Whonix Desktop Installer with Calamares - field report

Patrick · August 21, 2019, 4:40pm

onion_knight:

Regarding the issue

Somehow a user user was created during the build although it should be avoided at all costs (messes with live-user user config + is being copied over onto the host install) → to be verified/fixed (I am currently rebuilding a whonix-host machine to see if this error still happen. Didn’t do a pull request yet as I don’t know exactly what to change)

After rebuilding a Whonix-Host-15.0.0.3.6, I found the following: while testing the RAW file (not the ISO)

no home folder for user user was created during the build

BUT the file /etc/passwd contains a valid entry for user user , whose /home directory is created during first boot in persistent mode (along with Desktop, Downloads and Pictures directories, I guess copied from /etc/skel )
user:x:1000:1000::/home/user:/bin/bash

If I remove this entry from the /etc/passwd file, no /home/user directory is created, and instead of the graphical session, the lightdm login page is loaded (expected behavior)

guess what, default user user password is… changeme → inherited from Whonix

I guess all this is is faulty behavior and not on purpose?

Related source files:

So package anon-base-files maintainer script debian/anon-base-files.postinst currently creates user user but without home folder.

Home folder is created on login using PAM mkhomedir.

That is the current implementation which fixes bug: not all files form /etc/skel are copied to /home/user.

What you describe sounds very much like the current implementation.

We could add a feature to skip creation of user user in https://github.com/Whonix/anon-base-files/blob/master/debian/anon-base-files.postinst.

Package live-config file /lib/live/config/0030-user-setup seems to be responsible for user creation? That script seems to have a lot parameters / options we can consider. It also does a lot stuff we need to understand. Can we consider to skip /lib/live/config/0030-user-setup and leave that to the existing implementation for greater simplicity and consistency (user user created everywhere the same as much as possible)? Looks like (by reading /lib/live/config/0030-user-setup) by setting LIVE_USERNAME=user we might be able to skip /lib/live/config/0030-user-setup. Untested. Could you try please?

Generally, should we use package live-config folder /lib/live/config/ as much or little as possible? We at least need an overview what /lib/live/config/ does to check if it compatible with what we want.