Re: [tor-talk] Is there a way to use internet in a sandbox environment? (Linux)

[npdflr <npdflr@xxxxxxxx>]

Thank you for the information.



If I am running a live CD/DVD and I want to download and save a small text file from the internet and then transfer that text file to the offline hard disk, then do I need a persistence storage like USB for such a small purpose?



Also, can I write some data to the CD/DVD which I can then send as an email or upload somewhere via internet?



Basically, I am asking is whether a live CD/DVD (without persistent storage) can be used only for surfing the internet or also for facilitating data transfer between the offline hard disk and the internet.





>> A DVD-RW can't read/write to the attached Hard Disk on its own, am I right?

>>

>>

>>

> It can just as easily as the same ISO running off the USB could. If you

> need that level of security, then you're going to want to remove the

> harddrive from the system.



Or just unplug the data and power cables.

​



-------> I am 99% sure but still confirming: A CD/DVD cannot write data to itself (not the Hard Disk) without user permission in any case, am I right?







---- On Thu, 04 Apr 2019 12:23:48 -0700 Mirimir <mailto:mirimir@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote ----







On 04/03/2019 05:40 PM, Jim wrote:

> Mirimir wrote:

>> On 04/03/2019 08:03 AM, Ben Tasker wrote:

>>> When the system boots from the disk, it loads the OS into memory, so

>>> things

>>> like your browser cache files are written into memory (and so lost

>>> when the

>>> DIMMs lose charge).  If you want persistence then most live CDs will

>>> allow

>>> you to provide a writeable media (normally a USB drive) for that

>>> purpose,

>>> but then you get back into the risks associated with having writeable

>>> media

>>> available.

> 

> As I stated in an earlier email I am out of date on this but in the "old

> days" this was certainly not true.  In the original Knoppix (which is

> the grandfather of all live systems TMK) if you had the memory there was

> a mode where you could load the image into memory, but this was not

> necessary.  If you did load the image into memory things ran a lot

> faster.  But the only files that *had to* reside in memory were those

> that were writable.  Over the years there have been at least two

> different methods allowing writable files that reside in memory to

> dynamically and transparently be used in place of the read-only files on

> the original image.

> 

> I have certainly run live CDs on computers that had much less RAM than

> the size of the CD.



I don't recall ever trying that with "normal" LiveCDs. And even "normal"

LiveDVDs are rarely much over 1GB. But I was talking about a custom

LiveDVD that I built. Which had a Debian system plus VirtualBox and

another ~3GB of virtual machine data. I do recall trying to boot that in

a machine with 4GB RAM, with no joy. Maybe I wasn't patient enough. And

it did take some minutes to come up in the 8GB machine.



Wild guess: maybe you need to design LiveCDs so they'll boot quickly in

low-RAM systems.



>> True. And there are some limitations. As far as I know, all live

>> read-only systems allocate half of the physical RAM to the system, and

>> half to working memory. So if your machine has 4GB RM, you can load at

>> most a 2GB system image.

>>

>> But DVDs can hold ~4.7GB. So if your machine has 8GB RAM, you can load

>> 4GB from the DVD. Years ago, I built a live ISO with Debian, VirtualBox,

>> a pfSense VPN gateway VM, and stripped-down Whonix gateway and

>> workstation VMs. The workstation VM had just a simple openbox GUI. It

>> took several minutes to boot, but was very responsive afterward.

> 

> 

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