Hi Larry,

some comments from my side ...

First, good to hear that you like the SL LiveCD.

The LiveCD is just build after SL releases a new version. Normally the
LiveCD is not updated afterwards. You have to wait for the next SL
release to get an updated LiveCD.

The LiveCD comes with a write/read file system. All changes are written
to RAM. Just run "yum update" and the software on the LiveCD will be
updated. This can take some time depending on your internet connection
and age of your LiveCD and maybe fill up your memory or maybe not. Or
you can just run "yum update firefox" to get the latest firefox. Because
all changes are stored in memory, after a reboot they are lost again.

However, you can save the changes on an USB stick, see
http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/save.html

This should lead to an uptodate LiveCD. One thing you cannot do: You
cannot update the kernel of a LiveCD.

Editing the LiveCD iso image would be theoretically possible, but I
would not do it, because the data is stored in a special way
(compressed, etc.)


Hope this helps,

     Urs


PS. I would be interested in the CERN excellent Howto of building an own
live CD.
PS. I use for internet banking an uptodate Linux installation. In my
option this is enough secure.





P. Larry Nelson wrote:
> Hi all, the following article has convinced me to go the Live CD route
> when doing online banking.  I had been using a squeaky-clean and
> bare-bones
> Windows XP installation (and the latest Firefox) as a guest OS in VMware,
> but even that method, I've read, has potential security issues.
> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/10/avoid_windows_malware_bank_on.html
>
>
> To that end, I've downloaded and burned my first LiveCD (SL 4.8)
> and have been playing around with it - quite slick, I must say!
>
> However, it has raised some questions, particularly in regards to what
> I'm using it for.  First (probably a Troy/Connie question), how often
> do security updates get incorporated into the ISO image?  For example,
> there was just a security fix for xpdf/gpdf and the firefox in the
> SL4.8 LiveCD certainly does not have the latest bug fixes.
>
> And if the ISO image doesn't get updated then what's the best course
> for maintaining a patched LiveCD?  I know that one can build one's own
> LiveCD, and the CERN site has an excellent Howto, so conceivably I could
> build one and keep it up to date with the latest bug/security fixes,
> but I'm also aware that there seems to be software out there that will
> let one edit ISO images to extract or add files (ISO Master for Linux
> is one I found, but not tried).
>
> Any thoughts on this and/or does anyone have experience editing an ISO
> image?
>
> Thanks!
> - Larry
>