Ken, Urs, et al.,
Thanks for the comments!
Re: the CERN Howto, one can get to it via the scientificlinux.org
home page by clicking on "Scientific Linux Live CD/DVD 4.8" in the
far left column, under "news".
On that page, scroll down to the very end and you'll see a link to
More information can be found at http://www.livecd.ethz.ch
On that page, you will see a link to "Read how to build your own
LiveCD.", which will take you here in case you don't want to go
thru all that. :-)
http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/build.html
Ken Teh wrote:
Hi Larry,
I would also be interested in the CERN Howto on building a Live CD. I
have my own script for building my own SL Live CD. The live CD is not
as full fledged as Urs'; I use the live image only for embedded
purposes, but one can always learn new tricks. Please post the URL when
you get a chance.
I share Urs' opinion that an up-to-date Linux box is secure enough for
online banking.
Ken
Urs Beyerle wrote:
Hi Larry,
some comments from my side ...
First, good to hear that you like the SL LiveCD.
The LiveCD is just build after SL releases a new version. Normally the
LiveCD is not updated afterwards. You have to wait for the next SL
release to get an updated LiveCD.
The LiveCD comes with a write/read file system. All changes are written
to RAM. Just run "yum update" and the software on the LiveCD will be
updated. This can take some time depending on your internet connection
and age of your LiveCD and maybe fill up your memory or maybe not. Or
you can just run "yum update firefox" to get the latest firefox. Because
all changes are stored in memory, after a reboot they are lost again.
However, you can save the changes on an USB stick, see
http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/save.html
This should lead to an uptodate LiveCD. One thing you cannot do: You
cannot update the kernel of a LiveCD.
Editing the LiveCD iso image would be theoretically possible, but I
would not do it, because the data is stored in a special way
(compressed, etc.)
Hope this helps,
Urs
PS. I would be interested in the CERN excellent Howto of building an own
live CD.
PS. I use for internet banking an uptodate Linux installation. In my
option this is enough secure.
P. Larry Nelson wrote:
Hi all, the following article has convinced me to go the Live CD route
when doing online banking. I had been using a squeaky-clean and
bare-bones
Windows XP installation (and the latest Firefox) as a guest OS in
VMware,
but even that method, I've read, has potential security issues.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/10/avoid_windows_malware_bank_on.html
To that end, I've downloaded and burned my first LiveCD (SL 4.8)
and have been playing around with it - quite slick, I must say!
However, it has raised some questions, particularly in regards to what
I'm using it for. First (probably a Troy/Connie question), how often
do security updates get incorporated into the ISO image? For example,
there was just a security fix for xpdf/gpdf and the firefox in the
SL4.8 LiveCD certainly does not have the latest bug fixes.
And if the ISO image doesn't get updated then what's the best course
for maintaining a patched LiveCD? I know that one can build one's own
LiveCD, and the CERN site has an excellent Howto, so conceivably I could
build one and keep it up to date with the latest bug/security fixes,
but I'm also aware that there seems to be software out there that will
let one edit ISO images to extract or add files (ISO Master for Linux
is one I found, but not tried).
Any thoughts on this and/or does anyone have experience editing an ISO
image?
Thanks!
- Larry
--
P. Larry Nelson (217-244-9855) | Systems/Network Administrator
461 Loomis Lab | High Energy Physics Group
1110 W. Green St., Urbana, IL | Physics Dept., Univ. of Ill.
MailTo:[email protected] | http://www.roadkill.com/lnelson/
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"Information without accountability is just noise." - P.L. Nelson
