Secure Boot disk for Electrum/Armory/Bitcoin etc

[greBit]

Thought I would repost here as it may be useful to some Electrum users and it would be great to get some feedback

I've recently been playing around with Ubuntu with the aim of developing user-customizable live CD/DVDs/USB disks.

It works as follows:

1. User downloads(or builds) and burns  a liveDisk .iso image.
2. User boots it up. Adds software. Creates encrypted wallets. Makes it pretty.
3. User 'reproduces' the system as a new .iso and writes it to CD/DVD or USB disk
...

I currently have a very basic bitcoin livedisk version which can be downloaded (768mb) here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4kVxAbllVkIWXhKZlo3bXJyS00/edit?usp=sharing

It contains:

• Bitcoin-Qt
• Bitcoin Armory
• VanityGen
• Electrum
• BitAddress
• livedisk_tools (https://github.com/willish/livedisk_tools) including things such as 'livedisk-reproduce' for making baby .ISOs!

Screen shots:







I also have a GUI-less, Bitcoin-tool-less, bootstrap.iso at 387mb, here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4kVxAbllVkIQWlTbmF2UGxRUFE/edit?usp=sharing

Of course, everything can also be built manually. The build process is as follows:

Building the bootstrap.iso

1. Install Vagrant www.vagrantup.com

Code:

git clone git://github.com/willish/livedisk_bootstrap.git .
cd build_amd64            # or build_i386
vagrant up

Building the liveDisk-bitcoin distro

1. Find a decent sized USB flash disk (8gb would do nicely). **This will be completely wiped!**

2. Boot the 'bootstrap.iso`. Select 3rd boot option (with flash storage)

3. `sudo livedisk-init-flash /dev/sdX`  (where /dev/sdX is replaced by the path to your USB device)

4. `sudo livedisk-install bitcoin` (and wait a while!)

5. Reboot and again select 3rd boot option

6. Customize your distro!


Save your modified distro to a new .iso

1. `sudo livedisk-reproduce flash`  to make your customized liveDisk .iso

[btcven]

Why would you run a LiveDisk with the apps bundled (probably modified) rather than download them from a trust source (like their websites) and install them yourself?

[greBit]

The idea is that users would be able to build and customize their own bootable environments, without trusting me

I also would never trust an application I have not built myself with my private keys. I have simply made a couple of scripts which download and build Ubuntu+BitcoinQt+Armory+etc from their sources.

It also allows you to start from a very simple clean boot environment, customize it, and reproduce it as a 'child' ISO image.

Admittedly I need to tidy this up a lot but it would be nice to have a couple of alpha testers.