[1] Copying over files, pretty likely, yes. The Whonix host (or any VM) raw image doesn’t contain any installable packages before being converted to iso. Only already installed packages. Apt cache (debs) is cleared during the build process to save space. I doubt calamares somehow reconstructs debs from installed packages.
Makes sense.
I see requirement for internet by an installer as a disadvantage. User might have to enter wifi credentials twice. It adds more fragility, complexity. Think Tor, VPN, onion repos, connection slowness, data quota, and whatnot.
Debian installer is even worse. Often network cards or wifi adapters requiring nonfree drivers aren’t on the iso. These are only available online. After enabling nonfree repository. And Debian repository is unreachable due to no internet. I’ve seen many users fail at this requirement and use Ubuntu instead.
I guess since calamares copies over iso contents to disk it won’t be needing networking. That’s awesome since lower complexity and saves time.
Correct.
Custom user names would be unsupported. Username “user” is “the ideal user name”. It should be shared among all users of anonymity distributions. The rationale of this is explained here:
I also see this as an advantage of usability. The less questions installers ask, the easier to use.
User user
.
anon-base-files postinst script (anon-base-files.postinst) runs all steps required for user creation during installation of anon-base-files such as adduser, addgroup, pam-auth-update, passwd --lock root
.
Now that I understand calamares a bit better as per [1], anon-base-files postinst script would only run during the build process when installed. It currently isn’t re-run during calamares installation - because calamares copies files - we didn’t configure it yet to doesn’t install packages.
The refined plan:
- skip copying files from live iso /home/user folder to installed system
- if that is not possible use a script to remove any unwanted files either during calamares [preferred] or during first boot
- skip calamares user creation question
- keep user
user
as it was already created by anon-base-files during raw image creation build process
- keep user
Btw why would it be bad if files created in /home/user during live iso use would leak into the installed system? Because live contents should never leak to the disk? Well, that would make sense.
Can you find which calamares module is responsible for copying over the files? Then we might be able to find out how it can be configured and if /home/user can be excluded.
Calamares allows to run scripts indeed as per calamares/src/modules/shellprocess/shellprocess.conf at calamares · calamares/calamares · GitHub