Portable Apps Manager/Rohos Mini Drive/Portable Apps Leakage

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by tobacco, Sep 25, 2010.

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  1. tobacco

    tobacco Frequent Poster

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    A few topics but they sort of go hand in hand so thought i would just keep them covered under one roof ;) Let us begin shall we :)

    I decided to put together my own collection of portable apps and firstly looked for an "App Manager". Already knew about the client from - http://portableapps.com/ but wanted to see if there were other choices and discovered "LiberKey" - http://www.liberkey.com/

    This program not only manages your apps but does alot of the work for you and has a very nice GUI.

    Liber GUI.jpg

    Through the interface, you can open the LiberKey homepage and browse the collection of apps they have (over 300). If you see some you wish to add, LiberKey will download and install them for you - sweet :D You can also easily add others that are not found on their site by doing the following:
    Unpack the portable app folder you want to install. Drag&Drop this folder into the "My Apps" folder located inside the LiberKey main folder. Once done, open the LiberKey GUI - locate the ".exe" of the app your installing and drag/drop it into the desired folder in the LK GUI. There, all done :D As you can see in the image, all the extra apps i have installed reside in folders that begin with "My"

    Another nice feature if selected is LiberKey will check, download and install any updates for the client installed apps as seen below.

    Liber updates.jpg

    Next up was a way to "secure" everything. I already have TrueCrypt but is my understanding that even in "Travelers Mode", it still requires Admin Rights on the host machine which can present problems as you can imagine. So i settled on "Rohos Mini Drive" - http://www.rohos.com/products/rohos-mini-drive/ which is free of charge for 2 reasons:

    After the initial setup of the removable media in which Rohos creates 2 partitions - one normal and the other "a hidden, encrypted (AES-256) partition", it can be used "without Admin rights".

    Rohos MD #1.jpg

    Secondly, Rohos has the ability to use "File Virtualization" through it's "Disk Browser". Basically, all interaction your files do with the host machine are not "written" to the host but to your Rohos partition. :D

    However, this feature is still a work in progress and seems to work much better with text, doc, image, movie files than it does with "EXE" files which is what i want it to do.

    Some portable apps are absolute "Stealth" - meaning, everything and anything is contained in the portable folder with nothing written to the host disk. Others still will create registry entries and/or a folder in the host's "app data" section :( . This i am trying to avoid.

    So now a few questions if i may:

    Question #1 - are there other ways/programs that allow portable apps to work/run "Without" leaving anything on the host systemo_O

    Question #2 - it is my understanding that even if i could achieve the above, Windows still will create logs :eek: Any way to prevent this from happening as well??

    Thanks
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2010
  2. Nek

    Nek Registered Member

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    Some relevant posts about LiberKey found in portableapps.com's board:
    source: http://portableapps.com/node/8669#comment-86596

    source: http://portableapps.com/node/19636

    Here's another link from a third party reviewer,
    http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/murphys_law_liberkey_gpl_violation_or_sour_grapes

    I have stayed away from LiberKey ever since.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2010
  3. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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    Very useful links, Nek! Thank you. I get the feeling that PortableApps.com is a safer place to get software from, software that's going to be on my PC and software that's going to access the internet.
     
  4. tobacco

    tobacco Frequent Poster

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    Thanks for the info Nek

    However, i will continue to use LiberKey unless more comes out of that spat. So for now, still looking for suggestions on this:

     
  5. MrBrian

    MrBrian Registered Member

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    Perhaps Cameyo? I haven't tried it yet.
     
  6. Nek

    Nek Registered Member

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    No problem, useful information is always good. :)

    Tobacco, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but to quote John, the founder of portableapps.com,
    source: http://portableapps.com/node/17964

    Another relevant post,
    source: http://portableapps.com/node/12827

    FFP denotes Firefox Portable, but you get the idea.
     
  7. tobacco

    tobacco Frequent Poster

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    Hi Nek

    Sad to hear that - hope Rohos's virtualization continues to improve as a means to stop the leakage.

    Thanks again for the info!
     
  8. Warlockz

    Warlockz Registered Member

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    I Installed Rohos on a 2gb Flash, but was very disappointed when I mounted the disk, how to access the Hidden Partition without their retarded little virtual file browser crap? what a downgrade! o_O

    Run inside sandboxie then erase the Box when your finished :D
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2010
  9. Meriadoc

    Meriadoc Registered Member

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    I currently use Ceedo application virtualization which doesn't need do anything more to make an app portable. I also use vmware thinapp but the result doesn't look like Ceedo or the rest as there's no 'apps manager.' Both have full sandboxing capability.
     
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