Installation of Kicksecure on a USB

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Kicksecure can be used as a plug-and-play operating system on a USB data stick. This is particularly interesting for users looking for a portable persistent or live operating system.

Introduction[edit]

Yes, Kicksecure can be used as a plug-and-play operating system on a USB data stick.

Kicksecure can be installed as a host operating system (OS) on a physical machine, as a guest OS on a virtual machine or as a contained portable host OS on a USB data stick.

This USB option is designed for:

  • A) Users who want to boot into persistent mode (no saved data is lost after reboot), or
  • B) Users who want to boot into non-persistent live mode which does not save changes after reboot. This is facilitated by the pre-installed grub-live software package. Grub-live allows the host operating system - in this case, Kicksecure on a USB data stick - to boot into Live Mode.

Once installed on a USB data stick, simply plug in the stick, boot Kicksecure, and manage tasks requiring robust security.

Installation / Use[edit]

Two options for Kicksecure on USB.

  • A) Non-persistent ISO Live Mode USB installation, also referred to as ISO Live Mode;
  • B) Persistent USB installation, also known as USB installed Kicksecure.

Persistence in this context means that users' data created during a session of Kicksecure will be persistent. For example, documents created and bookmarks added will still be available after a reboot in persistent mode.

  • A) To set up ISO Live Mode, simply download the ISO and flash it to a USB according to the instructions. Boot. Done.
  • B) To set up USB installed Kicksecure, download the ISO, flash it to a USB, boot, click "install to hard drive," and select a different USB device as the installation target.

Why not just flash a persistent Kicksecure image to USB? Such an image has not been developed yet due to technical challenges. [1] Therefore, a "detour" through flashing a Kicksecure ISO is required to run the Kicksecure installer. Note that very few Linux distributions offer such functionality.

There is also a different option for advanced users. See footnote. [2]

Advantages of Kicksecure on USB[edit]

  • A higher level of security is achieved by installing the host operating system(s) required for Kicksecure on a dedicated, (encrypted), external disk(s) such as a USB flash drive or others. [3]
  • Reason 1: Using physical external media reduces the risk of other operating system(s) infecting the Kicksecure host operating system.
  • Reason 2: When Kicksecure disk(s) are not in use, they can either be removed or hidden.

See also[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ↑
    • grml-debootstrap, the tool used to create Kicksecure based images, does not support creating encrypted images. upstream feature request: encrypted VM images supportarchive.org
    • Porting to mkosi might be an option because it supports encryption, but that has not been done yet.
  2. ↑ Advanced users could also create a Kicksecure USB stick by following these instructions:
    1. Take a USB data stick with at least 16 GB of space.
    2. Install Debian on USB. Instructions are available on the Debian Wikiarchive.org. Additional online guides explain how to install Debian on a USB.
    3. Distribution-morph Debian into Kicksecure. Instructions for this can be found in our Kicksecure for Debian installation guide.
    4. Done.
  3. ↑ e.g., eSATA or FireWire. FireWire should generally be avoided:

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