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My setup of Qubes
this document will describe my Qubes Setup and what I did to improve the Qubes experience
About Me
Using Qubes has been a decision as I want to prove that using an alternative OS is possible. Additinally I want to keep my data as much secure as possible. Another benefit is that Qubes offers protection when working with one device in several customer environments.
My Hardware
I am using three devices, depending on what I need to do.
My main device which I use ~80% of time is the X230 Core i7 which has a 2nd Slice battery, giving me more than 8h of battery runtime.
The favorite device -> Lenovo X230
I think this is the best laptop which has ever been build and it my daily driver. It is also the last X-series laptop which supports CoreBoot and therefore I will likely keep it for a few years.
- 12 inch Laptop
- Intel Core Intel Core i7-3520M @ 2.90 GHz
- 16 GB RAM
- 500 GB Intel SSD
- 1366x768 IPS-Display
- WWAN-Card for LTE connectivity
- 44++ battery
- additional Slice-Battery 19++
- Coreboot with SeaBIOS
- Qubes 4.1
- Windows 10 Enteprise (DualBoot, BitLocker enabled)
The work horse -> Lenovo W540
currently not in use, as the X230 is so versatile and the W540 doesn't run with Coreboot and has a much shorter battery runtime.
My Setup
I have to run a dual boot system as I need to run Windows for specific tasks. But as we are able to se virtual desktops, mostly I am connecting to a remote desktop from within my qubes environment.
My currently installed AppVMs and Templates
My Disposable AppVMs
NAME STATE CLASS LABEL TEMPLATE NETVM
whonix-ws-14-dvm Halted AppVM red whonix-ws-14 sys-whonix
my-dvm Halted AppVM red t-fedora-29-apps sys-firewall
My regular AppVMs
NAME STATE CLASS LABEL TEMPLATE NETVM
anon-whonix Halted AppVM red whonix-ws-14 sys-whonix
my-bizmail Halted AppVM yellow t-fedora-29-mail sys-firewall
my-browsing Halted AppVM blue t-fedora-29-apps sys-vpn
my-corporate Halted AppVM green t-fedora-29-work sys-firewall
my-multimedia Halted AppVM orange t-fedora-29-media sys-firewall
my-privmail Halted AppVM blue t-fedora-29-mail sys-firewall
my-storage-datastore Halted AppVM gray t-fedora-29-storage sys-firewall
my-untrusted Halted AppVM orange t-fedora-29-apps sys-firewall
my-vault Halted AppVM black t-fedora-29-apps -
My Sys-AppVMs
NAME STATE CLASS LABEL TEMPLATE NETVM
sys-firewall Running AppVM red t-fedora-29-sys sys-net
sys-net Running AppVM red t-fedora-29-sys -
sys-usb Running AppVM red t-fedora-29-sys -
sys-vpn Running AppVM orange t-fedora-29-sys sys-net
sys-whonix Halted AppVM black whonix-gw-14 sys-vpn
My templates
NAME STATE CLASS LABEL TEMPLATE NETVM
fedora-29-minimal Halted TemplateVM black - -
t-fedora-29-media Halted TemplateVM black - -
t-fedora-20-apps Halted TemplateVM black - -
t-fedora-29-mail Halted TemplateVM black - -
t-fedora-29-storage Halted TemplateVM black - -
t-fedora-29-sys Halted TemplateVM black - -
t-fedora-29-work Halted TemplateVM black - -
whonix-gw-14 Halted TemplateVM black - -
whonix-ws-14 Halted TemplateVM black - -
My Templates
In order to understand how Qubes OS is working and to have a minimal setup I have choosen to use custom build templates, which are all based on fedora-28-minimal templates. This makes sure that I have only those packages installed, which I need. Additionally the setup of templates is mainly done by scripts which I can run from dom0. Therefore it is very easy to rebuild the whole system from scratch - something which I think is important in case that you have the feeling something might be not running correctly.
I have the following two baseline-templates:
- debian-9 (replaced 02/2019 with a fedora-29-template)
- fedora-29-minimal "baseline" means that those templates are never updated or changed as they are used as seed for my other templates. I qvm-clone those templates and then work on the copy. This allows me to always jump back to cleanest template and rebuild from scratch.
I developed a naming scheme as I have several AppVMs and TemplateVMs:
- all custom build TemplateVMs start with t-DISTRIBUTION-VERSION-NAME. For example t-fedora-29-apps is a template, whoch is based on fedora 29 minimal and has additional packages for my default (fat) Apps-VMs
- all system VMs, start with sys- like sys-net, sys-firewall, sys-usb, sys-vpn
- all other AppVMs, start with my-PURPOSE, for example my-multimedia
Custom build templates:
t-debian-9-multimedia
Template for a Multimedia AppVM, see my Multimedia Howto
- Chrome
- VLC
- Spotify
t-fedora-29-apps
this is my default fat AppVM template, installed packages:
- firefox
- libreoffice
- firefox
- ...
t-fedora-29-mail
this is my template for email tasks, it has installed:
- Thunderbird
- Neomutt
- Davmail (to connect to my corporate microsoft exchange server)
- Offlineimap
- ... I am separating email in two AppVMs for private use and corporate use. attachments from those VMs will be opened in disposable AppVMs.
t-fedora-29-storage
a special template which can be used to store data into one AppVM and share it securly with others via special scripts (which I am proud of :-).
- sshfs for sharing data betwenn VMs
- CryFS for data encryption
- EncFS for data encryption
- onedrived to be able to sync (only encrypted data) to the cloud The whole setup includes 3 AppVMs:
- Storage AppVM - stores the data and encrypts it using EncFS or CryFS
- Access AppVM - can access the Storage AppVM and is able to decrypt
- Sync AppVM - which can sync encrypted data to onedrive (only used for getting data out of onedrive, but could be used in two directions) management of those setup is done via one (!) script which can also build the templates and AppVM.
t-fedora-29-sys
template for my sys-vms and also for VPN connectivity a VPN or ProxyVM which can be used to run all traffic through ExpressVPN. This adds a great layer of privacy to qubes as my ISP can't analyse my traffic. I have written a howto How to use ExpressVPN as ProxyVM with Qubes 4
- sys-usb
- sys-firewall
- sys-net
- sys-vpn
t-fedora-29-work
My work tenmplate which has Vmware Horizon View, Cisco AnyConnect, Firefox and LibreOffice installed.
other templates
the Whonix templates which come preinstalled with Qubes 4