Qubes has become incredibly sluggish since I updated dom0 today. What happened? Is there a solution?
Strange things observed today.
What does this sluggishness manifest as for you? Did it happen immediately or only after a reboot? Are you on stable, security-testing or testing repos?
Itâs extremely slowâitâs become sluggish, like an old computer. It looks like dom0 is using an excessive amount of CPU. The slowdown started right after I updated dom0 and rebooted. I believe Iâm using the stable version; I havenât made any changes since installation, so itâs still on the default settings.
Could you check which process is using this much CPU? htop or btop are good commands to do that.
itâs Xorg , qubes-guid and xfwm4
I noticed this too.
It appears that when fcitx5 is launched on a VM with gui-agent-linux v4.3.19 installed, it hangs. So, when I reverted it to the previous version, it now works properly:
sudo dnf install qubes-gui-agent-4.3.18
It seems the debian repositories donât have packages for previous versionsâŠ
I believe you should make an issue on the issue tracker for this.
I think youâre right; the VM doesnât become incredibly slow if I use a template without fcitx. However, since I only use Kicksecure and Whonix templates, Iâm not really sure how to revert to the previous version.
Do you see the high cpu usage in dom0 or in the appvms / qubes?
Also as you mentioned xfwm4. Is everyone who experiences this running xfce? Anyone running KDE or something else?
For some reason after the dom0 update none of my qubes are starting anymore nothing happens when i click on any applications or on the start qube button
Does anyone know how to fix this
thank you
Did someone test this?
Thank you for working on this issue so promptly.
So Iâve built and tested a package that included your PR on fedora-44-xfce, but it looks like Xorg wonât startâŠ
journalctl -xe -u qubes-gui-agent -l --no-pager
Aug 20 04:30:13 fedora-44-xfce qubes-gui[630]: open status file: Permission denied
Aug 20 04:30:13 fedora-44-xfce qubes-gui[630]: Waiting on /var/run/xf86-qubes-socket socket...
Aug 20 04:30:14 fedora-44-xfce qubes-gui[630]: Xorg exited in the meantime, aborting
Aug 20 04:30:14 fedora-44-xfce systemd[1]: qubes-gui-agent.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
cat ~/.xsession-errors
X.Org X Server 1.21.1.24
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build ID: xorg-x11-server 21.1.24-1.fc44
Current version of pixman: 0.46.2
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/home/user/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log", Time: Thu Aug 20 04:30:14 2026
(++) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg-qubes.conf"
(==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
Parse error on line 26 of section Monitor in file /etc/X11/xorg-qubes.conf
ModeLine VSyncEnd expected
(EE)
Fatal server error:
(EE) no screens found(EE)
(EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
at http://wiki.x.org
for help.
(EE) Please also check the log file at "/home/user/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.
(EE)
(EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
/usr/bin/xinit: giving up
/usr/bin/xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
/usr/bin/xinit: server error
nl -ba /etc/X11/xorg-qubes.conf
1 Section "Module"
2 Load "fb"
3 Load "glamoregl"
4 EndSection
5
6 Section "ServerLayout"
7 Identifier "Default Layout"
8 Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
9 InputDevice "qubesdev pointer"
10 EndSection
11
12 Section "Device"
13 Identifier "Videocard0"
14 Driver "dummyqbs"
15 VideoRam 8100
16 Option "GUIDomID" "0"
17 # Render option requires to override default Intel device
18 # Option "Render" "/dev/dri/renderD128"
19 EndSection
20
21 Section "Monitor"
22 Identifier "Monitor0"
23 HorizSync 0-1
24 VertRefresh 0-1
25 Modeline "QBx" 0 1 2 3 1 2 3
26 EndSection
27
28 Section "Screen"
29 Identifier "Screen0"
30 Device "Videocard0"
31 Monitor "Monitor0"
32 DefaultDepth
33 SubSection "Display"
34 Viewport 0 0
35 Depth
36 Modes "QBx"
37 EndSubSection
38 EndSection
39
40
41 Section "InputDevice"
42 Identifier "qubesdev pointer"
43 Driver "qubes"
44 EndSection
I noticed that the Modeline in the âMonitorâ section of xorg-qubes.conf looks strange.
On a properly working qube, that section shows as
Modeline "QB1920x1080" 96 1920 1921 1922 1923 1080 1081 1082 1083
It might be PEBKAC. Letâs see the results of ongoing OpenQA testsâŠ
OpenQA is happy about this patch. It doesnât change anything related to starting of the gui-agent, so itâs likely unrelated. The open status file: Permission denied message suggests some issues with installing it - maybe wrong SELinux labels (if the binary was copied manually)? You can try running restorecon on the gui agent binary.
The same happened even after I disabled SELinux. So I tested it on debian-13-xfce, and other laptopăŒsame behavior. I suspected there might be some kind of error during the package build, but since the version built with v4.3.18 works fine, it doesnât seem to be related.
Well, since OpenQA was happy, the reason is most likely on my end.
Thank you for your advice.
Um, it turns out the cause was my lack of attention after all (was looking at vmside.c on the main branch).
Can confirm that the fix worked. Thank you, @besen.