Iso build for 4.1 fails due to --releasever

User Support General
1

Using an AppVM based on fc33, which previously successfully built a 4.1 iso which successfully booted and installed, I thought I would re-run, just to see what has been happening. I saved a copy of my builder.conf file, ran a make distclean and then also sudo rm -rf chroot-* and then copied my builder.conf back.

The make qubes-os-iso fails with:

-> Building template fc32 (logfile: build-logs/template-fc32.log)...
make: *** [Makefile:341: template-local-fc32] Error 1

Rummaging about in the template-local-fc32.log file, I see that the issue is

Unable to detect release version (use ‘–releasever’ to specify release version)

I found various references from 2020 claiming that this has been fixed. Apparently not so. I also saw some recent posts here claiming also to have hit the problem and surmounted it, but there are no details as to the solution, or even if the problem was a recent one, or the historical one.

Here is the log file: – sorry, new users, as I apparently am, cannot upload files.

Here is (essentially) my builder.conf file, based on the example-configs/qubes-os-r4.1.conf one:

Added near top: DISTS_VM := fc32 buster
Added near bottom: COMPONENTS := $(filter-out gcc,$(COMPONENTS))

2

→ Installing core RPM packages…
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/sockets.target.wants/dbus.socket → /usr/lib/systemd/system/dbus.socket.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/user/sockets.target.wants/dbus.socket → /usr/lib/systemd/user/dbus.socket.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/dbus.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/dbus-broker.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/user/dbus.service → /usr/lib/systemd/user/dbus-broker.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/timers.target.wants/unbound-anchor.timer → /usr/lib/systemd/system/unbound-anchor.timer.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/timers.target.wants/dnf-makecache.timer → /usr/lib/systemd/system/dnf-makecache.timer.
Unable to detect release version (use ‘–releasever’ to specify release version)
Qubes Template Builder Repository 0.0 B/s | 0 B 00:00
Errors during downloading metadata for repository ‘template-builder-repo’:

3

I had a similar issue when I tried to build the ubunt focal fossa template VM. The build aborted when done from a Fedora-33 VM. Building from Fedora-32 went fine.

4

I am getting this problem as well, also building from a fedora-33 VM. I will try building from my (recently reinstalled) f32 vm and report back.

This is going to be a problem in the near future if this continues. F32 is nearing end of life.

5

I am sad to report that building on a fedora-32 VM did not fix the problem. I’d love to try and troubleshoot the Makefile when I have time, but I dont have all too much experience with makefiles to be able to do that.

6

I had the same issue building 4.1. The only way I was able to successfully build was omitting the template VMs and building only dom0, as mentioned here Error when running qubes-builder : Unable to detect release version use '--releasever' - #7 by xmpriv

However the ISO that gets built doesn’t boot, ELF error as described here ISO build for Qubes 4.1 is broken (ELF: Not an ELF binary)