Whonix host operating system

Development
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276

onion_knight via Whonix Forum:

the genmon livecheck panel seems broken (always show Live Mode even when in persistent mode).

Created ⚓ T986 Whonix-Host livecheck systray broken for it.

277

Terminology now defined:
Whonix-Host Operating System Live ISO, Whonix-Host Installer

No. Upgrades installed in Whonix-Host ISO mode are not applied when later installing using calamares installer. These are missing in Whonix-Host installed. No idea why. Maybe calamares copies ISO contents and ignores the overlay. That might be a feature, not a bug.

278

Yep this is likely it. Even with libvirt, you can;t create two NAT networks with the same IP range.

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We’d have to configure KVM to have an external network in a different range however that will break networking since we ship one set of network confs for all non-Qubes versions. I had to figure out a way to make KVM use the same network settings as VBox when we switched off dhcp.

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280

Should we install packages

  • lshw
  • lshw
  • usbutils (lsusb)

by default?

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HulaHoop via Whonix Forum:

We’d have to configure KVM to have an external network in a different range however that will break networking since we ship one set of network confs for all non-Qubes versions. I had to figure out a way to make KVM use the same network settings as VBox when we switched off dhcp.

Likely fixed due to:

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Nope has nothing to do with baremetal’s IP management and everything to do with NAT network config for hypervisors. So it has to stay this way to avoid creating different settings for KVM vs Vbox.

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284

Whonix-Host (currently running inside VirtualBox) is now networking is now by network manager. eth0 got automatically assigned 10.0.2.15.
Now Whonix-Host networking (currently running inside VirtualBox) is functional and both gateway and workstation are starting.
Speed in nested virtualization is too slow to test if networking inside VMs is functional but I will assign more RAM and try again. Can also say more when I build a new image that doesn’t require all the manual changes I did during experimentation.
However, maybe likely this will work?

For QEMU support both of these shouldbe removed?

gateway (actually works without removing this):

<vcpu placement='static' cpuset='0'>1</vcpu>

workstation:

<vcpu placement='static' cpuset='1'>1</vcpu>

Removal was required for me inside VirtualBox. Otherwise I was getting cannot set CPU affinity on process error when trying to start workstation.

285

Whonix tag 15.0.1.3.2-developers-only should build.

Though, only tested with --remote-derivative-packages true. And had a minor hiccup which hopefully was just a one time thing.

dpkg-deb (subprocess): decompressing archive member: lzma error: compressed data is corrupt
dpkg-deb: error: <decompress> subprocess returned error exit status 2
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/calamares_3.2.4-3_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 cannot copy extracted data for './usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/keyboard/libcalamares_viewmodule_keyboard.so' to '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/keyboard/libcalamares_viewmodule_keyboard.so.dpkg-new': unexpected end of file or stream
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/calamares_3.2.4-3_amd64.deb
286

Managed to make Whonix-Host in VirtualBox coexist with KVM networking file Whonix-External.xml.

nmcli con show

NAME UUID TYPE DEVICE
virbr0 ecc61543-fa15-4a43-9732-fa99065ff801 bridge virbr0
virbr2 7b784b6c-44e4-4589-8fba-9ab6f322e810 bridge virbr2
Wired connection 1 2ed217e7-866f-3760-926a-11dedcca3182 ethernet eth0

nmcli con down Wired\ connection\ 1

Connection ‘Wired connection 1’ successfully deactivated (D-Bus active path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/1)

virsh -c qemu:///system net-start Whonix-External

Network Whonix-External started

nmcli con up Wired\ connection\ 1

Connection successfully activated (D-Bus active path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/7)

I.e. the trick is to let libvirt (whonix-libvirt-install.service) (virsh -c qemu:///system net-start Whonix-External) run before network manager.
Network manager can deal with it but libvirt cannot.
I don’t see any solution for this with systemd drop-ins in this case because:

/lib/systemd/system/network-manager.service has Before=network.target
while
/lib/systemd/system/libvirtd.service has After=network.target.

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287

Yes can be safely ignored/removed.

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A lot of progress has been done lately on the Whonix-Host project.

