Error when starting Whonix and read-only fails after last update

Support
1

After the last update the following error message shows when starting Whonix and read-only mode fails to start:

(line[118]: dracut-cmdline-ask.service: Failed to set up standard: Input/Output error

Followed by:

(line[118]: dracut-cmdline-ask.service: Failed to set up standard

Can this be related to the latest update?

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2

Unlikely.

Bug report as per instructions on Bug Reports, Software Development and Feature Requests required.

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3

Can I to revert back to the older version of grub-live-dracut?

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4

The source code is Open Source and git version history. So if you have the knowledge to do so, it’s certainly possible but outside of scope for Whonix support.

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5

Whonix fails to load on a read-only disk. Is this also the case for you?

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6

I just updated my Whonix KVM installation a couple of minutes ago and I can confirm this is indeed an issue when the disk is set to read only and live mode is selected at boot. I decided to revert to a snapshot I took before the update where the issue wasn’t occurring and updated again using upgrade-nonroot and the issue still occurs after updating so it does look like it is indeed caused by the update.

2 Likes
7

There’s been an update with a fix.

This is now in all repositories.

Please kindly check if this fixes your issue.

1 Like
8

The issue persists after updating with the hotfix

9

Same problem??? Last update fixes the gateway live, but workstation live don’t even exist in the grub boot menu for me anymore. I can run workstation without read-only, but with read-only it ends with terminal greeting message.

1 Like
10

Please check your grub-live version.

dpkg -l | grep grub-live

Expected output at time of writing:

ii  grub-live                                     3:5.8-1                              all          grub live boot menu entry
ii  grub-live-dracut                              3:5.8-1                              all          grub live dracut dependencies

Please do the same (dpkg -l | grep grub-live).

See also: Simplified Summary

In latest release, grub-live sets only rootovl kernel parameter for dracut.

It no longer sets: boot=live plainroot union=overlay ip=frommedia noeject nopersistence

As these should be applicable to initramfs-only.

That’s the only change.

Should that cause issues, try debugging this by “going back to the source”. No grub-live needed, which just simplifies things. Just a few kernel parameters that you can edit

Try Kernel Boot Parameter Change.

1 Like
11

The version of grub-live was 3:5.7-1, after the update grub-live to 3:5.8-1, booting Whonix gateway on a read-only disk works again. But the dracut startup error mentioned in the thread persists.

12

My output (identical):

ii  grub-live                                     3:5.8-1                         all          grub live boot menu entry
ii  grub-live-dracut                              3:5.8-1                         all          grub live dracut dependencies

%  dpkg-query -W -f='${db:Status-Status}' initramfs-tools 
not-installed%
%  dpkg-query -W -f='${db:Status-Status}' dracut 
installed%

/etc/grub.d/11_linux_live identical with https://github.com/Kicksecure/grub-live/blob/master/etc/grub.d/11_linux_live

Upd: problem solved by running sudo update-grub manually. sorry for the noise.