[ale] Live CD Challenge

[Brian Pitts]

On 11/26/2009 12:37 PM, Drew Brown wrote:
> No . . . The thing I'm trying to do is very specific.
>
> I want to put two .iso FILES (not CDs) on any system that has qemu.
> 
> Then, I want to use qemu to run one of them (like a CDrom).
> I want a user account running within the first to be able to see and
> mount the 2nd .iso.

Greg's response is the right answer to this. If you want qemu to boot
off of one iso file and mount another iso file, just create two virtual
cdrom drives in qemu and make one of them the boot device.

However, I don't think this is what you really want to do.

>
> This technique would allow me to have a live CD (that does not change)
> store
> data in the subdirectory of the directory where the .iso is . . . .
> It would allow me to mount an encrypted loopback filesystem and store data.
> It would allow me the ability to ftp the 2nd .iso to another dedicated
> server, etc.
> 

I think I get what you want to do, but I'm not sure why you think the
second file should be an iso file. Do you realize that an iso is read-only?

For storing changes, just create a disk image with qemu-img.  You can
put your encrypted filesystem on top of that. Alternately, if you use
the qcow2 image format you could use its optional built-in 128-bit AES
encryption.

The sequence of commands would be something like

# create a 4GB disk image in qcow2 format
qem-img create -f qcow2 rw_data.img 4G

# turn on encryption
qem-img convert -e rw_data.img

# set the iso as hdc and disk image as hda. boot from the iso
qemu -cdrom ro_livecd.iso -boot d rw_data.img

-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts