Tails

#2 Updated by intrigeri 2015-02-12 21:21:58

t-p-s runs as its dedicated user. No big surprise it doesn’t manage to run the system’s default web browser (Tor Browser, defined in /etc/gnome/defaults.list, and in the x-www-browser and gnome-www-browser alternatives).

So far, our options seem to be:

• switch back to using Yelp as the documentation viewer: needs to fix lots of bugs in it first
• allow t-p-s to run some web browser (probably with a weird config and behaviour) as it own user
• create a secure enough facility in Tails, to allow an application running as some user to open a URL in a web browser running as another user; in this case, t-p-s would open the link in the Tor Browser, or in the Unsafe Browser, running as the amnesia user; maybe there’s prior work in this area; maybe we’ll need something like this at some point; maybe it could “simply” be implemented with polkit rules + pkexec
• anything else?

#6 Updated by BitingBird 2015-11-18 06:58:00

Still the case in Tails Jessie.

#7 Updated by segfault 2016-05-03 09:08:16

I think the link this ticket is about has been removed. I can’t see any link in the tails-persistence-setup GUI.

Also, I just tried to start the tor-browser as the tails-persistence-setup user. It gave an error about not being permitted to create “/home/tails-persistence-setup”. After creating the home directory, I was able to start the Tor Browser as this user. This only seems to work while the tails-persistence-setup GUI is running.

So maybe we could just create the home directory and put the link back in?

Edit: The Tor Browser run as tails-persistence-setup can’t connect to Tor. This (and other problems the different user will cause) might be confusing for users, since the browser window does not look any different than the normal Tor Browser. Maybe we should just leave the link out.

#8 Updated by intrigeri 2016-05-04 03:17:10

segfault wrote:
> I think the link this ticket is about has been removed. I can’t see any link in the tails-persistence-setup GUI.

There is definitely one when one starts persistence-setup and no persistent volume exists yet: <b>Beware!</b> Using persistence has consequences that must be well understood. Tails can't help you if you use it wrong! See <a href='file:///usr/share/doc/tails/website/doc/first_steps/persistence.en.html'>Tails documentation about persistence</a> to learn more. <- just tested and confirmed.

> Also, I just tried to start the tor-browser as the tails-persistence-setup user. It gave an error about not being permitted to create “/home/tails-persistence-setup”. After creating the home directory, I was able to start the Tor Browser as this user. This only seems to work while the tails-persistence-setup GUI is running.
>
> So maybe we could just create the home directory and put the link back in?
>
> Edit: The Tor Browser run as tails-persistence-setup can’t connect to Tor. This (and other problems the different user will cause) might be confusing for users, since the browser window does not look any different than the normal Tor Browser. Maybe we should just leave the link out.

FTR the link points to file:///, so we don’t care if it uses Tor or not. But yeah, firing up a browser (be it the Tor or Unsafe one) as the tails-persistence-setup user is bound to be confusing for users, let’s not do that.

#14 Updated by intrigeri 2018-06-05 15:41:11

(For now we’ll simply remove the link. Once Feature #15142 is done, if the lack of a link to the doc proves to be a problem, we can open a new ticket about re-adding such a link.)

#21 Updated by intrigeri 2018-06-25 18:42:35

sajolida wrote:
> Cool! Did you do the merge already?

I did this work on the ASP topic branches (see the “Feature Branch” field). They’ll be merged into devel whenever those branches are ready, i.e. in principle in time for 3.9 (the initial goal was to merge by the end of June but we’re not there yet I think).