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Alert

A new Tails iso is out

Sep 6, 2014 4:01AM PDT

Discussion is locked

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T U,
Sep 6, 2014 4:15AM PDT

(decode that!)

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54 55
Sep 6, 2014 5:17AM PDT

54 68 61 6E 6B 20 59 6F 75

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71 00
Sep 6, 2014 5:25AM PDT

71 00 7A 7B 30 00

If anyone decodes what machine ran this, may the Q be with them.

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I know what
Sep 6, 2014 5:36AM PDT

55 22 is Devil

Digger

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(NT) that's a null point
Sep 6, 2014 6:03AM PDT
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Have you tried to put this on a USB flash drive yet?
Sep 12, 2014 3:34AM PDT

I finally succeeded this morning but don't know if I can write what made it work. Using the instructions and built in installation utility gives me a "no boot device" type message. I can, however, boot from a gparted CD with the Tails USB plugged in and it comes up fine. I can also use my Acronis boot disk and Tails loads with that. This is reminiscent of some old tricks with failed NT boot loaders where a floppy disk would boot the OS. Very strange. At any rate, I was able to make the thing bootable by having the Tails USB inserted but the Tails DVD inserted during the start. Once I created the persistent volume Tails would boot from the USB flash drive but not before...scratching head here. I'm doing this with a 16 gb drive so have more than enough space but the eventual goal (and I think I'm sunk here) will be to create a disk with a Windows readable partition so I can download or copy stuff there for later use. I've been able to do that with Linux Mint but only by pre-partitioning the drive. Tails doesn't seem to want to cooperate with that method. I still think Tails is evil. Anything that will lie for you will lie to you. Happy

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Me?
Sep 12, 2014 3:41AM PDT

That's a little complicated for me just yet so I let you guy's go first so when I mess it up, you guys can fix it Mischief
I put it on a neighbors HDD and took me A bunch of times to do it . I can't even explain what I was doing wrong. Had the right Key and everything.
Digger

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P.S
Sep 12, 2014 3:48AM PDT
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I didn't bother with the signature key
Sep 12, 2014 4:31AM PDT

so perhaps it's a necessity for a smooth installation. I'll try that when I've more time to waste. I've no real obsession with having Tails but a lean Linux installation that could boot and be used to retrieve or transfer files with Windows machines would be handy. I can use Unetbootin or UUI to make a Linux Mint USB drive but Windows can only see the FAT-32 portion. The persistent volume uses EXT2 but I've not been able to put a second FAT-32 partition after that one. Windows doesn't see it. I suspect I'll need to see if I can either slip it between the first partition and the persistent volume...a project for another day. These are very slow moving processes.

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I'm tellin ya man
Sep 12, 2014 4:46AM PDT

Tails was hard for me to install on that HDD, it took 2 days for me to get it right and I don't even know how I did it.

Whueey, It was really a b***h,
You go first Mischief
Digger

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So you're supposed to be able to move around
Sep 12, 2014 6:49AM PDT

anonymously, right? And you also need to trust someone managing what you're told is a secure and anonymous server, right?...with a Guy Fawkes smile, right? Wink

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I won't do it again lol
Sep 12, 2014 7:18AM PDT
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Well, when doing a flash drive
Sep 12, 2014 10:17PM PDT

You're well off to start with a USB3 device. The install process on USB2 goes OK but the update/upgrade is painful. The worst part is that you can't just let it run because some of the updates require user confirmation of the changes. Letting it run overnight doesn't help matters as, just as soon as user intervention is needed, the process just stops and waits for you in the morning. Good ol' Windows will just happily complete the process even if it's going to trash your system.

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Install on USB1
Sep 14, 2014 3:14AM PDT

Takes about 25-30 minutes on a USB flashdrive with 10 mbs read, 5 mbs write. So, boot is slow, but once it's booted and all programs to be used are opened, most things run at regular speed then, especially if you setup a temp file system in RAM. A LIVE DVD system will run faster than a fully installed Linux to the flashdrive.

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So whats the verdict
Sep 15, 2014 9:17PM PDT

Did you get it going on a flash drive ?

