diff --git a/SoftwareUpdateVM.md b/SoftwareUpdateVM.md index 422b20d8..be2bfaa5 100644 --- a/SoftwareUpdateVM.md +++ b/SoftwareUpdateVM.md @@ -16,17 +16,38 @@ In addition to saving on the disk space, and reducing domain creation time, anot The default template in Qubes R1 is called **fedora-14-x64**. -"Outdated" VMs --------------- +Installing (or updating) software in the template VM +---------------------------------------------------- -TODO +In order to permanently install new software, you should start the template VM and then start either console or dedicated software management application, such as gpk-application (Start-\>Applications-\>Template: fedora-14-x64-\>[Add/Remove?](/wiki/Add/Remove) software". + +Install/update software as usual (e.g. using yum, or the dedicated GUI application). Then, shutdown the template VM. + +You will see now that all the AppVMs based on this template (by default all your VMs) will be marked as "outdated" in the manager. This is because their fielsystem has not been yet updated -- in order to do that, you must restart each VM. You don't need to restart all of them at the same time -- e.g. if you just need the newly installed software to be available in your 'personal' domain, then restart only this VM. You will restart others whenever this will be convenient to you. Standalone VMs -------------- -TODO +Standalone VMs have their own copy of the whole filesystem, and thus can be updated and managed on its own. But this means that they take a few GBs on disk, and also that centralized updates do not apply to them. + +Sometime it might be convenient to have a VM that has its own filesystem, where you can directly introduce changes, without the need to start/stop the template VM. Such situations include e.g.: + +- VMs used for development (devel environments requires a lot of \*-devel packages and specific devel tools) +- VMs used for installing untrusted packages. Normally you install digitally signed software from Red [Hat/Fedora?](/wiki/Hat/Fedora) repositories, and it's reasonable that such software has non malicious *installation* scripts (rpm pre/post scripts). However, when you would like to install some packages form less trusted sources, or unsigned, then using a dedicated (untrusted) standalone VM might be a better way. + +In order to create a standalone VM you must currently use command line (from console in Dom0): + +``` {.wiki} +qvm-create --standalone --label