Re: [Tails-dev] Call for help: isohybrid.pl needs a maintain…

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Author: intrigeri
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] Call for help: isohybrid.pl needs a maintainer
Hi,

Michael Rogers wrote (11 Nov 2014 09:59:27 GMT) :
> how much work would be involved in creating Tails installers for
> Windows, Mac and Linux that would be able to create USB sticks
> capable of holding persistent storage, without the need for
> a DVD burner?


First of all, that's already possible, by 1. using the manual
installation process (Linux, Mac) or Universal USB Installer
(Windows), and then 2. cloning the resulting Tails medium to another
one.

But of course it's non-obvious and a bit cumbersome, so:

First step is to get Tails Installer working on a couple non-Tails
GNU/Linux distros: that's on our plate (#7046) and should be worked on
in 2015 if everything goes right. It's quite some work, but shouldn't
be too hard.

Second step is to make Tails Installer multi-platform. The Windows
side of things is a goal for the Tails 3.0 milestone (#7544). I expect
the hard parts to be:

  * getting everything in working shape on Windows (GPT, partitioning,
    filesystem creation)


  * making it so it doesn't block our plausible deniability plans
    (#5929), that is Tails Installer should be able to create LUKS
    volumes on Windows that look exactly the same as the ones created
    on GNU/Linux (or, worst case, implement #5929 in a way that
    creates the "fake" persistent volume at first boot, instead of at
    installation time)


  * testing the resulting Windows port on various versions of Windows:
    nobody on our team uses Windows, so that won't be easy. Also, it
    won't be easy for us to automate these tests...


Third step is to do the same for OS X. No idea how hard it'll be.

Cheers,
--
intrigeri