How to update a cloned template

User Support
1

I’ve successfully installed the Debian 13 XFCE template as well as the Fedora 42 XFCE template.

However, I have a few templates that are clones of the older Debian and Fedora templates and I am not sure how to update these cloned templates.

Do I run sudo apt full-upgrade (for Debian) and sudo dnf upgrade (for Fedora) or make new clones and switch over the App Qubes to the cloned templates that are based on the latest Fedora and Debian templates?

By switch over, I mean the process would look something like this:

  • Make new cloned template (if original template was called project-temp, the new one based on Fedora 42 XFCE is called project-temp-new)
  • Switch the App Qubes that were using project-template to use project-template-new
  • (Optional?) Delete the project-temp template

I tried searching the forum to try and understand what I should do but it wasn’t very clear what the natural solution was.

2

It’s really up to you… as any ‘cloned template’ is just a new independent template, and it doesn’t really related to it’s ‘original’ any more.

I personally using this process:
for smaller updates: I doing in-place upgrade from CLI using dnf/apt/whatever - then just rebooting the affected AppVMs

As it is a safe update, I have never needed to revert back from…

But for any new release version, like Fedora 42->43 ‘dist-upgrade’:

  • I downloading the new official template from Qubes repo
  • Cloning it to a new ‘working’ template
  • Applying my customization
  • doing an in-place upgrade to get the latest state.
  • switching my AppVMs template to this new one.

As such dist-upgrade comes with bigger risk, you can easily switch back to the previous working template anytime…

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3

I’m doing in place upgrade but I’m doing it on clones of one to upgrade. If after few day after upgrade new one works without problem then I delete old ones.

4

I have, in my case, for the last few versions of debian and fedora, executed an inplace upgrade.

  • Clone the old template
  • do a version upgrade inplace on the cloned template
  • switch the app-qubes to the cloned templates with the upgraded versions
  • if all goes right and no bigger problems pop up, delete the old templates
  • if something goes wrong, switch back that app-qube to the old template, delete the cloned one and try again with a fresh template from the qubes templates repo.

Additionally i have the rule, that i never use the original templates from the qubes template repo, before i use them, i make a clone.
Example:

  • original template: fedora-42-xfce
  • used for qube “untrusted”: fedora-42-untrusted (mainly a clone of fedora-42-xfce)
  • used for qube “personal”: fedora-42-full (clone of fedora-42-xfce with all applications, that i regulary use)
  • upgrade that template: clone fedora-42-full to fedora-43-full
  • make an inplace upgrade
  • switch qube “personal” to fedora-43-full
  • if all goes well, delete fedora-42-full after some time
  • … and so on
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