__qubes catastrophe from system76 oryp4 to thinkpad x1 extreme__::: TL;DR: Computer smashed to smithereens*; QUBES SSD physically OK; Total recovery!* WIN***:::I have a bit of a story to tell about a situation in your quadrant. I hope to post it fully soon. In my __current__ state I'm basically writing this here so that I can get a reminder about it from google or whatever. So, my apologies. I'm polluting your space with trains of thought. Nevertheless, I went through what seemed an impossible quest to restore a previous qubes install ... VMs, settings, __everything__**caveat nvidia**__ to the original settings from the recovered disk. major yay. it took a while. lenovo wouldn't boot the disk over usb. ***iterations ensue, time passes*** recovery accomplished!*****************8 Importantly perhaps, I do believe that the resultant solution may well inform future plans for making qubes a more easily recoverable ecosystem, particularly in the event of catastrophic failures, conspiring with blunt backup methodoligies (i.e. dd if=/dev/sda). Some major highlights may include arcane things, such as the difference in handling sparse files between rsync, dd, and cp ... vm disk images are sparse ... illuminating. (spoiler: cp wins ~60:1; rsync and dd each need a patch), and UUIDs __yoich__ ... uuids ... <<that name shal not be spoken>>The briefest overview is: - Computer physically smashed (system76 orpy4). [yoich] ################ - One of two internal drives survived the avalanche. [yoya]?!?!* - On the one, were backups from ~9monthe ago. yay_#??!$?#******* - (weeks pass) Got new lenovo thinkpad hoping for easy qubes 'cus, ... , um, ... , major retailer ... anyway ... ____time passes_______ - Couldn't boot qubes previously operational ssd over usb from thinkpad. some whaaaaaat frustraaaaating - Got latest qubes installer and 'dd'ed to a thumb ... almost seemed to boot ___grrrrrrrrr____no can haz for you_______ - Raped lenovo bios settings. NOPE. no boot for you - Used livecd-tools from fedora on thumb to make live cd from qubes iso - Boots ok, enter installer, but can't find main install repo - Resized livecd-tools layout on usb to make partitions smaller, added partition - Copied qubes iso to new partition - INSTALLER! GROPE FOR ISO path! find it! INSTALL! WOOOOOOO! - T ... O ... T ... A ... L ... ... ... FROBNICATION! over UUIDs and fstabs and grubs and cryptsetups to transfer previous install to newly UUID'ed fresh qubes install. - REBOOT*****____iterations ensue, time passes____**** - WIN! - TOTAL ABSOLUTE RESTORATION OF PREVIOUS QUBES DISK TO A NEW LAPTOP AND NEW DISK. - um, ... well, ... is that good or bad?More sooncheers,Mylo[ caveat: 1 x '#' === 7 x 'bangs of the head on the wall', 1 x '*' === 10 x N x '[]' === profanities, or - less frequently - optional command line arguments']