Installing qubes-core-agent on an existing HVM Standalone Linux VM, makes it unbootable

User Support
1

I’m on Qubes 4.1.

I’m able to install Debian 11 fine from an ISO - into a Standalone HVM. And yes, I really need this because I am running certain programs that need the full desktop experience.

This is not enough because I want file copy/move and clipboard integration too, so I continue… However after installing “sudo apt-get install qubes-core-agent” and rebooting, it fails to boot!

“parport_pc.956: Unable to set coherent dma mask: disabling DMA”

Any ideas?

Specific questions:

  • While installing qubes-core-agent, it prompts me whether I want to keep existing fstab or replace it with a new one. I tried both without success - but which option should I choose here really?
  • At VM boot after installing qubes-core-agent, a new GRUB “Xen Hypervisor” boot option becomes visible. I tried choosing this “Xen” and the old one, both without success. But which boot option should I choose really?
2

qubes packages will rarely work as expected when installed on an HVM.
I havent tried this and don’t have time to do so.

The error message you cite is unlikely to be the cause of the non boot.
All it shows is that DMA handling of that device in incompatible with
Xen.

You don’t say what that device is, or how you installed the ISO, where
you installed etc.

3

It sounds like this - running a full desktop Linux VM - within Qubes is not really a common use case, and not really “supported”. (As opposed to running a Windows, which is common and “supported”/documented.) Is that correct?

In this case, if literally nobody here can report success with this use case on Qubes 4.1, I’d rather just give up instead of trying to swim against the tide.

I might sadly be better off finding an online file/text sharing tool for my copy/paste and file copy purposes.

Is it somehow possible to go the other way around? Start with a normal Qubes AppVM and somehow “enhance” it into a full desktop experience (without having to bother with HVM/Standalone)?

4

…

5

As mentioned I don’t really want to go there… have little interest in being the only person in here doing this. It’s not sustainable.

  • Windows VM full desktop experience on Qubes: Clipboard copy/paste and file copy/move widely used and supported by the community.

  • Linux VM full desktop experience on Qubes: No clipboard copy/paste and file/copy supported because very few people are in need of this use case.

Got it. Now I have to adapt.

This is all I needed to know. I’m not going to spend any more time hacking my way around this if nobody else here has done it.

6

Hello there I am having exactly the same problem I have a qubes installation where the interaction between all AppVM’s and Windows standalone works fine, I have installed a standalone of kali as I like the menu’s but like you I think I am going to give up on the standalone.

This is the only post on the internet I have found with the same issue as us.

I have tried everything including a rebuild from the git repo using bookworm and trixie, manual deb installs to no avail same errors.

Did you ever get a result on this my next thing is going to try an AppVM install of Kali which the tools should hopefully work with and possibly use something like winvnc to mimic the desktop environment.

I installed from a Kali Linux iso 2024-1 and upgraded with a dist upgrade and all good until I tried to install the tools:

sudo mkdir -p usr/share/keyrings
wget -O- https://keys.qubes-os.org/keys/qubes-release-4.2-debian-signing-key.asc | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/qubes-release-4.2-debian-signing-key.asc
echo ‘deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/qubes-release-4.2-debian-signing-key.asc] Index of /r4.2/vm/ trixie main’ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qubes-r4.list
sudo apt update

This was trixie but I tried bookworm also the release is kali-rolling

7

You can install kali from the community templates testing repository:

And use VNC it you want desktop environment: