught me.
If you want faster then you need sys-net. Sys-whonix will be slower.
Fyi My system downloads and installs fedora xfce template in about an hour over whonix.
Is it sys-firewall or sys-net ?
There was a thread explaining this but I can’t find it. In the global settings for things like update preference, it is sys-net. That’s how it is in the default install if you don’t change it to go through whonix
Just download it once to dom0 with:
qvm-template download "templatename"
And install it from there as often as you want without downloading it every time with:
qvm-template install "path to template or drag and drop it into your terminal"
A lot of time saved!
Is no one going to comment on this?
I have fibre to desktop at work and apartment, so all is good.
I’m currently in the mountains using a cell, and install times for
templates are in the order of 20 minutes - 13 of that downloading the
template over Tor.
I dont have a high powered machine- far from it. I use a BSD sys-net,
mirage-firewall, and I dont use Whonix, but a straight TorVM. Download
and install times of 1-3 hours is not acceptable.
Has anyone benchmarked Whonix to check connection speeds?
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
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Doesn´t it usually come down to the tor circuit you are using to download the template with? If you are using the clear net address it is a minimum of three hops. If you are using a tor hardened system you will download from the onion repository so you will have at least seven hops. And the specific bandwidth of each hop has an effect on your overall performance. So if you are out of luck and there are low bandwidth hops in you circuit it can take a very long time. I usually do all my maintaining over a tor hardened system - most of the time it works flawless. If not I restart my tor gateway until it works.
For my part I still think downloading the template package once and then reinstalling it locally is the way to go. It saves a lot of time an hustle.
Looks like OP wanted to install multiple templates, not reinstall/clone the same template multiple times.
1 hour was a rough estimate to give OP an idea. I have occasionally finished in about 30 min, usually more like 45 min. All the variance is the sys-whonix download speed. As another poster mentioned, speed is erratic between downloads sometimes even within one download. I have fibre. Download reports about 1-1.5 mb/s but it varies a lot
You can do that with this approach. It is just the package you are downloading for a specific template. When you install this downloaded package you install a fresh template with a new UUID on your system every time you do that. You could even mount the current ISO for QubesOS and take packages from there. Then you do not have to download anything at all. With the caveat that the ISO just contains the packages for regular debian, fedora and whonix as far as I remember from doing it the last time.
As I said it depends on the tor circuit you are using for your task.
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-reduce-the-time-to-download-templates/35328/9
So tor is probably the weakest link in your infrastructure when it comes down to performance but also your other network elements might factor into that equation…
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