[qubes-users] R4.0.4 Wiin10: block device dom0:loop1 not available

I have been having problems with starting a Win10 VM for a while now. Previously Qubes would always timeout and shut it down even though the VM was up and running fine. My impression is that once the VM was forcibly terminated/killed due to a timeout, usually the next time it would start up normally. I could spend as much as an hour just trying to get it startup properly, and now it doesn’t even get that far.

Now after enough forced terminations it is unable to even begin starting and no logs are being created at all. The only symptom is the popup message “block device dom0:loop1 not available”. I don’t see anything significant from journalctl or dmesg. Running in debug mode does absolutely nothing. Restoring from backup just gives the same loop error message when attempting to start the restored VM.

Q: What is this loop1 supposed to point at, and is there a way to recreate it?

I would hate to have to rebuild this VM from scratch because I had to fight with Microsoft just to get the license activated the first time around. II need this VM to run my document scanner.

thanks,

Steve

Steve Coleman:

I have been having problems with starting a Win10 VM for a while now.
Previously Qubes would always timeout and shut it down even though the VM
was up and running fine. My impression is that once the VM was forcibly
terminated/killed due to a timeout, usually the next time it would start up
normally. I could spend as much as an hour just trying to get it startup
properly, and now it doesn't even get that far.

Disabling swap or setting it to a fixed size seemed to help me here, although my issue was the Win10 VM crashing on startup.

Now after enough forced terminations it is unable to even begin starting
and no logs are being created at all. The only symptom is the popup message
"block device dom0:loop1 not available". I don't see anything significant
from journalctl or dmesg. Running in debug mode does absolutely nothing.
Restoring from backup just gives the same loop error message when
attempting to start the restored VM.

Have you enabled debug mode, booted, then checked the vm's log in /var/log/qubes? You might also need to set qvm-feature gui-emulated to 1 on the VM to see a display with debug checked, but see if it's already set first with qvm-features <vmname>.

Q: What is this loop1 supposed to point at, and is there a way to recreate
it?

I booted my Win10 VM and don't have a loop1. Is it possible you set up your VM somehow to automatically map an ISO?