Machine-id doesn't change in Live Mode?

Support
1

So the Machine-id doesn’t change in live mode?

Kicksecure 18.0.8.7

USER Persistent mode:

[user ~]% cat /etc/machine-id
3a0be44995e7efdfce5714979311f238
[user ~]%

live mode USER:

[user ~]% cat /etc/machine-id
3a0be44995e7efdfce5714979311f238
[user ~]%

If you notice that my machine-id is not the same as the one in dist-base-files b08dfa6083e7567a1921a715000001fb which is shared by whonix.

Whats going on here? Is something being altered in the install process via GUI installer?

2

Your expectation that machine id does change depending on the boot mode is invalid. There’s no such feature. Persistent mode and live mode share the same filesystem. The former is persistent. The latter is not.

3
4

So is the Kicksecure Live ISO the only thing sharing the same machine-id as Whonix?

5

dist-base-files, installed by default in Kicksecure and Whonix, which ships file /etc/machine-id.

  • Kicksecure installed: machine-id assigned probably during calamares installation by calamares. [1]
  • Kicksecure ISO: dist-base-files /etc/machine-id
  • Kicksecure VM images: dist-base-files /etc/machine-id
  • Whonix VM images: dist-base-files /etc/machine-id
  • Whonix ISO: … off-topic … → Whonix-Host Operating System Live ISO, Whonix-Host Installer
  • Kicksecure installed: machine-id assigned probably during calamares installation by calamares. [1]

This could be considered a bug.

It’s debatable what the best machine-id for Kicksecure is. Could be argued it should be uninitialized and should be populated at first boot.

[1] https://codeberg.org/Calamares/calamares/src/branch/calamares/src/modules/machineid