I think we are quite close to be release-ready, at least in beta state. I also thought a nice sum-up of what blockers/issues remain would be nice to set priorities :slight_smile:

Whonix-Host to-do list as of May 29, 2020
We currently have 21 open issues on phabricator:
https://phabricator.whonix.org/project/view/26/

Let’s break them down (subjective triage by myself):

1. Severity: blocker
needs to be addressed before official release

2. Severity: not a blocker
small issue/might be implemented in a future release

3. Severity: unknown (needs triage)
Maybe a blocker, maybe not, maybe a non-issue. Needs advising

To sum-up, as of today, and pending decision on “need triage” issues, there are only 2 identified blocking issues:

  • Implementation of Whonix-Host firewall
  • Fixing EFI booting problem on installed Whonix-Host

Alternatively, to speed things up, we could decide that the inability of installing Whonix-Host on a EFI machine is not a blocker (as the main innovation we offer is the ability to boot an GRUB/EFI ISO with Whonix VMs pre-installed and pre-configured).

Of course, many other issues will probably pop up once we will have more test time…

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289

Doesn’t need to be blocked. Forensics testing would be OK for beta.

Blocker indeed. It needs to be developed.

Right.

Yes, also does not need to be a blocker. In beta testing can be called a known issue. Perhaps by then we find out or someone else finds out.

Same as above. As long as efi booting is broken, this is not too bad either.

Indeed.

Actually blocker. Without Tor host config, sdwdate and apt is broken by default.

Blocker since this needs to be documented.

Yes.

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290

Greetings!
Coming back from a looooong pause… :slight_smile:
But still alive and willing to complete this project.

I just built Whonix-Host from source, from stable branch (15.0.1.3.4).

Good news: what did work still works apparently (didn’t run extensive tests, but on the surface looks good):

  • Boot ISO in BIOS mode: OK
  • Boot ISO in EFI mode: OK
  • Run VM machines in ISO live mode: OK
  • Install in BIOS mode: OK
  • Run VM machines in host persistent (post-installation) mode: OK

“Bad” news (but expected): what didn’t work, still doesn’t work:

  • Whonix-Host (post-installation) fails to boot in EFI, although installation reports no error
  • Whonix-Host Firewall and Whonix-Host Tor configuration and anon-connection-wizard are still not implemented (as far as I know)

I have no idea how to work out the Firewall and Tor configuration issues. I hoped someone more knowledgeable would take up the challenge :slight_smile:

Meanwhile, I will try to solve the EFI issue. I will contact the debian-live team on Gitlab, see if they can help. I will post the link here once it’s posted.
EDIT: I cannot post any issue there, only pull requests.

In the meantime, if we want the EFI installation to work, we must add the modules
sources-media
and
sources-media-unmount
in /etc/calamares/settings.conf otherwise it will fail to download the package grub-efi-amd64 during the installation process and the installation will abort.
See pull request: Update settings.conf.dist by onions-knight · Pull Request #4 · Kicksecure/live-config-dist · GitHub

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291

Welcome back! We missed you around here :smiley:

Yeah grub-efi is definitely a hard dep AFAICT.

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Yay! :slight_smile: Welcome back!

Whonix-Host Firewall is rather difficult to invent. → Whonix-Host Firewall

Maybe now after working on other things I’ll have new inspiration.

They use mailing lists.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-live/

Merged. Now included in 15.0.1.5.2-developers-only.

A bit non-ideal to download during installation but we can perfect that later (somehow cache the package during build process).

EFI booting might be broken because of this. In a VM with grub-pc installed:

sudo apt install grub-efi-amd64

The following NEW packages will be installed:
efibootmgr grub-efi-amd64 grub-efi-amd64-bin grub-efi-amd64-signed mokutil shim-helpers-amd64-signed shim-signed shim-signed-common
shim-unsigned

Most of these packages seem to be Recommends:.

When using

sudo apt install grub-efi-amd64 --no-install-recommends

The following NEW packages will be installed:
grub-efi-amd64 grub-efi-amd64-bin

These Recommends: in Debian packaging terms might actually be required for successful EFI booting.

Since Whonix source code doesn’t mention grub-efi or other packages in the build script or in anon-meta-packages, I guess that could be why EFI booting is broken.

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Thank for the warm welcoming back :slight_smile:

Great suggestion.
I installed grub-efi-amd64-bin (wouldn’t allow me to install grub-efi-amd64) and all its dependencies (7 additional packages, forgot to write down which ones exactly…) in the Host raw file and reburnt the ISO.

Still stuck at “Minimal BASH-like editing…” / “grub>” prompt after installation.

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It’s something really small and stupid that is messing (missing?) somewhere. We will eventually find out.

Installation works, and the Host EFI installed machine actually boots into GRUB if repaired using grub> commands or if it is booted with the ISO still in (I know, strange. Same behavior last time I checked in May).

Of course, all these tests are performed in QEMU/KVM (virt-manager) for now, but if it doesn’t work here at this level it won’t work on real hardware.

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New functionality added for overlayfs may be useful for live mode:

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