USB install and upgrade

Originally created by Tails on #5820 (Redmine)

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Roadmap

We have released something useful in Tails 0.11, based on the work we’ve already done on the basis of Fedora liveusb-creator.

Next steps are:

Bugfixes and minor improvements of liveusb-creator

• Remove devices from the list when unplugged.
• Set cursor to waiting (hourglass) state while working.
• Target Device list: display more information, such as the stick brand and model.
• Allow setting the system/overlay partitions size via command-line option(s).
• command-line option —local-hard-disks that would enable installation on local hard disks (= not external USB); is half-implemented by --force, see special casing in the detect_removable_devices method.
• Should be more explicit when no target device is available: currently displays an empty list, no message, is not that easy to understand.

Other tasks

Other bugs

Incremental upgrades

See the dedicated page about incremental upgrades (#5919 (closed)).

Choose again

Implement our specifications in (probably) Ubuntu’s usb-creator, that has a much saner codebase.

This should also open the possibility to take care of, at least, verified downloads and Windows support.

Resources

• notes about GPT (#6123)
• the code: our work on liveusb-creator is in a dedicated Git repository. Integration work is made in the feature/usb_installer branch in the main Tails Git repository.
• USB installation specification and design
• archived roundup of existing tools (#6122)