URGENT: Qubes system is unusable

User Support
1

No update as far as I know was made to the system.

However, suddently I cannot open any apps in any VM, except for disposable VMs.

After restarting the system, even the mouse does not work.

Dom0 terminal does work. However, for example, running

qvm-run social2 xterm

just hangs.

The logs don’t seem to show anything:

…
fbcon: Taking over console

Debian GNU/Linux 11 social2 hv0

social2 login:

I need this system immediately for my work. Will I be able to access the data, for example, if I backup the qubes and restore them on a fresh system?

Would appreciate any suggestions soon.

2

You can try to connect to the console of the qube that doesn’t show any of the app windows with this command in dom0:

qvm-console-dispvm vmname

Check the logs in this qube and try to figure out how to fix it.

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3

Do your disposable VMs have the same template as your non-working VMs?

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4

Thanks, but this gives the error:

qrexec-client.c:489:wait_for_vchan_client_with_timeout: vchan connection timeout

This error occurs with both the qubes that are not working as well as when I tried it with a working disposable qube.

As mentioned in the OP, I already checked the logs but did not see anything>

5

You can connect to your qube like this then:

sudo xl console vmname

To detach from the qube console press Ctrl+].

Maybe you’ve missed the important messages in the qube log.

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6

No, the disposables have a different template.

So perhaps I hosed by template!? That would make sense because I did modify the template to try and get python 3.12 instead of python 3.9. Unfortunately, I cannot open a terminal for the template either.

7

Can you open the terminal of template used by your disposable VMs?

8

This gives:

social2 login:

and then I get an Authentication failure if I try to entry the login info.

9

Maybe you’ve installed something in your template but you didn’t have enough free space available so it didn’t install correctly and your template and qubes based on this template can’t boot anymore.
Check the free space in your non-working qube after connecting to its console with:

df -h
10

How do you try to login?
Enter user login, it shouldn’t ask for a password.

11

Oh, I was trying a different user name. OK, I’m in!

12

84% usage

You don’t think that modifying python in the template broke it?

13

Is it for your root filesystem?

user@testqube:~$ df -h
Filesystem          Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/dmroot   20G  5.4G   14G  29% /
14

No, that is actually not working either.

15

Yes, Mounted on /

16

Then it shouldn’t be an out of free space issue.
Do you have any related messages in dom0 logs when you start non-working qube app?
Check the journalctl in dom0 terminal.

17

There is one error when Starting social2:

qmeman.systemstate[1934]: Xen free = 105386213 too small for satisfy assignments! assigned_but_unused=83632583, domdict={‘0’: …

18

More evidence that I messed up the template:

I have an AppVM based on a different template, and I just discovered that it is working fine.

19

But that wouldn’t explain why the mouse is not working.

20

OK. That was it. Thanks for your help!

By connecting to the debian-11 template console, I switched python back to the qubes installed python3.9.

Now all of my VMs are working again.

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