Re: [Tails-dev] Experimenting with Tails, preferred workflow…

Arnaud:
> intrigeri:
>> I personally combine two approaches, depending on the need:
>>
>> * build a modified ISO image
>> * start Tails and modify files in there (it *is* writable, but of course the modifications go to a ramdisk)

Let me add one, which is a special case of intrigeri's last point:

* start Tails and "symlink" the relevant/changed files from your Tails source tree into the correct places in the filesystem of a running Tails session. So first you use sshfs or libvirt filesystem shares to make your Tails sources available inside the Tails guest, then you just symlink the source files to the correct places. This allows for rapidly testing your changes, but won't in all situations (e.g. stuff happening during early boot). YMMV.

> Thx for sharing ! I wasn't even aware that the rootfs was writable, I
> thought it was just a read-only squashf filesystem.

Any changes to a file on the rootfs means it will live in RAM from then on (until shutdown, of course). This is important to keep in mind in some situations excessive modification of the rootfs leads to high RAM usage.

> Now I just read a
> bit about aufs and I understand better how it works

It's a cool technology, but I don't think it's really needed. :)