Creating an offline Electrum wallet using a bootable USB Linux key
I'd never used Linux before so this took me a lot of effort to learn from scratch - hopefully this helps someone.
If it can get moved to the Electrum subforum (or if I can get permission to post there myself), that would be awesome.
1. Download and install Linux Live USB creator
a. Google “Linux Live” and click the official website (
www.linuxliveusb.com)
b. Click “Download LiLi”
c. Install in Windows this Linux Live bootable USB creation software
2. Download the latest version of Ubuntu
a. Google “Ubuntu” and click the official website (
www.ubuntu.com)
b. Click the download link, and download “Ubuntu desktop”
c. Download Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) (an ISO file)
3. Create your bootable Ubuntu key
a. Insert a blank USB stick
b. In Windows, run the Linux Live USB creator software
i. Select the blank USB stick
ii. Select the ISO option and point it to the Ubuntu ISO file you downloaded earlier
iii. Leave the persistence set to Live mode
iv. Check “Format the key in FAT32”
v. Click the lightning bolt to start creating the key
4. Boot into Linux from the key on a computer connected to the internet (Ethernet is easiest)
5. Install new software in Linux/Ubuntu
Note this replaces the non-working instructions on the Electrum website to type “sudo apt-get install python-qt4 python-pip” & “sudo apt-get install python-slowaes”
a. Hit Control-Alt-T to enter the terminal window then enter
i. cd ~
ii. wget –P Downloads/
http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.pyiii. sudo python Downloads/distribute_setup.py
iv. sudo easy_install pip
v. sudo easy_install slowaes
6. Install Electrum using the exact command currently found on the official Electrum website
a. Note this starts with “sudo pip install
https://download.electrum.org/Electrum/Ele...” and ends with an md5 checksum.
7. In Ubuntu disable the option that says “Enable networking” for extra security
8. Shutdown and reboot the USB stick on a computer that has no access to the internet
9. Run Electrum for the first time and create a new wallet, write down your seed with a pen and paper as backup.
10. Be secure with the new wallet that contains the private key
a. Export the Master Public Key onto a different USB stick (not the bootable one) and import it into the copy of Electrum you run on your online computer.
b. Never again plug the bootable USB stick into any computer that can connect to the internet, nor leave it plugged into any computer at all except when booting from it.
c. Google “Electrum offline signing” to learn how to create send transactions using the online computer then transfer them using a DIFFERENT USB stick for signing on the offline computer.
