Electrum on Tails Linux Live without persistence

[joe1234]

Hello forum

I intend to start with 1 BTC-transaction per month. Instead of installing Electrum on my
rooted mobile, I am going to use the built-in Electrum of Tails


Upon starting Electrum in Tails, the following message is shown:

"Persistence is disabled for Electrum
When you reboot Tails, all of Electrum's data will be lost, including your Bitcoin wallet.
It is strongly recommended to only run Electrum when it's persistence feature is activated."


Why this warnings? Because of e.g. possible power-outings of a Linux Live system?
Is it not enough to write down the 12 seed words?



Thank's for your help!

Joe

[ranochigo]

It is enough. Tails doesn't save any data within the USB that lasts beyond a reboot. This means that if you don't save the seeds, your Electrum will be gone without the seeds. Enabing persistence will allow you to use Electrum across reboots without having to restore everytime.

[Chikito]

you have forgotten to create persistent volume. your electrum will run by default.

you have to create persistent volume first to have enabled electrum wallet to keep it on disk.

persistent volume as the option, you have to choose to enable or disable it at the beginning (encrypted by password).

[pooya87]

Is it not enough to write down the 12 seed words?

Yes, that is what the mnemonic is designed for, you can write it down on a piece of paper which you should protect well and in the future every time you want to recover your funds you simply use this in Electrum to re-create the same set of keys again.

[LoyceV]

Why this warnings? Because of e.g. possible power-outings of a Linux Live system?
Is it not enough to write down the 12 seed words?

Your seed words will protect your funds, but without persistent storage you'll lose your transaction labels. That's probably okay as long as you only make one transaction per month, but if you have multiple payments coming in simultaneously, you may want to keep track of address labels and transaction descriptions.

[bob123]

Be assured, you don't need any persistence storage on your bootable USB.

This warning is necessary since a lot of people simply skip the backup of the mnemonic code (or even "back it up" on the live distro itself).

If you properly back up your mnemonic code (i.e. not on your live distro), you are fine.

[joe1234]

Thank's a lot for the interesting answers!

1.
Ok.. as I understand, I can use my original-seed (created during the installation of my former wallet-app)
in order to be able to restore the fund's into Electrum on Tails (without persistence).

2.
Does that mean, all my bitcoin-funds are save(and restorable with the former/inital seed) even the
ongoing transaction is interrupted, e.g. because Tails/Electrum crashes (e.g because of a power outage)?


3.
Are "Transaction-labels" a list of the performed transactions?


Thank you very much for any addtional help!

Joe

[ranochigo]

Ok.. as I understand, I can use my original-seed (created during the installation of my former wallet-app)
in order to be able to restore the fund's into Electrum on Tails (without persistence).

Yes.

Does that mean, all my bitcoin-funds are save(and restorable with the former/inital seed) even the
ongoing transaction is interrupted, e.g. because Tails/Electrum crashes (e.g because of a power outage)?

Your funds are not stored in the wallet. Your private keys to the addresses are what makes them spendable for you. As long as you're able to control your private keys (or your seeds), you are able to control the funds. As for the interruption of outgoing transactions, if it crashes before it gets broadcasted, then you will have to create another transaction again; it'll be like as if the transaction has never been made. If you have already pressed broadcast and it was done successfully, your transaction will show up as per normal.

Are "Transaction-labels" a list of the performed transactions?

Nope. Transaction labels, payment request, address labels, etc are all stored within the wallet file locally, they cannot be restored using the seeds only. It is important to note that while you'll be able to restore your addresses with the seeds alone, you need to have a backup of the wallet file if you are using Lightning Network and have an open channel.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Ok.. as I understand, I can use my original-seed (created during the installation of my former wallet-app)
in order to be able to restore the fund's into Electrum on Tails (without persistence).

When you say your "former wallet-app", what are you referring to?

Yes, you can use any seed phrase generated from any other wallet (more or less) to restore your wallet on to your airgapped Tails Electrum. However, doing so might negate the entire point of using Tails in the first place. The whole point is to keep your wallet, and therefore your seed phrase, permanently offline and therefore eliminate (or at least, greatly reduce) the chances of it being hacked or leaked via the internet. If you take a seed phrase which was generated by a hot wallet, such as a mobile wallet, and import it in to your Electrum on Tails, then you have not created an airgapped wallet and your funds are still at risk.

If you are planning to use Tails Electrum as a cold, airgapped wallet, then you should also use it to generate a new seed phrase and only recover from this securely generated seed phrase and not from any old seed phrase from other wallets.

[Kakmakr]

Also, another thing you have to remember is this.... The Tails Distro does not necessarily have the latest version of Electrum included. When you enable the persistence volume, you can update it to the latest version of the wallet software.

The advantage of using Tails is the "clean boot" option and this is a protection against harmful viruses and keyloggers that might have infected your computer. (enabling the persistence volume, allow this to be installed again) 

It is a bit of a catch 22 situation when you enable the persistence volume, because you clean boot, but you give hackers a volume to store their exploits. 

[bob123]

1.
Ok.. as I understand, I can use my original-seed (created during the installation of my former wallet-app)
in order to be able to restore the fund's into Electrum on Tails (without persistence).

Yes.
You need your private keys to access your BTC. And these private keys are derived from your seed, which you have a backup from with your mnemonic code.

2.
Does that mean, all my bitcoin-funds are save(and restorable with the former/inital seed) even the
ongoing transaction is interrupted, e.g. because Tails/Electrum crashes (e.g because of a power outage)?

Yes.

3.
Are "Transaction-labels" a list of the performed transactions?

No. They are not related to the bitcoin network at all.
These are just electrum-specific "names" you can give to transactions. They are only stored on your client-side and are not necessary at all.