Qubes Template Manager: UI and Terminal command failing or VERY slow (For Beginners or Experts)

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SOLVED For me at least.

Others may have worked this one out already.

But for those that have not - here is the problem, and the solution I have found:

The Problem - (On a Brand new install of Qubes OS 4.2.4) :

Qubes Template Manager - by either UI or command line- is delayed in providing a full mirror list by a ridiculous amount of time, and in many instances impossible to receive.

This is as yet for unknown reasons - other than possible fetch processes for meta data are being strangled somewhere along the pipeline causing confusion.

I cannot suggest more. I am dyslexic. I am pretty much a GUI/ cut and past developer and coder.

See this post for more on this topic

(Qubes Template Manager slow refresh - #6 by rustybird)

The .metalink file is a list of mirrors, look inside of it.

I looked inside (and as a personal preference) now feed all of my mirror downloads through .onion :

(this is not an obligation to solve the problem as it appears that the .metalink files are the cause)

Solution?

To comment out the metalink= line and uncomment or define a baseurl= line in the qubes-templates.repo file to use a specific server.

Follow these beginner-friendly steps:

  1. Open the qubes-templates.repo file located usually at /etc/qubes/repo-templates/qubes-templates.repo in a text editor with root privileges. For example:
sudo nano /etc/qubes/repo-templates/qubes-templates.repo
  • Find the line starting with metalink=. Comment it out by adding a # at the beginning of the line. This disables the metalink mirror list.
  • Find the baseurl= line, which might be commented out with a #. Uncomment it by removing the # at the beginning of the line. If there is no baseurl line or you want to use a custom server, add a new line starting with baseurl= followed by the URL of the server you want to use. For example:
#metalink=https://...
baseurl=http://your.preferred.server/path
  • Save the file and exit the editor.

Press Ctrl + O to save, then Enter to confirm. Exit with Ctrl + X.

  • Optionally, verify the repository connection, for example by running:
sudo qubes-dom0-update --show-output --console

This switches repository access from the mirror list (metalink) to a fixed base URL server, which can improve speed or reliability especially when using Tor or specific mirrors.

​
In summary:

  • Comment out the metalink line by prefixing with #.
  • Uncomment (or define) the baseurl line with the desired server URL.
  • Save and exit, then update as usual.

I hope this will be of assistance to somebody out there.

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Additional Edit

This won’t result in a permanent change (unless I am mistaken).

Instead - if you wish to make this a permanent change use:

sudoedit /etc/qubes/repo-templates/qubes-templates.repo

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Happy to hear you fixed your problem. Welcome to the community :smiling_face:

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