livecd/liveusb persistent mode doesn't work

Hi, thanks for reporting.

Could you please upload the /etc/fstab and /var/log/syslog file from the Live system?

Here's /etc/fstab and /var/log/syslog from just after CD Live persistent boot with 20070213. Let me know if the attachment doesn't come over O.K.

I usually test with this Celeron system which is quad boot with Dapper, Edgy, Xubuntu, and Win98. I do have a laptop and three other Intel systems with various video adapters, monitors, and processors if the type of hardware would make a difference. I usually try them with persistent because Herd 2 fdisk to the USB pen drive trashed the Celeron's hard disk partition table.

I've booted 20070213 several times today; once the desktop showed two casper-rw icons with the same UUID. Since the boot was persistent it shouldn't have showed any casper-rw icon.

With persistent I can install Flashplayer, Real Player, ndiswrapper wireless, do many internet videos (not ActiveX), ...

Still does not work with Herd5.

2

When shutting down Herd's 4 and 5, the following error message shows up:

* Unmounting temporary file systems. . .
umount: /cow not mounted
                                                                                                [fail]

I am new to Linux, so don't know if this is relevant, but I didn't see this error message with Herd 3 in which persistence seems to work and it looked like /cow may be used by casper.

I'm also facing this same problem. Is there anything I can do to debug this?

It seems that this problem needs to be fixes asap as the final release is not far away. I would also like to suggest to upgrade the importance of this bug.

Experiencing same problem with the Kubuntu Feisty Fawn Beta CD iso (Version 7.04, built on 20070322.1)

Symptoms:
 - No persistence was observed (bookmarks, software installed from Adept)
 - Creating a new user (other than the default, 'ubuntu') did not help.
 - The casper-rw icon for my USB key appears on the desktop.
 - An error about "unable to umount /cow" appears on shutdown
 - Casper claims to be syncing files at shutdown, but nothing is written to the USB key.

Hopefully this can be fixed before Feisty goes prime time!

Confirming this bug with 7.04 beta CD on a ThinkPad T60
The casper-rw icon shows up on the desktop. Nothing is written to the USB stick during a "persistent" session. No persistency is achieved.

I can provide more info and do some tests, just let me know what you need.

In comparing the Herd3 casper.log to the Beta casper.log on my system, I noted the following difference. In reviewing the following scripts, note that I am booting the LiveCD off of a USB device that contains the LiveCD files in the manner described in one of the Ubuntu Wiki's. Hence the references to sdb1 below. I follow exactly the same approach for Herd3 and Beta, but persistence works for Herd3 and not the Beta distribution.

The casper.log from the Beta distribution reads as follows.

Begin: Running /scripts/casper-premount ...
Done.
Done.
mount: Mounting /dev/sda1 on /cdrom failed: No such device
mount: Mounting /dev/sda1 on /cdrom failed: No such device
mount: Mounting /dev/sda1 on /cdrom failed: No such device
mount: Mounting /dev/sda1 on /cdrom failed: No such device
mount: Mounting /dev/sda1 on /cdrom failed: No such device
Done.

All of the "No such device" failures are missing in the Herd3 casper.log. Again, don't know if this is relevant and I am a newbie, but it appears that this failure is occurring while running the scripts in the casper-premount directory. Looking in that directory in the Beta distribution, there is only the 10driver_updates script. I have repeated part of that script below.

#!/bin/sh

PREREQ=""
. /scripts/casper-functions
. /scripts/casper-helpers

[I HAVE OMITTED A PORTION OF THE SCRIPT HERE]

mountpoint=/cdrom

[I HAVE OMITTED ANOTHER PORTION OF THE SCRIPT HERE.]

check_dev_updates ()
{
    sysdev="${1}"
    devname="${2}"
    if [ -z "${devname}" ]; then
        devname=$(sys2dev "${sysdev}")
    fi

    fstype=$(get_fstype "${devname}")
    if is_supported_fs ${fstype}; then
        mount -t ${fstype} -o ro "${devname}" $mountpoint || continue
        if is_updates_path $mountpoint; then
            return 0
        else
            umount $mountpoint
        fi
    fi

    return 1
}

[I HAVE OMITTED THE REST OF THE SCRIPT.]

