BDK Linux Live Image

This repo contains the Debian live-build tree for a relatively small Linux live distro that has a basic graphical environment (XFCE) and bundles rusty-paper-wallet and bdk-cli. It can be used to generate keys or paper wallets from an air-gapped computer with no persistent memory.

For convenience we release signed pre-built ISO images, but since the build is not reproducible we strongly encourage users to re-build their own image before using it with real keys and real money.

How to build the image

The build process is only supported on a Debian system. Unfortunately running it inside of a Docker container is not easy, since the build scripts need to perform mounts inside the chroot.

Install live-build

You can install live-build from the Debian repositories:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y live-build live-config

Run the build.sh Script

Run as root the build.sh script. Make sure cargo is installed for root as well.

The default architecture is amd64, you can change it to i386 by setting the BDK_LIVE_ARCH env variable to i386.

BDK_LIVE_ARCH=amd64 sudo build.sh
BDK_LIVE_ARCH=i386 sudo build.sh

How to run the image

You can burn the live-image-${BDK_LIVE_ARCH}.hybrid.iso image to a CD or a DVD and boot from it. This is the recommended storage media to use, because it is read-only after the initial image is burned on it. For extra safety you should also consider unplugging any kind of persistent memory from your computer, like your hard drive/SSD, before using the CD to generate keys.

Unfortunately CD/DVD drives are not very popular anymore: an alternative is booting off of a USB drive by flashing the ISO image to it with something like:

sudo dd if=live-image-XXXX.hybrid.iso of=/dev/sdX conv=sync status=progress