[Tails-dev] running unsafe-browser fails from an upgraded Ta…

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Author: Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Date:  
To: Tails development list
Subject: [Tails-dev] running unsafe-browser fails from an upgraded Tails 1.2
Hi good Tails people--

I had a Tails stick which i had upgraded successively from at least 1.1
to 1.2. I found that after booting 1.2, unsafe-browser no longer works.
If i click to launch it, it appears to try to start (the confirmation
dialog box showed up), but no browser window ever opens.

unsafe-browser *does* work from a clean 1.2 ISO.

Looking into it further, it appears that /usr/local/sbin/unsafe-browser
assumes that /lib/live/mount/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs contains the
entire filesystem -- it does an aufs r/o mount of that filesystem tree
stacked with a r/w tmpfs tree, and tries to configure and do a chrooted
launch of the browser from within the usr/lib/tor-browser/ directory
within this temporary aufs tree.

But on an upgraded system, i think that there are multiple filesystems
stacked into the main filesystem root, and only the 1.2 slice of the
stack contains usr/local/lib/tor-browser, so when the unsafe-browser
script stacks things together, it probably needs to include all of the
stacked filesystems, not just the base one.

Any scripts that are based on the unsafe-browser approach (like the I2P
browser launcher Kill Your TV has been working on) might have the same
problems, so they probably need review as well.

If this doesn't make sense, or if i can do anything to help replicate
or correct the issue, please let me know how i can help.

Regards,

        --dkg