I did not see this script in Herd3 at all. As best as I can tell, the "mount" command shown above is where the mount failure is occurring, although I again am still in the process of learning Bash and Linux so I don't really know enough to evaluate this further at this point. While this script appears to be looking for driver updates, it is mounting the /cdrom directory. I wasn't sure if the failure in mounting the /cdrom directory might affect persistence in another script. Even if it doesn't, it does appear that one of the variables used in this mount loop is wrong and that causes me to wonder whether that error may have bearing on the persistence failure. In particular, on my system, the LiveCD cdrom files are located on sdb1 and not on sda1. So, I assume sdb1 should be mounted at /cdrom, not sda1 as it looks like this script is trying to do. On my system, my internal hard drive shows up as sda1. I am not sure why that is the case. It is my work laptop and I think it is an internal IDE drive. But it is that way on both Herd3 and the Beta distribution, and this error does not appear when booting the Herd3 distribution. It is an NTFS formatted drive which is probably why it is not available during boot. I haven't updated my fstab to mount it. Even if I did, it...

"persistent" still broken as of 20070411. Isn't the release candidate to be available tomorrow?

I notice the "Importance" on this Bug is listed as "Undecided". As far as introducing new users to Linux, hopefully working on Bug #1, I still recommend Dapper which does have "persistent".

Cheers, Jerry

I tried as hard as I could to fix this, but I couldn't get it to work for me so couldn't recommend an upload; at this point I'm afraid it's post-feisty. The fixes I attempted are in the main Ubuntu casper bzr branch if anyone wants to try them out.

(Specifically, while my fixes correct the casper-rw label handling, the USB device still doesn't appear until somewhere just shortly after the attempt to detect casper-rw devices. Adding udevtrigger/udevsettle didn't help.)

I'm using Feisty final and it doesn't work for me too... :(

I can just browse casper-rw on the desktop (it only contains the lost+found folder), but nothing is saved...

I have tried the desktop version 7.04 and put it on my USB flash drive to use persistent mode, which was downloaded last week.
I found this bug too!
I hope this bug can be fixed asap.

I can't help as I'm not experienced with ubuntu yet, but I offer a thought for a new user perspective:
I would think this bug would be important to fix (regarding Bug #1)

I imagine many new users of ubuntu will try out the LiveCD/USB while deciding whether to switch.
I did, this was my first experience with ubuntu and I almost gave up because it just seemed broken
(luckily I found this page so I realised it was a bug, and not something I was doing).

I've dropped back to Edgy for now :( But I look forward to a feisty future...

I'm booting Feisty final from a USB drive on a ThinkPad R60 and am experiencing the same problem. Persistent isn't persistent, and the casper-rw volume appears as a volume on the desktop (in fact, the folder is protected so only root has rw acess) - Any workarounds to this would be appreciated. I've tried playing with permissions on the casper-rw volume, but I think the problem is down to the way the volume is mounted.

well, how would the importance of the bug be decided, how can we confirm its root cause, and how can we help in fixing it, please guys, can anyone post the steps that should be taken to start working in this thing, i see that many people here (including me) are willing to help but don't know where to start..

"well, how would the importance of the bug be decided, how can we confirm its root cause, and how can we help in fixing it, please guys, can anyone post the steps that should be taken to start working in this thing, i see that many people here (including me) are willing to help but don't know where to start.."

Second that, if I can be of *any* help I'd be willing to. I guess I'll go with Herd 4 for now...

Anyone have any idea how to/feasibility of using early Beta boot scripts with release code? Apparently telease code boot tries to speed up by doing more things in parallel, hence fails starting "persistent" mode because the USB code hasn't recognized the device yet and the volume isn't mounted yet. The "persistent" mode process needs to wait until all devices are active and all volumes mounted. I'd be quite willing to have a switch that said the user wants "persistent", therefore serialize device recognition and mounting before attempting to start "persistent" process.

