Tails

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2017-06-28 13:54:11

• Subject changed from Install by cloning sometimes silently fails to Install by cloning sometimes silently fails from a stick installed with UUI
• Category set to Installation

#2 Updated by intrigeri 2017-06-28 17:07:57

• Status changed from New to Confirmed
• Assignee changed from intrigeri to goupille
• QA Check set to Info Needed

The info I need is:

• how exactly was the device installed/upgraded
• the full output of the tails-installer-launcher command, started in a Terminal

Thanks!

#3 Updated by goupille 2017-07-04 11:41:47

• Assignee changed from goupille to intrigeri
• QA Check changed from Info Needed to Dev Needed

I sent the asked informations to intrigeri, re-assigning the ticket

#7 Updated by sajolida 2017-08-03 17:42:54

• related to Feature #10984: Test Rufus added

#13 Updated by BitingBird 2017-08-30 11:11:31

• Description updated
• Target version set to 2018

#14 Updated by intrigeri 2017-09-01 13:08:40

• Assignee changed from intrigeri to emmapeel
• % Done changed from 0 to 100
• QA Check changed from Dev Needed to Info Needed

Thanks for the logs, that’s interesting. There seems to be something wrong (early guess: either filesystem type, or filesystem options, or permissions) with the system installed by UUI.

goupille, emmapeel, I need:

• the full output of the export DEBUG=1 ; tails-installer-launcher command (started in a Terminal) when this happens
• the output of ls -lAR /lib/live/mount/medium
• the output of mount -l
• the output of df -T
• the output of lsblk

Thanks in advance!

#16 Updated by sajolida 2017-09-29 09:09:21

• related to Feature #14448: Consider documenting Rufus as a workaround in case UUI doesn't work added

#17 Updated by sajolida 2017-09-29 09:11:11

• related to Feature #14447: Consider using Win32 Disk Imager to install from Windows added

#19 Updated by intrigeri 2017-10-22 09:01:41

• Assignee changed from emmapeel to sajolida

rolan wrote:
> Programs like Universal-USB-installer will format as NTFS without warning despite the selected “FAT32 option” when installing to a thumbdrives larger than 32GB.

Is it “32GB or larger” or “strictly larger than 32GB”?

Interesting, this could explain a lot, thanks! Next steps could be:

1. (optional) help desk checks bug reports to see if the affected drives are >=32GB; I’m writing “optional” as I bet that some affected users simply did not check the FAT32 option; anyone up to do that?
2. someone (sajolida, who’s responsible for this part of our installation proces?) tries to reproduce; next steps assume that rolan is correct;
3. check with UUI upstream if that behaviour is expected, and if it could be changed; according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_of_the_FAT_file_system a FAT filesystem can be up to 2TB large so I’m curious why UUI would force NTFS. If sajolida doesn’t want to handle this, perhaps I could do it myself (assuming this counts as Foundation Team core work);
4. if UUI can’t be fixed in this respect, document that drives larger than 32GB are not supported and display a warning when starting Tails from a NTFS system partition (as said earlier on this ticket, this could be done e.g. in live-boot i.e. very early, or after login).

#20 Updated by sajolida 2017-10-24 22:20:27

• Assignee changed from sajolida to intrigeri
• QA Check changed from Info Needed to Ready for QA

I’ll report on the test from Feature #14734 here, so that all the information is in a single thread.

Summary: UUI behaves as instructed regarding partition formatting, including on >=32GB USB stick, but Tails Installer doesn’t work when run from an NTFS partition.

Details of the tests and results:

- UUI 1.9.7.7: The version we served from https//tails.boum.org/uui/Universal-USB-Installer.exe until today
  - [X] Install on FAT32 32GB without "Format in FAT32"
    → OK! FAT32 with previous files preserved. I didn't test that Tails.
  - [X] Install on FAT32 32GB with "Format in FAT32"
    → OK! FAT32 with previous files removed. I didn't test that Tails.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB without "Format in FAT32"
    → EXPECTED! NTFS with previous files preserved. I didn't test that Tails.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB with "Format in FAT32"
    → OK! FAT32 with previous files removed. Intermediary Tails boots fine.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB with "Format in FAT32" and clone onto the intermediary Tails
    → OK! Tails Installer runs fine and final Tails boots fine.

- UUI 1.9.7.9: The version we serve starting from today
  - [X] Install on FAT32 32GB without "Format in FAT32"
    → OK! FAT 32 with previous files preserved. I didn't test that Tails.
  - [X] Install on FAT32 32GB with "Format in FAT32"
    → OK! FAT 32 with previous files removed. I didn't test that Tails.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB without "Format in FAT32"
    → EXPECTED! NTFS with previous files preserved.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB without "Format in FAT32" and clone to final Tails
    → REPRODUCED! NTFS with previous files preserved. Tails Installer fails to start on 3.2. I didn't write the error message but it was something about permission denied and /lib/live/mount/medium. I can get the full error message if you want.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB with "Format in FAT32"
    → OK! FAT32 with previous files removed. Intermediary Tails boots fine.
  - [X] Install on NTFS 32GB with "Format in FAT32" and clone to final Tails
    → OK! Tails Installer runs fine and final Tails boots fine.