Digger

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Still a work in progress but I did get Tails
Sep 16, 2014 2:29AM PDT

working. It's very picky about how you install it and it finally did boot from the drive once I created the persistent volume. I'm still not happy with it, however. My intention was to have a bootable Linux USB flash drive with a Windows readable partition. It will be used for troubleshooting, data recovery, etc. Tails was more slim than most current distros. Yeah...there's always Puppy. I gave up on Tails and went to Mint but still have problems. Here's the instructions I tried.

http://tuxtweaks.com/2014/03/create-linux-mint-persistent-live-usb/

I can make the bootable flash drive just fine but I can't figure out how to create that desired Windows accessible FAT-32 partition. Well, I can create one but, for some reason, my Windows 7 PC can't see it properly. Disk managers notes the partition but gives an error if I try to format it. Attempts to juggle things around by placing the second FAT-32 partition directly after the first cause me to lose the persistent volume.

I suppose I could just use a second USB drive instead of trying to make an all-in-one. I may monkey around with it later as each failed attempt has been costing me more of what's left of my life than I'm willing to give up. Happy

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This one is simple
Sep 16, 2014 2:39AM PDT
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One Member
Sep 16, 2014 2:55AM PDT
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That idea might work
Sep 16, 2014 4:02AM PDT

I won't try it now because I want to get another flash drive with an activity LED in it. This will let me know if it's still working or stalled out. It looks like this method creates the Windows readable FAT-32 partition first instead of last. I've been using UUI and Unetbootin and I think either should work if I can get the partitioning scheme right. I do want a smaller Linux footprint but do want to be able to do updates and save setting so the persistent volume seems to offer some of that. My largest drive right now is 16 gb and I think a 32 would be more useful. A project for another day right now.

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I don't know why
Sep 16, 2014 4:14AM PDT

But things seem to work easier with just a straight up Debian. Those Ubuntu's are good distro's but I've never had great luck with them.

Digger

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Another update
Sep 25, 2014 4:24AM PDT

I've been able to (mostly) accomplish my goal of having a windows readable partition on a Linux bootable USB drive. I had to use a version of Mint. Solydx just didn't work out. Sorry, I know you're a Solyd fan but the darned thing would lock up, wouldn't shut down completely and gummed up my FAT-32 partition such that Windows thought it needed to be formatted again. Once I did that, Solydx was gummed up...some kind of GRUB error. The GRUB repair utility couldn't fix it. Perhaps it just needed an edit somewhere but I didn't feel like messing with it anymore. Mint works and it's footprint isn't any bigger. I'd probably be better off to just carry 2 USB flash drives and keep it simple. Now to do about 8 hours worth of painful updates. Happy

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Cool!
Sep 25, 2014 1:46PM PDT

Ya got it going . I was hoping to hear good news about Tails though.
Lots of folks have better luck with Ubuntu based distros , we work with what works best for us...

Digger

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Do this for future restoration
Sep 26, 2014 11:58AM PDT

Because the MBR is located on the disk it can be backed up and later recovered. Make a copy of the entire MBR for the drive and store it in a safe place, properly labeled. Of course remember the sd** has to be the proper drive and partition used in the below method.

This means "do copy the input of drive partition to a backupfile for 512 bytes as one sector." The second reverses it. If you have that, the original boot and partition tables can quickly be established again if corrupted. You would boot a LIVE DVD, use the backed up MBR and "dd" it back where it belonged in the first sector. If using a 64 bit version, you'd use 1024 or maybe 2048 as the number in place of 512. If you always leave an empty MB at the front of the first partition, then you also have that wiggle room added.

To backup the MBR:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/path/mbr-backup bs=512 count=1 [/b[

Restore the MBR:

dd if=/path/mbr-backup of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

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notice the clock during the install
Sep 26, 2014 12:14PM PDT

goes from 18:38 suddenly to 19:14, but it was so smooth a transition, some might not realize there was a time gap there of 36 minutes. I see he uses Kingston flashdrives like I do. I'm a bit surprised the USB 3 flashdrive didn't install a bit quicker than that. I think their write time is not much better than the USB 2, but the read time is a lot quicker.

Some things I've come to a conclusion about concerning flashdrive installations is;

1) Don't put a swap partition on it, waste of space and probably will never use it, not necessary.

2) use ext2 file system since it's not a journaling file system and therefore fewer writes to the flashdrive while using it, but also have to be sure to do safe shutdowns or face the "fsck" on the next boot.