"The "persistent" mode process needs to wait until all devices are active and all volumes mounted."

Really? Surely persistent simply needs to wait until the boot device is mounted, or until the device it needs to write to is mounted. Working out which one it is could be more complicated, particularly on read-only filesystems.

Maybe we can put a poll wrapper around the persistent script that says "have they loaded yet? have they loaded yet?" :-)

As for the questions about who to contact to get the ball rolling on this
bug, I think Tollef Fog Heen might be our man. I don't know much about the
heirarchy of developers in Ubuntu, but Tollef is subscribed to this
bug<https://bugs.launchpad.net/%7Etfheen>,
and he is also listed as one of the authors on the manpage for
casper<http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/casper-manpage>.
The other authors are Matt Zimmerman <mdz AT canonical DOT com>, and Marco
Amadori <marco.amadori AT gmail DOT com>.

Hopefully one of these guys can take ownership of this bug and get
persistent back on track.

On 5/3/07, Tudor Holton <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> "The "persistent" mode process needs to wait until all devices are
> active and all volumes mounted."
>
> Really? Surely persistent simply needs to wait until the boot device is
> mounted, or until the device it needs to write to is mounted. Working
> out which one it is could be more complicated, particularly on read-only
> filesystems.
>
> Maybe we can put a poll wrapper around the persistent script that says
> "have they loaded yet? have they loaded yet?" :-)
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

As for the questions about who to contact to get the ball rolling on this bug, it looks like Tollef Fog Heen is our man. I don't know much about the heirarchy of developers in Ubuntu, but Tollef is subscribed to this bug, and he is also listed as one of the authors on the manpage for casper. Tollef's email is <tfheen AT canonical DOT com>. The other authors on casper are Matt Zimmerman <mdz AT canonical DOT com>, and Marco Amadori < marco.amadori AT gmail DOT com>. Hopefully one of these guys can take interest in this major bug and get persistent back on track.

Is it me, or is this bug already assigned to Tollef Fog Heen?

Back on 16 March I got this note:

"I can't promise to get it (i.e. 84591) fixed for beta, but I have milestoned it for
the release and assigned it to me, so I will take a look at it.

Thanks for telling me,
--
Tollef Fog Heen"

Now with the forums at a crazy rolling boil I can't imagine the heighth of the stuff on Tollef's plate.

Cheers, Jerry

Jerry,

I've been wanting to try reverting to some of the Herd3 packages myself, but hadn't had a chance to try it until last night. It seems that that approach may or may not break something, depending upon what is done.

Last night, I used "diff -y --suppress-common-lines [Herd3 filesystem.manifest location] [Feisty Final filesystem.manifest location]" to generate a list of the packages that are different between Herd3 and Feisty Final (the bracketed phrases above were replaced with the location on my pc of the filesystem manifest for each version). Someone correct me if I am wrong, but that diff list should be a package level description of all of the changes between Herd3 and Feisty Final. At that point, it is a matter of identifying packages that may affect the issue. For example, I had been planning to try reverting to Herd3 packages for at least the casper and ubiquity-casper packages. I honestly didn't expect this to fix the problem, but thought it was a starting point and may be the least likely to break something else.

I tried that reversion last night and it did not fix the problem. In particular, I reverted to casper 1.80 and ubiquity-casper 1.80, which were used in Herd3. To generate the customized livecd with the reverted packages, I followed the approach described at the following link, but there may be other ways to do it.

http://www.atworkonline.it/~bibe/ubuntu/custom-livecd.htm

You can get the old packages from here (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/) and I believe it is also possible to use the herd3 distribution itself to get the old packages. Launchpad does give some information about what the packages do and what files they contain. You can probably find a list of what is in at least some of these packages here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/ (that link may only give packages used in final releases, but at least some of the herd3 packages were used in edgy).

