Document how to install Tails from an Android device
Rather out of necessity, I had to prepare a Tails flash drive today from an Android device, and surprisingly it worked like a charm. I believe for many Tails users it would be very helpfull to have this documented on the website, esp. since many users will use a Smartphone anyway to follow the instructions on the website.
- For verifying the USB image, I tried both firefox for android and chromium:
- With chromium, i needed to grant access to the microphone (I ticked "Allow only this time) and it would offer me to Record a Audio file, or to open the Files App to pick a file. The impression that I was asked to upload an audiofile was admittedly odd, but I could pick the right Image with no problems
- With firefox, it asked weither I wanted to select a picture file or Any kind of file. this was also a little odd, and maybe a security feature (grant access only to pictures and not the whole file hierarchy, but worked out fine.
- For flashing the USB image I used EtchDroid (https://github.com/EtchDroid/EtchDroid) which is available on both google play store and fdroid, and via direct download on github. It has a very intuitive UI that you can see here and verifies the flashed image afterwards.
- I used a Google Pixel Device which has a USB-C port and the custom android system CalyxOS installed on it. Installing images with EtchDroid works on both USB-A flash drives using a USB-A-to-USB-C adapter and of course on USB-C flash drives.
Issues that might need investigation:
- There are reports that some Android devices do not work well with EtchDroid, see https://github.com/EtchDroid/EtchDroid/issues/117
- I did not test weither this works out with a device with micro-usb, but I can do some research if that might be a limitation
- There is a bunch of hash-verification apps available on fdroid that I did not try out yet. Would be worth investigating though as alternative to the verification via the Tails website
- I assume Google Chrome (which the majority of Android users will be using) works the same as Chromium, might be worth to verify this though
What do you think about documenting installation via Android? If you agree that'd be useful, I'd be glad to do some more research and prepare a pull request