Yes, i broke a cardinal rule, i have never backed up my tails stick. Scold me, shame me, strike me down from the heavens, i apologize. Moving past all that, im trying to boost my OpSec and get my shit organized and backed-up on the regular.
So anyway, i tried following the DNM bible instructions for backing up tails and i noticed the pictures they have on the bible look different on the new V6.1 tails cloner. I inserted a clean USB, cloned my tails including backing up persistance with a new pass phrase for the cloned drive. It went through the whole process and at the end it said everyrthing was installed successfully. But there were a few things that i just "winged" because it was different than what the bible says.
Now at this stage i wasn't sure what to do, all it said was on the sidebar the usb stick named itself "encrypted 22" or something. I pulled the drive out. Shut down tails on my original stick.
On Re-boot, the bootloader menu didnt recognize the orignial stick, or the new cloned drive. I thought i bricked both drives. I decided to try the original stick one more time before i cry myself to sleep, and it worked, including persistance. Everything on my original drive is fine, but now i really feel like im walking on egg shells and need to back-up this drive for real.
So where did i go wrong? has anybody here used the new version of tails cloner with persistance that is on the new 6.1 version of tails?
THANKS, sorry for all the noob bullshit but everyone has to start somewhere. All im trying to do is clone my tails drive so i have 2 or 3 extra incase they decide to break. seems like it should be really simple since tails has a "cloner" tool built in, so where am i being stupid?
thx again.
-Eve
/u/miner21 · N/A votes · 17th April, 2024 - 05:26 · Link
I dont know your answer but I want to know as well
/u/PsyGuy · N/A votes · 17th April, 2024 - 08:08 · Link
All I do is check "Clone the current Tails" and "Clone the current Persistant Storage", set a password, and let it set up. There should be more updated instructions on the Tails website. If the new drive doesn't work then probably just try again, may not be required but I used drives of the same capacity. Making a backup should never brick the drive you are backing up so you should be fine, and if something ever where to happen then tails support could help recover your persistance. Also, make sure to update the backups every once in a while, you don't want to lose any new pgp keys and it can take forever for the monero wallet to update depending how long it's been. My drive got bricked once from one of the many times I've bumped it out of the port while running and, considering the amount of monero I had on it, I almost had a heart attack until I remembered the backup I had made a few days before. Crazy thing was that was the first backup I had ever made of the drive so the timing was very fortunate lol.
/u/JasonJones86 · N/A votes · 17th April, 2024 - 13:01 · Link
Now at this stage i wasn't sure what to do Next time shutdown here. the usb stick named itself "encrypted 22" or something. I pulled the drive out. Its a 32GB usb right? That encrytpted22 or whatever was a name chosen for the partition by tails because its about 22GB. Its where the persistent storage files are. Before you pull the usb out make sure you unmount the partition or it might get corrupted. Maybe that was your problem this time. Click the thing that looks a like a fat up arrow next to the partition name to unmount it and a message should pop up saying you can remove the usb device. When you clone tails the usb is completely wiped unless you're cloning it to another tails usb then its lets you keep its existing persistent storage if you just click install. Or you can clone the persistent storage from the tails you booted from instead by ticking the box in tails cloner. That wipes the whole usb and asks for a new password for the cloned persistent storage so it sounds like you did that. I dont know where your at now but if your still having problems, my advice is start from scratch with a new tails install using the official guide. Get the persistent storage exactly how you want it (at the very least your going to want persistent files and PGP keys) then do a full clone including the persistent storage onto a second usb stick. Do this offline (just close the tor connection when it pops up) and dont run any programs before doing the clone because thats the only time Ive had errors, when cloning isnt the first thing I do. If you keep getting partition errors or something like that its possible the usb is corrupt. Then you should wipe it using diskpart on windows https://tails[dot]net/doc/reset/windows/index.en.html and try again. Thats always fixed anything me because it wipes absolutely evrything off the usb. If you want to be extra safe it's a good idea to have a 3rd usb installed the same way as the first where you dont use any cloning. Just set it up manually the same way as the first and use a 4th usb to transfer files encrypted if theres sensitive info. Set up a folder called something like myfiles and put a copy of everything you want in it. Then right click in file explorer and click open in terminal. Type these commands and use a strong password and your safe to put myfiles.tar.gz.gpg on the 4th usb to copy or store or whatever. Maybe not necessary but its useful to know sometimes and good to have a 3rd usb that isnt a clone in case theres a bug in the cloner in future. cd .. tar -zcvf myfiles.tar.gz myfiles gpg -c myfiles.tar.gz Decrypt it like this. gpg myfiles.tar.gz.gpg tar -zxvf myfiles.tar.gz