Issues Testing Installing Whonix 16 in Qubes 4.1 (beta)

User Support
21

It creates a new one. You can manually switch over the old if you don’t want to redo the customizations.

22

how do you know what version you are on? from packages? cat /etc/fedora-release just says 4.0

strange my
sudo nano /srv/formulas/base/virtual-machines-formula/qvm/whonix.jinja
already says ‘16’ how can that be ?

23

Probably because whonix.jinja was already updated through regular update scripts so that step isn’t needed anymore.

Qube Manager > About > Version Information
qubes-template-whonix-gw-15.noarch 4.06.202012170920
qubes-template-whonix-gw-16.noarch 4.06.202109211111
qubes-template-whonix-ws-15.noarch 4.06.202012170920
qubes-template-whonix-ws-16.noarch 4.06.202109211111

24

I broke my Qubes install twice (and did re-install of Qubes) in attempting to switch over to Whonix-16. I think I give it a break for now and wait and see if there’s a new release in form of ISO which allows me to use Whonix-16.

I kind of think the Whonix documentation is very confusing even for people with technical skills (i.e command line/terminal). I’m no expert though just a hobbyist.

25

I did too but I think this update fixes it.

1 Like
26

Glad it’s not just me then.

Solid post/contribution by the way above.

27

yeah, that salt jinja command needs to come with a LARGE blackbox warning, close all other qubes run overnight, froze my system, and had to reboot, and I have 32GB RAM.
not sure what that script does that it should be freezing all other qubes, but IIRC this same thing happens years ago with the same type script,

sort of makes me want to uninstall whonix, if the Qubes system is going to get corrupted, or might be already from me, hard rebooting during its partial install ??

1 Like
28

I got through it on 4.1 but it was a little bumpy. The Salt script did not work to download the whonix templates so I used qvm-template-gui to download them, then the Salt script ran and created remaining whonix 16 elements.

1 Like
29

@estoner
I’m on 4.1-beta too - mind sharing the complete list of commands you ran/did?

30

I think I just discovered sudo qvm-template-gui. I’ll update if it succeeds in doing stuff correctly.

31

I was shooting from the hip and not documenting it, but i’ll try to recount my steps

  1. open dom0 terminal run qvm-template-gui (this should launch the template gui)
  2. in the gui scroll down until you find the Whonix 16 templates (2 of them)
  3. click on the template(s) you want where it says “available”, a drop down will appear and select “install”
  4. hit “Apply” (top of gui) the gui will download and install templates
  5. after it finished I closed all Qubes and rebooted (my choice)
  6. open the dom0 terminal and enter ‘sudo qubesctl state.sls qvm.anon-whonix’
  7. the rest is automatic except for changing all references to whonix 15 to whonix 16 from the Qubes Manager (this was a little hit and miss but I got it done by looking in settings of each Qube)
  8. one twist for me was that the whonix-ws-16-dvm was in the Qube Manager but it did not show up in appmenu. I finally fixed this by opening settings on whonix-ws-16-dvm from Qube Manager application tab and selected a few applications and presto… it showed up in the appmenu.
  9. one more thing you can do to check that its 16 running is open a terminal from newly created whonix 16 qubes and run " cat /etc/os-release. I just looked for debian 11 since my whonix 15 qubes were debian 10

good luck

1 Like
32

@estoner Legend. Thanks for the write up. Working my way through what you said as I write this.

33

It worked, thanks again @estoner

34

this is what install page says

Ambox warning pn.svg.png Before executing the call in this section, note it can take a long time to finish. Fast Internet connections take only a few minutes, while slow connections can take twenty minutes or more (it is far slower over Tor). No progress indicator is shown, so do not interrupt the salt process once it has started or this can lead to an unstable system [archive]. [6]

However the link to “unstable system” goes nowhere, probably it should not cause a system to freeze, else it should say so IMO

any reason I can’t just install templates the way other templates are installed?

*note 4.0 has not qvm-template-gui

35

You mean something like this?
sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-templates-itl-testing qubes-template-whonix-ws-16

Did you rename any templates? I don’t remember what the installation log showed but maybe the script couldn’t find you whonix templates if they were renamed.

36

yes, the standard method

$ sudo qubes-dom0-update qubes-template-fedora-XX

is -16 testing? I thought it was “released”, though adw says rolling release above as I recall .

I’ve created a dummy template and uninstalled -15 ; but still have the /whonix.jinja ; which still says ‘16’ ;

I can try again overnight, though if it hangs my system, don’t really want that to run unattended, etc

37

hey @deeplow , can you split this topic for it to be easier to find?

38

Actually I think it moved to the community templates, no longer testing. Also if you delete 15, you won’t have whonix connectivity. Shouldn’t you delete it after a successful upgrade?

39

In case anyone missed it:

However, Qubes 4.1 is still in testing, so Whonix 16 may not work on Qubes 4.1 yet.

40

I check my… /srv/formulas/base/virtual-machines-formula/qvm/whonix.jinja
and it is already at 16

OK 'WTF"…I followed what they have on whonix site for fresh install

sudo qubes-dom0-update qubes-template-whonix-gw-16 qubes-template-whonix-ws-16
and ni terminal i get
No match for augment qubes-template-whonix-gw-16
No match for augment qubes-template-whonix-ws-16

open dom0 terminal run qvm-template-gui…This is not found in 4.0.x
So I gues my question is are you guys just winging it or what??