Make a 'Guest Mode' menu

Krishna asked me how to get E2B to display either the full E2B MAIN MAINMENU, or a single Guest Menu, with only the items in it that he wanted to allow a guest user to use.

After a lot of thought, I ended up with this and it is really quite cool!

So cool, I had to make a video!

Once you make the changes, if you boot E2B normally, it enumerates all files in the MAINMENU folder as usual (or if you have FASTLOAD enabled it will use the cached menu) and then it will always load the GUEST Menu by default. The Guest Menu can also have sub-menus if you create them.

The Guest Menu (you can change the folder name and heading) can load a different background if you like (or not).

Default Guest Menu (use whatever wallpaper you like or keep the default wallpaper)

E2B v1.78 demo video on YouTube

A quick demo showing off the new graphics stamp, animation and large font features in E2B v1.78!

Many thanks to the grub4dos developer yaya for making all this possible and Wonko from reboot.pro for his help with creating the hex files needed for the large fonts!

E2B v1.78n Beta available (at last!)

Latest version 2016-03-16 of grub4dos included (seems stable)!

Default appearance, if you say 'Yes' to the Animation prompt when you make a
new E2B USB drive using MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE (run as admin).cmd.
E2B Boilerplate + rotating E2B icon will overlay the menu.

New Templates

The new MyE2B.cfg template files can be found in the \_ISO\docs\Templates\Animate and LargeFont folders.

LargeFont MyE2B.cfg demo (set to GMODE=1024)

The E2B icon rotates + 4 stamps!

Protecting your E2B USB drive from being cloned

I added this section to the E2B 'Passwords and Security' page today because I was asked how to protect an E2B USB drive from being cloned:

Someone could make a byte-for-byte copy of your E2B USB drive. Each USB drive should have a unique device serial number, however we cannot read this using grub4dos (and also many USB drives do not have unique serial numbers!).

Save all your passwords to a text file with one click!

Tutorial 59 on my RMPrepUSB.com site explains how to set up a script file to collect and save all your passwords into text files with just one click.

The Tutorial was a bit out of date and needs tweaking (I will update it in a day or two). Nirsoft had put some of the command line utility versions in a separate, password-protected download because they were being detected as a virus and it was causing the nirsoft site to be blacklisted!

Here is the new cmd script I ended up with:

Add a fully-installed Zorin OS to E2B

To run Zorin as a fully-installed OS from an E2B USB drive, just follow the instructions in my previous blog for Kali using VirtualBox.

Tips

Make sure your large partition image file (e.g. Zorin.) is large enough for the OS and any swap file you might want to create later + data storage (minimum approx 5GB).

• Be sure to choose  /   (root) for the /dev/sda3 mount point choice (ext3) where sda is the USB drive
• IMPORTANT! Set the 'Device for boot loader installation' to /dev/sda3 where sda is the USB drive..

If you are installing to an internal hard drive, make sure to pick the correct boot loader partition!

   Use ext3 (not fat32) for the sda3 partition.

The Virtual Machine will also need an internet connection to download packages.

You will be warned about not having a Swap partition, but just continue anyway.

You can create a swap file later (follow the instructions in the blog and it should work).

You should now have a fully working Zorin installation on your E2B drive.

Note:
If installing to an internal hard drive and you accidentally install grub to the E2B drive, you can use RMPrepUSB - Install grub4dos - MBR=Yes to re-install grub4dos boot code.

Protecting animated E2B menus with passwords

I have found a way to password-protect menus on E2B and still have the animation playing in the background.

The DNA animation starts once the menu has been built by E2B and it then prompts you for a password with the animation still rotating on the display. A large 24-pixel high font has been used with the E2B default 800x600 background in this example.

Using E2B with the datAshur Personal encrypted USB flash drive

I have been looking at how to protect a USB Flash drive recently including encrypted USB drives. Some models (the cheapest) just provide a data encryption program to make an encrypted folder on the USB drive.

Others comprise of two 'devices', one is a CD containing the encryption software and the other is the Flash storage volume (similar to U3 USB drives).

Neither of these types are suitable to support USB booting because we need the BIOS to be able to read the unencrypted drive sectors on power up.

Another type of encrypted USB drive is the type that has a PIN keypad. This type encrypts the data as it comes in or out of the USB drive. The data is stored in an encrypted form on the flash memory, but any external device will 'see' the unencrypted data (if the correct PIN is used).

I found several models of encrypted USB Flash drives that require a PIN number to unlock them. There seems to be only four different ones however, as many of them appear to be re-badged\re-branded versions of the same thing:

MPI Tool Kit v0.064 available (with important bugfix)

I found a bug in MPI Tool Kit - if you try Clover booting then it 'breaks' the syslinux boot option and you can no longer MBR boot!

Adding Tails to E2B

Tails 5.1.1 (and many other versions)

For MBR legacy boot from the ISO (DVD) file, use an extension of _.isodef.iso and E2B v2.14 or later.

For UEFI, use agFM and in the Tails grub2 menu, if you have a USB HDD, choose the 'Tails (External Hard Disk) option.

Tails 4.2, 4.6 4.28, etc.

Also see here for UEFI boot and later Tails versions with E2B .mnu support.

Tails 3.16

The Tails ISO can be downloaded from here. You can download via the Torrent or download the ISO directly.

E2B will boot from a Tails ISO on a real system from a Removable E2B Flash drive.

Booting from ISO under a Virtual Machine will not work if the VM sees the USB drive as a 'virtual IDE/SCSI hard disk. (E2B v2.14+ will boot Tails ISOs on both Removable and Fixed USB drives however).

If your E2B USB drive is a 'fixed-disk' type, then you can convert the Tails ISO to a .imgPTN file. Ensure that 'live-media=removable' is not in the kernel cheat code line (press TAB in the syslinux Tails boot menu to see the boot parameters). The latest versions of the MPI Tool Kit should remove this cheat code for you if you choose AUTO-CORRECT=Y.

The persistence option in the Desktop menu system cannot be used because Tails will only create the persistence volume on a USB drive that has been installed using Tails (has a GPT partitions with a volume name of 'Tails' - possibly only works on Removable USB media?) and so has the correct partition structure.

Tails 2

The Tails 2.2 ISO can be downloaded from here. You can download via the Torrent or use FireFox and download the ISO directly.

The Tails 1.0 and later ISOs cannot run with persistence now (unlike earlier 0.xx versions). Tails 1.0+ looks for a GPT disk and an EFI volume labelled 'Tails' (see here and here), so you must make a dedicated GPT USB Flash drive for Tails if you want persistence. If the drive wasn't 'made by Tails installer' then it will refuse to create a persistent file system for you.

If you boot from the ISO (even in E2B), you cannot install Tails to a new flash drive because Tails will only install if it is running from a USB FAT32 drive. This is a real pain!