Arnaud:
> anonym:
>> 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.
>
> Nice, thanks for sharing tips :)
>
>>> 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. :)
>
> Not sure to follow you. It IS actually used, that's what `mount` and
> `/etc/fstab` show me. If I understand properly, it's thanks to aufs that
> the rootfs is writable (in RAM).
I just meant that detailed knowledge about aufs is not central to understanding Tails and being able to hack on it. :) I think it is enough to know the general idea, that we stack filesystems on top of each other. OTOH if this area excites you, by all means, read up more, but probably about overlayfs instead, since that is what we are moving towards slowly (help needed!):
https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/8415
> BTW I stumbled on quite a nice article about the different filesystem
> strategies used in different LiveCDs (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora), here the
> link in case you're interested:
>
> https://major.io/2014/07/29/adventures-in-live-booting-linux-distributions/
Cool! It's worth noting that overlayfs has been merged into the mainline Linux kernel since then, and this is a huge motivation for us to migrate from aufs to it instead.
Cheers!