After reverting to casper 1.80 and ubiquity casper 1.80, everything still booted fine (no obvious broken functionality, although something could be broken without being apparent), but the persistence issue remained in exactly the manner described above. I actually suspect that the problem may be in some of the more fundamental scripts in other packages. In particular, I have listed below some of the other packages that I eventually may try. If anyone disagrees or has other suggestions, feel free to chime in. Also, if anyone else wants to try any of this, it could be a dead end or it could give useful information. If any of the developers have suggestions about what they think we should try, or things that they know will break the distribution, or even if they think this approach will not be fruitful, certainly do not hesitate to say so. This is a fairly trial and error approach, and I would not be surprised if the developers already know enough to take a more focused and well informed approach. But, again, I am new to linux.

The initramfs-tools and initscripts packages seemed like possibilities. The initscripts actually appears to be part of a more fundamental distribution, sysvinit described here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/2.86.d...

Well, I took my revised livecd in which I had reverted the casper and ubiquity packages to the version used by feisty herd3 and I tried to additionally revert udev to the herd3 version of udev.

This did break the distribution (it hangs on boot when executing the local scripts), but there was one potentially important difference in my boot messages.

My casper-rw filesystem is an ext2 filesystem. When I boot up and persistence works, I always get the message "EXT2-FS Warning: Mounting unchecked filesystem. Running E2FSK is recommended" (or something to that effect). When persistence does not work, that message is conspicuously absent in my boot messages. When it shows up, it comes right after the message "SquashFS: version . . . ."

In my customized livecd that uses the herd3 version of udev, this message showed up again. This seems to suggest that reverting to the herd3 version of udev may fix the timing issue because this message suggests that the casper-rw filesystem is mounting with the old udev. Note, in order to use the old udev, I did also have to revert on a few other packages, so it could be in udev or one of the related packages that I reverted (these other files were either listed with the udev binaries on launchpad or were the files dpkg forced me to revert when I tried to install the old udev - dmsetup was one of them; I think there were two that had "volumeid" in the name).

Not sure why, but I haven't been able to reproduce the result in my prior post.

I've come up with a temporary solution that meets at least my needs (until someone actually fixes the packages). I have generated a Feisty LiveUSB disk that for the most part includes the packages from the final version of Feisty, but I have specified that certain packages are to remain at the Herd3 level, allowing persistence to still work.

Basically, I used a "Preferences" file (I have attached the one that I used) in the manner I describe below. This Preferences file prevents the files that it lists from upgrading when I upgraded the Herd3 files to the final version of Feisty.

I used this Preferences file to generate a new version of the following files on my Live disk:

/casper/filesystem.squashfs
/casper/filesystem.manifest
/casper/filesystem.manifest-desktop
/md5sum.txt

I generated these new files, again, following essentially the approach at this link: http://www.atworkonline.it/~bibe/ubuntu/custom-livecd.htm

My comments below refer to the procedure outlined at that link.

I generated the ubuntu-fs.ext2 file, containing the ext2 filesystem, as described. I actually used a 4GB file instead of the 2GB file shown at the link because I ran out of space, when upgrading, using the 2GB file. (I believe that the larger file does not ultimately cause you to consume additional space on your usb disk because of the effect of creating and deleting the "zeroed" dummyfile). I mounted this ext2 filesystem and copied the "unsquashed" filesystem from the Herd3 iso into that directory (i.e. unsquash into this directory the contents of the /casper/filesystem.squashfs file from the Herd3 iso).

Either prior to or after chrooting into this file system, I copied the attached Preferences file into the /etc/apt directory of the unsquashed filesystem. Again, this will "pin" the listed files at the Herd3 versions listed in the attached Preferences file. See the Apt How-To for a more detailed description of "pinning." (I haven't tried to upgrade from Edgy. But if you are doing that, then I suspect you at least need to change the file names and versions in the attached Preferences file to the corresponding Edgy files). In my /etc/apt directory, I also updated the sources.list file to be sure it had the repositories I wanted. There is a Wiki guide (I believe it is called a Feisty Startup Guide) that lists available repositories.

I mounted and chroot'ed into this filesystem, exactly as shown at the link above.

I executed "apt-get update" to update the list of files available at the repositories. I then used aptitude to run both the upgrade and dist-upgrade commands in that order.

aptitude upgrade
aptitude dist-upgrade.

