Startup script after boot and login to automate which VMs I start with which apps and which partitions I attach to which VMs

[QubesUser32]

@airelemental

qvm-volume info fedora-32 revisions_to_keep

Thanks a lot! I didn’t know about the automatic backups and had actually never used qvm-volume before. I think it’s a just a typo, but it should be fedora-32:root, like in the other examples, right?

And you’re right about the .bashrc that just ask if the script should be run.

@deeplow

This sounds to be like a very specific setup.

I think a lot of people have multiple storage devices whose partitions they have to attach to different VMs. They could directly attach the partitions to the target VMs for decryption, but it’s less secure that way, especially if the target VM has internet access.

@deeplow

In order to make it easier for people to help you I would suggest you try to break it down into it’s various components and start a thread for each

@deeplow

And then when you’re done with your full setup, you can use this thread to document what worked, what didn’t and in which threads those were solved.

You’re right, definitely.

@deeplow

Quoting unman from another thread:

@unman

Don’t mix usage after you have set up the qubes in their groups: guard

against accidental use. Anything you can do to help enforce this would
be good. Have multiple desktops. Colour code them. Force qubes to
appear on the relevant desktops. (Switch to KDE, and use Activities to
make this simple.)

You can also make this with i3wm, but I think this conversation deserves its own thread as there may be other (even better) ways to do it.

I used i3wm on Fedora a year ago and really liked it. Same with KDE, I’ve been using it for years. If I can’t find a way to do it with XFCE, I’ll probably switch to one of those.

@deeplow

For complex configurations like these, using a configuration management engine like SaltSack may be a better bet

I didn’t think it was possible to do it with Salt, but I have no experience with it anyway. I thought it could just automate the configuration of new Qubes machines so that they are similar and stuff like that. I’ll read more about it.

Thanks again, you’ve both given me a lot to think about and read!