Running Tails in Qubes

Tails is the amnesic incognito live system. It is a live operating system that aims to preserve your privacy and anonymity.

To run Tails under Qubes:

Read about creating and using HVM qubes
Download and verify Tails from https://tails.boum.org in a qube, (saved as /home/user/Downloads/tails.iso on qube "isoVM" for purposes of this guide).
Create a HVM
- in Manager, click VM menu and select "Create VM"
- Name the new qube - "Tails"
- Select "HVM"
- Configure networking
- Click "OK" to create new HVM.

Open dom0 Konsole and start Tails:

qvm-start Tails --cdrom=isoVM:/home/user/Downloads/tails.iso

Configure Tails at start up.
Once the Tails qube has started, configure networking in the qube.
- Check the IP address allocated to the qube - either from GUI Manager, or qvm-ls -n Tails in Konsole. (E.g. 10.137.1.101 with gateway 10.137.1.1)
- In the Tails qube, open systems menu in top-right corner. Select "Wired Settings", and change IPv4 configuration from "Automatic (DHCP)" to "Manual".
- Enter the Address: 10.137.1.101 in our example.
- Enter the Netmask: 255.255.255.0
- Enter the Gateway: 10.137.1.1 in our example.
- Enter DNS: 10.137.1.1 in our example.
- Click "Apply". You should now see "Connected".
Use Tails as normal.

Usage Notes

Display issues:

Black screen on start up.

This was reported with earlier versions of Tails: I believe the problem is now fixed. If you do encounter this problem, you can try to constrain display settings by appending vga codes to the Tails boot parameters. (If you do not know the codes, append vga=999, and a helpful prompt will appear.)

N.B Tails 2.3 does not appear to honour the vga code.

Window extends beyond bottom of screen.

This seems to arise because Tails sizes to the height of the screen, but there is a title bar at the top of the window. Either remove the title bar altogether, or move the window upwards using ALT+drag.

Persistent Volume

The persistence tools will not work because Tails has not been launched from USB. The HVM disk(s) can be configured and mounted from within Tails to provide persistent storage.

Shutdown

The Tails qube will not shut down cleanly. Kill it from the GUI Manager or qvm-kill Tails in Konsole.

Security

You will probably want to implement MAC spoofing.

Read the warnings from the Tails team about operating in a virtual machine. While the Qubes security model mitigates most of the risks identified, traces of the Tails session may remain on the disk.

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