3) since they are mobile, by all means at least the home folder should be set for encryption. Don't bother with a separate partition for home.

4) Put a first partition of 2-4GB for FAT32. If you lose it, most windows users will only see that first section and think the drive is broken beyond that size or that it is an EBay fake. If they use Disk Manager and see the extra room and create one large partition and format it, your data is then safe from prying eyes. If they figure out maybe it's bootable, all they get is a password prompt. If they are really savvy and think maybe it's linux, boot a live DVD, they only find encrypted files.

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Here's what I did
Sep 26, 2014 11:47AM PDT

I took a 16GB flashdrive, used GParted to create 2 partitions. The first one, which is the ONLY one Windows can access files from (it can see second partition in Disk Manager, but not access) is FAT32. I then installed Mint to the second partition, same as you would to a hard drive. The home folder is encrypted. Anything I want to share with windows I can put in the first partition. Anything I want secure goes in the encrypted home folder in the second partition. If I plug into windows computer, it's file manager sees anything in the first partition. I can boot from it if desired. Other than the state size, nobody on Windows would probably realize there's data behind the first partition. If it gets lost, the data in the second partition is safe due to encryption which would need the password. If someone accessed the data other than booting to it and giving the password, all they see is encrypted data, useless to them.

http://glenburniemd.net/CNET/2PartMintFlashDriveV16.png

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I have both Mint Cinnamon and Lubuntu
Sep 26, 2014 10:03PM PDT

on USB drives now. Mint is on a 32 gig drive and Lubuntu on a 16. My intention is only to use these as troubleshooting or recovery tools at a school right now. I really don't put personal data on it so encryption isn't a need at this point. As you described, I've put the FAT-32 partition up front and my desire is to maximize the amount of space available on that partition. Actually, I'd like to use NTFS to get around the FAT-32 file size limit. An interesting thing I have found that Grub is quite persistent in leaving its tattoo on the MBR. Removing Mint and installing Lubuntu after repartitioning/formatting the drive still showed a Mint 17 volume listed in Lubuntu's file manager. I generally use Acronis Disk Director for partitioning/resizing for Windows but it was unable to deal with the MBR once Grub was there. The Acronis CD wouldn't even boot properly with the flash drive in place. In any event, I have most of what I want now. It's rather pokey but it works. Thanks for the tips.

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If you need to wipe the MBR
Sep 27, 2014 3:01AM PDT
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Windows diskpart works too
Sep 27, 2014 5:25AM PDT

I have (a legal) copy of Acronis Disk Director installed on my PC and I can manually just write zeros to the first few sectors. That works too.

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MBR
Sep 27, 2014 4:48PM PDT
An interesting thing I have found that Grub is quite persistent in leaving its tattoo on the MBR. Removing Mint and installing Lubuntu after repartitioning/formatting the drive still showed a Mint 17 volume listed in Lubuntu's file manager.

That can happen if you wipe out the first part of the MBR which is 446 bytes and not the rest of the sector of 512 bytes which contains the partition setup. Meaning a fix of the MBR but retaining current partition setup.
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1.1.2 out now
Sep 27, 2014 7:04PM PDT

Gave it another try and found more interesting anomalies that might occur with some systems. I'm using an older Intel board (dg41tx) with a quad core processor. I cannot get the Tails Live DVD to boot unless I enable boot support for UEFI. Otherwise, I get a black screen with no error or other messages. Enabling UEFI under boot options allow the DVD to load. Once I use the Tails installation process to create the USB device, I find that it will not boot. I get a message that a "bootable device has not been detected". If I go back into the machines BIOS and disable UEFI in boot options, the USB installation of Tails boots just fine. This might explain my earlier difficulties and also might add to my own understanding of the difference in creating the USB from an .iso image and that of installing it from a burned DVD. I believe I was under the mistaken assumption that Unetbootin and UUI just eliminated the requirement to burn the .iso to DVD first. This may also explain why I couldn't put a Windows accessible partition on the USB drive that was burned as an image. In any event, this MB doesn't have UEFI BIOS but does show a boot option for such disks. Success or failure of a Tails installation could be affected by one's hardware. The light just came on too late. Duhhh! Happy