[Whonix-devel] [qubes-users] Whonix 14 - upgrade or re-install? Whats more smooth, less troublesome?

[Patrick Schleizer]

Andrew David Wong:
> On 2018-08-12 14:26, 'awokd' via qubes-users wrote:
>> On Sun, August 12, 2018 6:16 pm, qubes-fan at tutanota.com wrote:
>>> I am planning to move from my Whonix 13 to Whonix 14 on Qubes. My
>>> question is what way it should be easier, based on the Q user 
>>> experiences. What would you propose - upgrade or re-install? Are 
>>> there any known issues which would call for one or other way?
> 
>> Re-install is usually easier.
> 
>>> I have few VMs based on the Whonix template with data and 
>>> settings on it. Will the contents of these VMs remain, or will
>>> it be destroyed - re-install vs upgrade?
> 
>> Contents should remain, just set them to the new Whonix template. 
>> Make sure to back up everything first.
> 
> 
> The installation guide [1] states:
> 
> "Re-installation will destroy any existing user data stored in Whonix
> VMs, unless it is backed up first. To avoid this scenario, it is
> possible to upgrade Whonix 13 to 14 instead of following these
> instructions."
> 
> This was puzzling to me, too, since TemplateVM upgrades usually don't
> affect user data in TemplateBasedVMs. Could you shed some light on
> this, Patrick?
> 
> [1] https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Qubes/Install

I see. Indeed it is not clear from the text alone without jumping over
to the reference and other links.

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Qubes/Install links to
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Qubes/Uninstall which suggests to get rid of
Whonix entirely (whonix-gw, whonix-ws TemplateVM, sys-whonix,
anon-whonix) before proceeding. Therefore all data gets lost unless
backup exists. Otherwise reinstall using salt would not be possible and
manual reinstall is too difficult (too much room for user error).

This is due to a hard to solve issue with Qubes salt:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4177

Help welcome with these salt issues as well as other salt issues (or any
Whonix issue):

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22C%3A+Whonix%22

Cheers,
Patrick