[Tails-dev] CheckIt no longer available

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Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: [Tails-dev] CheckIt no longer available

As pointed out by a user on the forum [1], the CheckIt add-on is not
available anymore. This add-on was used in the documentation to allow
Windows or Mac users to verify the ISO image. We decided to advertise a
Firefox plugin because:
- it would be a relatively cross-platform solution
- it should be easy to install
- it could be fetched through HTTPS

The alternative to do checksums with Firefox is MD5 Reborned Hasher [3]
but this one can only be run from the "Download" window of Firefox. So
just after downloading the ISO. Which most probably will not be the case
since we are asking the verify the ISO, and possibly installing MD5
Reborned Hasher and restarting Firefox, after downloading the ISO.

I found a workaround for most cases but I wanted your opinion before
putting that in the documentation.

1. Download the ISO
2. Install MD5 Reborned Hasher, restart Firefox
3. Open the ISO image from File ▸ Open File… and save it on top of
itself. That's the weird move. It seems to work ok on Windows XP but it
was not working on my machine where /tmp didn't have enough space to
store a temporary copy of the full ISO.
4. Check the SHA-256 from the Download window.

What do you think?

[1] https://tails.boum.org/forum/Checkit_no_longer_available/
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkit/
[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/md5-reborned-hasher/

--
sajolida