I ran these commands again (I might have used apt-get, instead of aptitude, the subsequent time(s), although it shouldn't matter) until I got feedback that there were no additional files to be upgraded or added. Note, I did get feedback that the "libdevmapper1.02" package was broken (this is one of the "pinned" packages). But, I ignored that because I selected that as one of the files to not be upgraded. The result still worked for me. I don't know if others will experience the following issue, but I also had to work throug...

Here's the Preferences file that identifies the packages not upgraded. Apparently I couldn't attach two files to the preceding link.

Mike, I really appreciate your work and would love to try it, but I don't have a Herd 3 image anywhere, could you tell me where you found it?

Great news! Mike, maybe we could get this hybrid Herd3/5 LiveCD circulating as a torrent?

I've never done that before, but it's not rocket science. We just need you to seed it (recent versions of Azureus have a built-in tracker) and send us the torrent. I'll gladly keep it seeding from my Linux box.

For security reasons, it will be important to clearly identify your disk image as an unofficial Ubuntu release that is your own creation and include an MD5 sum in the description. This way users will not confuse your disk image with official Ubuntu releases and can 'trust' the contents of the image as your own by verifying the MD5 sum.

I think that's the best way for you to share your effort with the community. Email me directly if you want help organizing it.

That sounds good, Fisselfink. I actually may not be able to get this going until some time next week. My wife has been giving me some dirty looks for the time I have spent. But, there are a couple things I still want to check out.

I suppose it probably makes sense to make all of the files available in the form of an iso, just like a ubuntu distribution (unless someone has other thoughts), and probably makes sense to make it available without my other "customizations" (e.g. not add ntfs-3g, bootchart, etc.). That way, it is a "base" image, similar to the ubuntu distrib.

Also, I am experiencing a problem installing the Java JRE and plugin. It does not look like it is a problem unique to this hybrid. But rather, appears to be a problem that others have experienced (e.g. I think it is failing to configure Java, saying it cannot locate libjli.so and libjava.so - or something to that effect - I don't have the error messages in front of me now). Although I believe Java is not in the base distribution, it would be nice if I could resolve that before making this available. But I don't think I am going to have time to figure it out. I expect it is probably an issue that can be fixed by making changes in persistent mode, but again I haven't worked it out.

I guess, people should assume there may be issues and test it out and provide feedback. It may need more fine tuning. I am also am wondering whether it would make more sense to start with Edgy and upgrade from that (so that the Edgy version of the relevant files are pinned, rather than the Herd3 versions). Again, I may not have a chance to figure that out soon. If anyone wants a copy of this earlier than next week, I don't mind making it available in exactly the form I have it now, as long as everyone recognizes that it may still be a little "rough."

Vincent,

I found a Ubuntu link to the Herd3 iso, but it wasn't working. Does anyone know if the Herd3 is stil being made available? If not, I guess that that may be another reason to start from Edgy.

One other interesting point. I didn't make this clear in my earlier posts, but it looks like you may need to use the new manifests and squashed filesystem with the files from the herd3 iso (rather than with the files from Feisty final iso) to get it to work. I tried using the exact same manifests and squashed filesystem with the files from the Feisty final iso and persistence didn't work. But, when I copied the exact same files into the files from the herd3 iso, it worked.

Not sure why that would be the case, and I haven't had a chance to double check to make sure I didn't do something else wrong. But, just an fyi for anyone trying this. You might try it both ways as well to see what results you get.

I've been playing with the Xubuntu 7.04 CD and a 4GB flash stick. I suspect this bug is a 7.04 kernel/module problem. Quite simply, persistence is borked because unionfs isn't loading. (Just type "mount" and you'll see "unionfs on / type (rw)" is missing and you can confirm it with "lsmod | grep unionfs" too.) As a hack, I copied vmlinuz and initrd.gz from a 6.10 CD to /usb and /usb/casper (I guess it must be copied to both places because links don't work in vfat) and persistence worked. Unfortunately, other stuff seems to break with the 6.10 kernel--the LAN is dead on at least one of my live USB hosts and the PS2 mouse is dead on another host. USB keyboard and mouse seem to work. At one point, I couldn't mount the ext3 filesystem on my hard disk, but that problem seems to be mysteriously absent now.

