I'm writing in response to sajolida's request for Tails installation
experiences here:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/ux/2015-December/000031.html
I followed the instructions at
https://tails.boum.org/install/expert/usb/index.en.html. I hit four
snags:
1. The instructions didn't say exactly what command to run for the
installer, but I was able to guess tails-installer-launcher.
2. I didn't have the udisks2 package installed, so the installer did
not detect the USB drive.
3. I initially didn't run the installer as root, so I didn't have
permission to write the disk image.
4. I was confused by how long I should wait during "Synchronizing data
on disk..."
I started at
https://tails.boum.org/install/. From there I continued to
https://tails.boum.org/install/debian/index.en.html. Then I read the
first few steps of both of:
https://tails.boum.org/install/debian/usb/overview/index.en.html
https://tails.boum.org/install/expert/usb/overview/index.en.html
until I decided that the second one was the one I wanted.
I happened to already have signatures on the signing key. Downloading
and verifying was no problem. The download was "1.06G in 38m 9s".
I added the backports repository and installed tails-installer while the
iso was downloading. No problem.
Step 4/7 "Install Tails" doesn't tell you exactly what command to run. I
used tab completion to file tails-installer-launcher. I suppose there
would have been a menu icon but I don't have a desktop compatible with
that.
The first time I ran tails-installer-launcher, I got the message "No
device suitable to install Tails could be found." I removed and
reinserted the disk while tails-installer-launcher was running; no
change. I exited and reopened tails-installer-launcher; same message. I
suspected I might need root and ran "sudo tails-installer-launcher";
same message. dmesg shows that my disk is inserted. Just for fun, I
selected the iso file from the interface, and this message appeared on
the terminal: "Could not guess underlying block device: Argument 1 does
not allow None as a value".
At this point I was about to give up and just write a report saying that
tails-installer-launcher didn't work for me.
I did "dpkg -L tails-installer" to see where the source files were
installed. I grepped for the message "No device suitable to install
Tails could be found" and found my way to
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/tails_installer/creator.py. There the
line
self._udisksclient = UDisks.Client.new_sync()
made me think I had to install a udisks-related package, which I
remembered having to use some time in the past. The package I needed was
udisks2.
With udisks2 installed, tails-installer-launcher detected by USB disk.
It was neat: I could remove and reinsert the disk and the UI would
update live. I selected the iso file and started the installation. It
failed with:
tails-i386-2.0.1.iso selected
Clearing unreadable partition table.
Partitioning device /dev/sdb
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.NotAuthorizedCanObtain: Not authorized to perform operation
Tails installation failed!
udisks-error-quark: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.NotAuthorizedCanObtain: Not authorized to perform operation (4)
I guessed I needed root and ran "sudo tails-installer-launcher". I
noticed that the iso file I had selected last time was added to Recent
Files and briefly wondered if that's a noteworthy information leak.
I started the installation as root. Within a few seconds the progress
bar filled to 100% and there were the messages:
tails-i386-2.0.1.iso selected
Partitioning device /dev/sdb
Formatting /dev/sdb1 as FAT32
Verifying filesystem...
Extracting live image to the target device...
Wrote to device at 1082 MB/sec
Reading extracted MBR from /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr/gptmbr.bin
Installing bootloader...
Synchronizing data on disk...
At this point I wasn't sure what to do. It didn't look like anything was
happening. The installation guide said, "At the end of the installation,
you are asked for your administration password," and that hadn't
happened yet. The guide also said "The progress bar usually freezes for
some time around 95 percent while synchronizing data on disk," but the
progress bar looked like 100%, not 95%. I ran iotop and saw that kworker
was doing a lot of disk writes, so I decided to wait. After about five
minutes, I got the messages
Unmounting mounted filesystems on '/dev/sdb1'
Synchronizing data on disk...
Resetting Master Boot Record of /dev/sdb
Synchronizing data on disk...
Installation complete! (0:05:04)
(I had to copy the messages by typing them out; I wanted to copy and
paste them, but the "Installation complete!" modal dialog prevented me
from doing it.)
The whole process took me 70 minutes. About 40 minutes of that was the
iso download.
Though I had some difficulties, I liked the tails-installer experience.
It's better than trying to look up a dd command or unetbootin, or
burning a DVD.
The progress bar looks full, not 95%.
