Tails USB Installer

I've been trying to create a Tails USB with persistence. According to their documentation

I manually created the first Tails USB stick using the Pendrive Universal USB installer as the recommended. This USB stick works fine. When I use the Tails USB Installer from this stick to clone Tails to the new one as they describe, the operation repeatedly fails. I've tried 2 USB sticks for this, a 4 and an 8GB, both reset per their instructions. This is copied from their installer on the last attempt with the 8GB stick:

Am I overlooking something or is there a problem with their installer or their instructions?

 

i'm not sure why it's not working for you, but i created mine on a virtual machine. just booted the VM from the Tails ISO, chose extra options at login to get password, connected a 4 GB USB drive to it, and started the Tails USB installer. iirc, it all went smoothly. so if you have vmware or virtualbox already installed, then try it that way.

 

At the moment, I don't have access to Virtualbox. The only other difference I see in what you describe is that I didn't choose the extra option for password. Would parts of this process be considered administrative tasks that won't work on a regular login?

 

i'm not sure anymore, but i do remember you need the password for some operations, maybe persistence. in any case, i initially used YUMI to make a bootable USB stick from the Tails ISO, and I remember I had some problems with that (in terms of persistence or using a USB stick with persistent folders). if you have no VM, then just burn the ISO onto a DVD.

About the VM, please note that you don't actually have to create a virtual machine that takes many GB of disk space. For example, on VirtualBox, you can just set up a machine (say Debian 32-bit although I doubt it'll matter since you don't need to install the OS); give it plenty or RAM and processors, but do not create a virtual hard disk for it. From the settings for this machine, I'd increase video memory (from display properties) just for good measure, and under storage, click the small disk icon and choose 'Choose a virtual CD/DVD file...' -> choose the Tails iso, then boot the machine and you have Tails LiveCD running in a VM.

Note: If you do install VirtualBox (under 200 MB of HD space), add Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack to it as well for better USB compatibility.

 

I have a DVD-RW that I overwrite with the updated ISO image everytime I need to update my thumb drive. I've never had a problem doing it this way. You might try doing it from a DVD to see if, for some reason, that solves your problem.

That being said, though, it seems from the output above that you're trying to install TAILS into a drive with not enough space. The TAILS website says you need a minimum of 2GB. A couple things to check:

• Are you sure the thumb drive is big enough?
• Is there anything else on it taking up space?
• Has it been divided into smaller partitions?

Make sure your thumb drive is clean and formatted. I run TAILS from a 4GB thumb drive which I installed from the DVD I mentioned above. Everything works great including persistence.

 

DVD worked fine here to. I then put it on a MicroSD card.

PD

 

That's the part that makes no sense. The thumb drives are 4 and 8 GB respectively. Both were reformatted using Tails own disk utility. It reports them to be the proper sizes and empty. I don't have a DVD burner.

 

I went through the whole process again, using the same USB sticks. The only thing I did different was to use the password option when starting the first tails stick. It installed tails correctly on the same 8GB stick that failed before. I don't see what difference assigning a password to a stick without persistence should make, but apparently it does. Wish they would have put that in their documentation.