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I want to create a cryptowallet on a USB stick. My idea was to find a pendrive Linux to install on a USB stick that I can carry around, put it into any (old) computer, boot and use the wallet.

My requirements:

  • works on 32bit / boots on an old netbook (e.g. MSI Wind 100)
  • comes with a persistent, encrypted storage space
  • runs Jaxx
  • can be created on OSX or Xubuntu
  • optional: fits on a 1GB stick

So far, I had some success with PuppyLinux BionicPup32. It matches nearly all the mentioned requirements, only that there is no storage partition in the shipped ISO. So what I did:

  • installed the ISO with Etcher, i.e. wrote the 278 image onto my 1GB stick.
  • then resized the partition to 300 MB
  • created an empty partition on the now free 700 MB
  • booted with the new stick
  • Puppylinux offered me to create a persistent storage on the 700 MB partition, encrypted with LUKS. Yay.
  • did what was offered
  • however, on next reboot the storage was not recognized – Puppylinux behaved as it was again a first boot

What I am asking for now:

  • advice how to make Puppylinux recognize the persistent storage, or
  • an alternative solution matching my requirements (ideally a pendrive linux ISO that already comes with an additional storage partition)
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  • 1
    what happens if you do not encrypt the persistent storage partition?
    – jsotola
    Apr 16, 2020 at 17:04
  • Same story, not recognized on reboot. I've even tried with Folder instead of File. I might also note that the save partition is /dev/sdb1, whereas the linux partition is /dev/sdb2. Luckily, on /dev/sdb2 was also 1 MB free, so I tried saving there. Same story again.
    – Georg Jähnig
    Apr 17, 2020 at 17:06

2 Answers 2

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As it might be too hard to incorporate encrypted partition at Linux startup, you may want to write scripts which will mount the partition for you. Then you will know what is asking for password and when.

Other way around is not a "live" system, but installed onto pendrive with LUKS encrypted home folder. You can do that, for example, from pendrive to pendrive. And for better performance and stability of the OS, I would use at least 32 GB pendrive with Linux Mint (enough new and stable).

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When you reboot, can you manually open the luks partition from a terminal?

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sd[whatever] enc
mount /dev/mapper/enc /mnt

if so, you can turn that into a bash script and run it when you boot, or replace puppy's file manager with one which recognises luks

If not, try seeing if you can affect the partition at all from the live disk, might be in some weird read-only state and not able to affect the partition

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