Sigh..another post about customizing Tor Browser in a Qubes-Whonix template

I for the life of me cannot get my security settings and changes to ‘about:config’ to persist after creating an I2P-Whonix workstation disposable template. I have read and re-read the Whonix documentation and the previous forum discussions on this topic. The exact point of failure is after I turn the AppVM into the disp template using the commands “qvm-prefs exampleappvmname template_for_dispvms True” and “qvm-features exampleappvmname appmenus-dispvm 1”.

The TLDR rundown of the steps I take are:

  • Clone the whonix-ws-16 template
  • Install and configure I2P-Java according to docs
  • Close template and build an AppVM based on it (without a NetVM attached)
  • Start Tor Browser in the freshly built AppVM and configure the settings I need
  • Close the AppVM and clone it, giving it some title with “dvm” tacked on
  • Run those 2 commands previously stated in Dom0
  • Start a disposable VM from the Applications Menu and manually add sys-whonix as the NetVM in the Qubes Manager

During my troubleshooting of this issue, I have found that the customization I do to Tor Browser persists in the actual disposable VM template, but not in the dispvm’s that are made out of the template. And changes I make to another browser, like Firefox for example, do persist in each new dispvm, like intended.

I think I am narrowing down the issue being related to ‘~.tb’ not being generated until after Tor Browser is started, which is a problem when each dispvm is brand new and Tor Browser has not had the chance to start yet. My next guess in solving this issue is to customize the settings I need in the proper config files located somewhere in ‘/var’ in the original I2P-Whonix template, before I create the AppVMs based on it… Does that sound right? Some tips on how to properly edit those config files would be greatly appreciated, since I think the ‘~.tb’ directory is generated from the cache files in ‘/var’.

Am I on the right track or completely off base? Any and all help / feedback is welcome. I just want to start my I2P-Whonix dispvms without having to configure every setting every time in Tor Browser!!

Thank you.

Did you see yet these wiki chapters?

For technical background:

And then the user documentation:

Which option did you choose?