What are some possible causes? It happens fairly regularly.
I will have a completely different array of VMs networked and sys-whonix spontaneously starts. So I shut it down and sometimes it will start right back up again. I assume it’s something innocuous like dom0 checking for updates, but it’s somewhat unnerving .
Often times it happens when I have an alternate whonix gw running. Do the Qubes Whonix templates (or dom0) contain any scripts or configurations that assume an active whonix gateway is named sys-whonix (inadvertently triggering the sys-whonix to start when attempting to manage or run processes in the current gateway)?
Do the Qubes Whonix templates (or dom0) contain any scripts or configurations that assume an active whonix gateway is named sys-whonix (inadvertently triggering the sys-whonix to start when attempting to manage or run processes in the current gateway)?
Yes, and there are instructions on how to fix it. Basically you need to tell the sdwdate daemon the name of your alternative gateway.
But I’m a bit confused. The solution is to create a custom 50_user.conf file in the /usr/local/etc/sdwdate-gui.d directory of the whonix workstation connected to the alt whonix gateway. But that obviously won’t persist after a reboot.
The existing 30_default.conf file in the same directory also explains the issue. It suggests that it’s possible to use the same ws template for both workstation appVMs, but how? Nothing is mentioned about using bind-dirs but that would seem like the only way to have different root files in unique whonix workstations that use the same template.
It will persist - /usr/local is mounted from /rw/usrlocal, and (as part
of /rw) will persist across reboots.
You can confirm this by checking with mount, or by creating a file under
/rw/usrlocal/etc and seeing that it is present under /usr/local/etc
These qubes will share the same template but (as above) can have
different file systems under /usr/local
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum or in the mailing lists I speak for myself.
@unman It turned out to be a beginner mistake I was making in navigating to the correct directory. I initially navigated to /usr/local and checked the directory contents. Then instead of using cd etc and making the sdwdate-gui.d directory, I used cd /etc… Live and learn.
Got it figured out and everything is working perfectly now.
Live and learn.