Safety/stability of --force restarting system qubes

User Support
1

I’m writing a simple script to replicate Qubes Update’s “Restart all system qubes after update” functionality

Essentially (pseudocode):

for each sys-* qube except sys-usb ; do
  if { qvm-check -q --running "$qube" } and
     { qvm-volume info "${qube}":root is_outdated } = 'True'
  then
    qvm-shutdown --force --wait "$qube"
    qvm-start "$qube"
  fi
done

(a quite dumb version of what Qubes Update does, based on a scan of the source.)

On one hand I think this is fine- everything will reconnect back up. On the other hand I’m a little leery because Qube Manager won’t let me shutdown system qubes unless I also shutdown connected qubes (which I don’t want to do), and there may be good reasons for that.

Can I understand Qube Manager’s safety check here to just be a protective for new users? Or is there something inadvisable in restarting system qubes without shutting down connected qubes?

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