Retrieving data from a ssd

User Support
#1

Hi everybody
I have been using qubes in an old Lenovo W530 that has been going famously. Famously that is until it died. So what I have is a healthy ssd with my qubes install on it. I have a few laptops that allow me to tinker but I cannot get this this ssd with my qubes install to work properly in any of them. I can boot into the qubes environment but I can’t get any qubes beyond sys-usb going for all sorts of reasons.

My question is, am I able to back up any of these qubes? I posted another question about back ups which I am clear about now. I am not near my machine now but I am thinking that from the environment where I have at least sys-usb going would I be able to back up my qubes with storage attached to sys-usb in this setting?

I am learning the very hard way about backing up my data. I have been too busy forging ahead tinkering and trusting the hardware too much. My only saving grace is that all of my hds are new so, while I have the data, I have to see if I can get to it.

Thanks for any help of course. Learning hard lessons as I go.

#2

Yes you can backup any of your qubes.

#3

Thanks for the reply. In the end I didn’t pull it off. It wouldn’t allow me to attach a storage device to sys-usb no matter what I did. I just cut my losses in the end. But I’ve learnt some valuable lessons.

#4

You can’t attach USB device to sys-usb because it’s already in sys-usb by default.

#5

Yes, I read this after I posted. Thing is that I couldn’t find the memory stick attached anywhere, and believe me I looked.

Its academic now however as I installed another qubes over the top of this one now so at least I’ve rid myself of another wrestle when I get home from work this afternoon!

#6

Hi use kali.org
Boot it using an usb stick of tftp if your laptop does not want to boot from usb for some reason.
Here you can open the luks-crypt and lvm mount all the virtual machine images which sit in /var/vm or the like iirc.
So mount the LVM individually and extract your data.

I have done this stunt some times to clean up the smoking debris of a qubes that died from a full hard disk e.g, as some stuff did not write well and the qubes manager did not want to run my VMs.

Claim:
Qubes is best method to get you deeper into yak brushing than any other linux distribution you may dream of.

#7

Thanks for that tip. Too late now. I did try the rescue option on the qubes installer but it was useless. Next time.

You’re right about qubes!

#8

With Qubes-OS 3.2 one needs to loop mount the vm images, which are loop images, which I enjoyed more, as I was rescuing data from a dead qubes-3.2 installation.

mount -o loop /var/vm/some_dir/private_stuff.img /mnt/13

Here using loop-aes would have been a good addition to additionally crypt
a private file of a qube vm.

But 4.x uses lvm images, so there is no loop-aes possible.

Always have s stick with kali linux in your pocket you never know if you need its powers today.
(loop-aes.sf.net would need a patched kernel, but “nobody” uses loop-aes)