Whonix gateway freezing

I saw this topic but was not sure it was the same issue because the crash kills processes and causes data loss.

I use 2-4 gigabyte RAM for the workstation. QXL gets 64 megabyte (as soon as you change any setting libvirt/virtmanager goes back to 64), but tried more manually in xml.

My impression was that it was Spice, QXL or KDE (or KDE reacting badly to QXL). Debian Jessie’s QXL driver is strange and I have had issues with it in other guests, but nowhere near as bad as this with KDE. The only other OS I have seen similar problems with QXL is Mageia, but I can’t figure out what they have in common. It may be unrelated to this but it’s to say Jessie is has problems. I also notice the spice copy pasting correlates more or less with KDE exploding.

I felt that simpler DE would lessen chance of issues, because I’ve never had it this bad.

There is another issue you should know about I don’t see documented: QXL does not always play nice with kernel modesetting.

On some systems you have to add
qxl.modeset=0
to the kernel command line in
/etc/default/grub
and run
update-grub

It made no difference for this crashing but helps fix some other problems, worth a try.

This is a confirmation for 6 days of usage without freezing’s at all , and again my settings:

fedora 21 i686 xfce4 host with lxdm ,pae kernel, (updates & upgrades done on host and guests) , parcellite clipboard manager on host and guests (the default clipboard managers are killed and disabled for autostart,) some times failed for autostart the parcellite on kde’s but that is not problem , can just start it and is ready on seconds.

  • i have a total system 8 GB ram and i give to each guest 1536 MB, not touch any other settings on virt-manager \xml’s

GW is getting freezed if u leave it on for short time and always after the last update&dist-upgrade of the GW.

not just that , but it will kill the KVM machine and knock it off from working again, c the image of the KVM:-

Note:- maybe u should put the performance of the pc to be low then rise it up again = there.

Everything looks good here for me.

What you are describing is libvirt hanging on your system and needs to be killed with system monitor and restarted. (probably a resources issue)

yeah i c , but why the WS keep working with slower performance (due to resources) , but in GW it will be freezed and killing the KVM ?

Hard to tell whats the problem without performance stats but I’m sure its not a general problem or else I would get more topic posts about it.

Perhaps it’s the same as this one?

https://forums.whonix.org/t/whonix-gateway-freezing

Perhaps it’s the same as this one?
Whonix gateway freezing

that one was happening only on first time GW-KVM setup.

while this one , is happening randomly after the GW installed.

the thing i dont understand , why the workstation working good and dont hanging/freezing at all while the GW always has the freezing issues?

I attempted to use a different DE than KDE on the official Whonix Workstation and thus far it works better. The copy-pasting spice issue I complain about only seems to happen in KDE. It hasn’t crashed yet either. I suspect KDE triggers latent issues in QXL or spice.

Another possible factor I forgot about is the CPU. Whonix is the only VM I still use which is 32-bit. And on other machines I’ve occasionally run into problems with the default hypervisor processor though I don’t remember if I tried different settings against these KDE crashes. For example Tails had a known crash against default qemu processor, requiring the “Copy Host CPU configuration” setting be set.

There are too many variables.

28 days of usage without freezing’s! and again the settings\configuration that i understand is the reason for success:

fedora 21 i686 xfce4 host with lxdm , (updates & upgrades done on host and guests) , parcellite clipboard manager on host and guests (the default clipboard managers are killed and disabled for autostart,) some times failed for autostart the parcellite on kde’s but that is not problem , can just start it and is ready on seconds.

  • xml is edited for clipboard sharing right by the directions on whonix-kvm documentation.
    not touch any other settings on virt-manager \xml’s

*I am sorry , i use ver, 11. not 12, so my posts here are for whonix ver. 11.
I am stop the posts here , (28 days without freezings). At curent level , the download option for whonix images is ver. 12, if they have freezings to , can aply the workaround in that post.

Since switching DE I haven’t had any crashes (or clipboard problems) either.

I will stop reporting on this issue because the new DE works well enough and was painless to install on the Workstation, and I’m done trying to hunt down the original cause. It has to be one or more of QXL, spice or CPU causing crashing. The clipboard bug has to be spice.

There are some rough edges, such as the desktop icons are not marked as executable which new DE complains about, but nothing major. I was afraid there were whonix parts that depend on KDE but I don’t see anything missing. (Please advise if I’m wrong)

Good day,

no, Whonix doesn’t depend in KDE for anything.

Have a nice day,

Ego