So I didn’t observed what rolan was describing and, for me, there’s no bug in UUI and our instructions are fine.

Now, what we could ask UUI is whether they can preselect “Format in FAT32” when Tails is selected, explaining that installing on NTFS leads to broken stuff (I would need more help on describing why the solution to this problem cannot be to make Tails work properly from an NTFS partition). UUI might be reluctant to do that because it’s erasing people’s file on the device but, on the other hand, it’s what we’re advertising on our official instructions anyway.

If you think that’s a good idea, maybe create another subticket to contact UUI and I can do it (unless the Foundations Team wants to take over).

#22 Updated by intrigeri 2017-10-29 09:02:33

• Assignee changed from intrigeri to sajolida
• QA Check changed from Ready for QA to Dev Needed

> I’ll report on the test from Feature #14734 here, so that all the information is in a single thread.
> […]
> Details of the tests and results:

Amazing, thanks!

> So I didn’t observed what rolan was describing and, for me, there’s no bug in UUI and our instructions are fine.

OK. So the engineer’s point of view is that everything is fine. But in the real world, the users’ & help desk’s point of view is that very often “it doesn’t work”. So I’m glad you’re proposing improvements despite these test results :)

> Now, what we could ask UUI is whether they can preselect “Format in FAT32” when Tails is selected, explaining that installing on NTFS leads to broken stuff (I would need more help on describing why the solution to this problem cannot be to make Tails work properly from an NTFS partition). UUI might be reluctant to do that because it’s erasing people’s file on the device but, on the other hand, it’s what we’re advertising on our official instructions anyway.

Good idea. Here’s the info you requested:

• We don’t want to support NTFS because it supports ownership & permissions, and Tails requires the desktop user (amnesia, 1000:1000) to have full read access to the files we install on the system partition (otherwise Tails Installer would need even more admin credentials, which is bad from both a security and UX perspective). Given we have no control over what user UUI is run as on Windows, this implies we have no guarantee that the installed system files will be readable by the desktop user on Tails. So we need a filesystem that doesn’t support ownership & permissions. To the best of my knowledge, the only such filesystem that works with UEFI is FAT.
• Regardless of NTFS vs. FAT32, we don’t want to support installing on an existing filesystem that might already have data and it’s impossible to guarantee anything wrt. how pre-existing files may affect Tails’ behavior. So we need “Format”.

It logically follows that we need “Format in FAT32”.

(As said above, EFI support might be another argument against NTFS, but I didn’t actually test EFI on NTFS so let’s not mention it.)

> If you think that’s a good idea, maybe create another subticket to contact UUI and I can do it (unless the Foundations Team wants to take over).

#26 Updated by intrigeri 2017-11-11 14:38:05

• related to Bug #14959: Test UEFI boot with a Tails installed with UUI added

#29 Updated by sajolida 2018-02-01 21:07:26

• blocks Feature #14761: Core work 2017Q4 → 2018Q1: User experience added

#31 Updated by intrigeri 2018-02-03 16:17:32

• related to Feature #11679: Rethink the installation process and upgrade process added

#32 Updated by intrigeri 2018-02-06 16:04:46

• blocked by Feature #15292: Distribute a USB image added

#33 Updated by sajolida 2018-02-18 12:37:19

• QA Check deleted (Dev Needed)

I tried to reproduce this with Tails 3.5 now that Tails Installer has no splash screen. The behavior changed and now Tails Installer starts but the Install button remains unavailable. Which is not ideal but not that bad either :)

#36 Updated by sajolida 2018-02-19 16:06:17

• Target version changed from 2018 to Tails_3.7
• Type of work changed from Research to Test

But I’ll test again after 3.6.

#37 Updated by sajolida 2018-02-23 12:50:29

• Target version deleted (Tails_3.7)
• Type of work changed from Test to Wait

The last open subtask is Bug #14907 with is a “Wait” and with little hope to get done any time soon.

So I’m removing the target version. Worse case, we can close this ticket once Feature #15292 is done.

#38 Updated by emmapeel 2018-03-23 11:06:07

• related to Bug #15453: Tails Installer 'Install' or 'Upgrade' button greyed out: Permission denied: '/lib/live/mount/medium' added

#39 Updated by emmapeel 2018-03-23 11:09:51

• has duplicate Bug #11280: Tails Installer fails to mount certain USB sticks in Tails added

#40 Updated by sajolida 2018-03-27 17:51:39

• blocked by deleted (Feature #14761: Core work 2017Q4 → 2018Q1: User experience)

#41 Updated by sajolida 2018-09-10 14:44:33

• blocks deleted (Feature #15292: Distribute a USB image)

#42 Updated by sajolida 2018-09-10 14:45:00

• Status changed from Confirmed to Rejected

We now have a contract for Feature #15292 that will get rid of UUI, so I’m rejecting this.