[archived] Previous, now Deprecated Whonix Windows Installer Testing

Tested Windows 10 only. We could support both 10, 8 . I’ll have to get an 8 image. Would be good to test on different releases anyways. Support for Windows 7 for a little while since it reaches EOL in a few months.

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/windows-7-end-of-life-guide

Microsoft recently announced that it will officially begin the Windows 7 end of life phase on Jan. 14, 2020. On that day, the company will stop supporting Windows 7 on laptops and desktops, and will no longer patch it with security updates.

Done.

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Verify_the_Whonix_Windows_Installer

Done.

https://www.whonix.org/w/index.php?title=Verify_the_Whonix_images&diff=50613&oldid=43931

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Downloaded and installed from Whonix.org.

  • First time extracting had an error. My guess would be Norton antivirus or Windows defender interrupted the process which cause the issue? Started the extraction over and everything went fine. Repeated the Download/installation a few more time with no issues.
  • When installing from Whonix.org, Windows automatically restarts (to finish installation?) This only happened after build when:
    • Norton quarantined Whonix.exe at the start of build and the installer obviously wouldn’t work. But a file is created .\Output\InstallWhonix.exe that works to install Whonix when executed. However, when run this also restarted Windows the same as above. The whonix-installer.exe did not do this.(Windows restart)

https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix-Windows-Installer/blob/master/config.txt

;!@Install@!UTF-8!
Title="Whonix Installer"
RunProgram="Output\InstallWhonix.exe"
ExtractTitle="Extracting Whonix Installer"
GUIMode="1"
;!@InstallEnd@!
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False alarm. I take that back.

Just saw you moved Windows_Testers_Only_Version to Verify the Whonix Windows Installer. Wiki history intact:

Permission error - Whonix

(Either false memory by me or mediawiki improved that during an upgrade.)

A new VirtulaBox version is available. I’ll create an new installer and test when I get a chance. VirtualBox 6.0.12

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Not high priority atm.

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There is also a newer Whonix stable release already.

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Had an issue when importing Kicksecure ova image in VirtualBox. The error message isn’t all that helpfull.

Code: E_INVALIDARG (0x80070057)

I previously used https://whonix.org/wiki/Dev/Whonix-Windows-Installer to install VitrualBox and Whonix. Reinstalled VitrualBox and was able to import the Kicksecure ova.

If I remove Kicksecure ova image and run Whonix installer again, then try to import the Kicksecure ova image again the same thing happens.

Related:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=53991

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Could you try to import using the command line please? Hopefully that will give more debug output.

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Maybe a version mismatch? Windows installer VirtualBox version is outdated. And Kicksecure was created with latest stable version of VirtualBox.

Maybe updating VirtualBox would solve this?

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Command line import command from Whonix ™ for VirtualBox with Xfce footnotes (expanded):

eula show:

/path/to/vboxmanage import /path/to/ova --vsys 0 --eula show

eula accept

/path/to/vboxmanage import /path/to/ova --vsys 0 --eula accept

Perhaps --vsys 0 can or must be dropped since only a single VM and not two VMs in one ova.

#18343 (Unable to import OVA with error NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG) – Oracle VM VirtualBox says this could be an out of disk space issue. Do [all] disks have enough disk space? Let’s say two or three times as much as ova size (even with VirtualBox VMs on drive D: VirtualBox might do extraction/temporary files on drive C:, dunno).

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Created a new Whonix Installer with the latest VirtualBox version (quick and dirty) and had no issues. Looks like a miss-match.

Still want me to try imporing Kicksecure (CLI) with older Whonix installer?

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We just have to know about this and tell users to upgrade VirtualBox.

No need.

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https://imgur.com/a/RHg2QaR

https://imgur.com/a/RHg2QaR

Can’t make head or tail of yet. Error message is here:

https://github.com/Whonix/Whonix-Windows-UI/blob/master/Whonix-UI/error.xaml#L11

You appear to execute this program from a folder which doesn’t contain the necessary files for it to operate properly. Please try reinstalling this program via the Whonix-Installer. If the program persists, please contact the developer at: https://forums.whonix.org

I’ve had this same issue when running the Whonix Installer.

To recap. This happened when:

  1. (after building from source) I ran the wrong executable (InstallWhonix.exe) which is built along side the Whonix Installer and can be found in \current_working_directory\InstallWhonix.exe

This is one of the reasons for changing the installer name from Install Whonix.exe to whonix-installer.exe . (to prevent confusion)

Not sure of the purpose of this executable?

  1. When Norton anti-virus qaurantines a needed file when the whonix-installer.exe is run. This has happen to me more than a few times…

Obviously there could be other reasons for this issue.

This is a common fix for Windows users. But I think we can do better…

When I start working on development again I plan on trying to resolve this issue and work on better error handling for the installer.

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If anyone is having issues with the Whonix installer you will likely receive a faster response by asking your question on the Whonix forum as opposed to emailing myself or Whonix developers directly.

I don’t mind answering questions via email, but when questions are asked in the Whonix public forums, all community members can benefit from the answers provided by the Whonix team and greater community.

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Very much agreed.

I personally usually refuse to help by e-mail, unless professional (paid) support requests. And link to Free Support for Whonix ™ (Unless something minor.)

(Needless to say: everyone is free to e-mail anyone of course.)

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Will be updating the following wiki pages to reflect the latest Whonix release,

Also updating (pull requests) where needed:

Should we also have a separate wiki page (For Testers)?

Looking forward, what information would be helpful for users to provide if anyone encounters the above?

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gpg4win website nowdays has a valid, CA signed TLS certificate / functional https. Therefore chapter for manual TLS certificate installation remove.d

Is there still any point of downloading SignTools from microsoft.com to use it to verify gpg4win? Connecting to microsoft.com over TLS only vs connecting to gpg4win.org over TLS only seems to be equally dangerous. There seems to be a bootstrapping problem of securely obtaining gpg4win on the Windows platform anyhow.

Or is initially downloading SignTools (which then will be used to verify gpg4win) from microsoft.com more secure because microsoft.com is on the TLS Static Public Key Pinning list?

TLS Public Key Pinning (HPKP) was deprecated but does TLS Static Public Key Pinning still exist?

References for TLS static pinning:

Can anyone find a TLS Static Public Key Pinning list?

However, I doubt it. curl --head https://www.microsoft.com does not even include a HSTS header.

//cc @madaidan

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It’s not just about the connection. It’d be much more unlikely for a massive company like Microsoft to be compromised and serve malicious software than gpg4win.

curl --head https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ does though which is weird.