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qubes-update-tt

README.md

qubes-update-tt notes

This tool is a package manger helper for Qubes OS templates. It was originally created during my Qubes OS 3.2 days, when I had to download updates for a lot of templates during night to circumvent daily download caps. I've added installation, search, remove and other functionalities at later stages. After being away from Qubes OS for a long time and returning to Qubes OS 4.2, some parts of it became obsolete because of the modern Salt interface, the new graphical updater and qvm-vm-update tool. It is still very useful as some of its features are not available via the mentioned tools.

Internals & Features

The tool is written entirely in pure bash. Using some coreutils for text and message processing. It is compatible with apt, dnf, emerge & pacman based templates which have qrexec installed on them. It could be used to perform package installation, search & removal operations as well as downloading updates without installation or actual installation of updates (which is discouraged). Command help is available at the top of the file which hopefully should make it self-explanatory. Some use cases:

  1. Only checking for updates & notifying dom0. If the template is halted, it is turned on, checked for updates and turned off again. A pair of systemd unit & timer is provided for this purpose to schedule it at 3:00AM±60m.
qubes-update-tt --all check-only
  1. Downloading updates without installation, only for templates tagged for update-availability. And keep the template running after download. A pair of systemd unit & timer is provided for this purpose to schedule it for 5:00AM±60m.
qubes-update-tt --all --if-updates update --refresh --download-only -y --skip-broken --after-update running
  1. Installing htop on all minimal templates:
qubes-update-tt "*-minimal" install htop
  1. List repos for all Fedora templates:
qubes-update-tt "*fedora*" repolist
  1. Search for blender on XFCE & Arch templates:
qubes-update-tt "*xfce*,archlinux" search blender

Installation & Removal

To install the tool at your ~/bin directory and systemd units at ~/.config/systemd/user run this command in the current directory:

make install

To remove them from your system run this command in the current directory:

make remove

Limitations & Issues

Some of the known limitations and issues at the current status of the tool:

  • It calls Qubes Admin API via qubesd-query(1) utility. Currently only available in dom0.
  • Gentoo's emerge does not detect qvm-run and qrexec-client as a valid tty. So --ask option of the emerge does not work. Thus, automatic update is disabled for Gentoo as it deserves careful user intervention.
  • Currently tested only on Qubes OS 4.2.1

Screenshot

Here is a screen shot of the qubes-update-tt service running in the background.