Next I attempted to build unionfs into the kernel, rather than a module, but the build ended with an extended attribute (xattr) conflict with other filesystem modules. At this point, I really don't know how to build a kernel for a live CD anyway. If anyone can point me in the direction of a howto, we may be able to solve this.

-Cal

Mike, if there's anything anyone can do to help you getting that iso on bittorrent, please ask. I'm going to mail a relative a live stick monday, in the hope of getting them to use Linux, and it would be great if they could use it in persistent mode.

Cal, that's interesting. The problem was not present in Feisty Herd 3. If someone could copy vmlinuz and initrd.gz from a Herd 3 CD to /usb and /usb/casper , it may cure the problem with less side-effects than you experienced. I might even be a viable workaround altogether. It's really annoying that there seems to be no way of getting my hands on a Herd 3 image.

Looks like I've been a bit too optimistic. I found a Herd 3 image and applied the same procedure as described by Cal. The good news is that persistence works, and that the logs written onto casper-rw indicate that most of the hardware is correctly recognized and initialized. The bad new is that I've also seen some ugly error messages passing by, and that I don't get any login prompts in the virtual terminals. Which is really bad because X fails to start as well (that happens with all Ubuntu live CDs on my laptop). Sure, I could make a customized xorg.conf file on the casper-rw filesystem and see what happens, but as copying the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files is just a dirty hack, it may not merit further effort. Besides, I'm too tired to continue. Moreover, I discovered that my casper-rw partition is too small to make persistence really useful (gconf immediately fills it). Hope you guys can work out a cleaner solution for the persitence problem, though. I'm sure it would make a lot of people very happy.

Okay--now I'm getting somewhere. I think the problem is 7.04 is using an incompatible version of Unionfs. I don't have much time to work on this so maybe we can regroup in the forums--and it's probably best not to clutter this bug report while we work on a fix. Please see my posting for more info:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2687688#post2687688

Thanks,

-Cal

FYI, I was able to get an edgy/feisty hybrid system working. See Cal's link above.

Gutsy Alpha persistent doesn't work as far as I can tell. The Alpha is still a bit shaky (not to ship until October) and may not be solid enough to work on Cal's persistent fix. Sure would appreciate it if the developers could look at this too.
Thanks! Jerry

Gutsy Alpha 20070612 today's daily build tried persistent several times. Once it actually loaded the ubuntu system folders into the USB device, however it didn't save a text file on home, and I couldn't get persistent to do anything since, or on another computer either.

Cheers, Jerry

Some interesting new information (at least interesting to me).

Ignoring the unionfs issue for the moment, I played around with the pinned files. I found out that persistence works if I only pin the following 4 files:

Package: udev
Pin: version 093-0ubuntu18.0edgy2
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: upstart
Pin: version 0.2.7-7
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: upstart-compat-sysv
Pin: version 0.2.7-7
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: upstart-logd
Pin: version 0.2.7-7
Pin-Priority: 1001

The other thing that I did was upgrade to the 1.91 version of casper from gutsy because I suspected that the other debian changes had been rolled into the gutsy version of casper.

Sure enough, persistence works fine. It seemed that gutsy's casper file was fine as it has been revised.

The other thing that I had done, before upgrading to the gutsy version of casper, was to unpin the three upstart files. Again, with this last change, persistence still worked, but I received a failure to umount local filesystems. So, persistence worked with the only pinned file was udev.

I have suspected this from the beginning, but this really re-enforces my belief that there has to be some issue in udev that is causing this problem. Alternatively, it could be an interaction between udev and the upstart files. But, based upon these results, it seems there has to be a problem in one of these.

I am going to play around a little more to see if I can generate any additional useful information.

__________________

Sorry, it looks like pinning udev also causes

dmsetup, hal, libdevmapper1.02, and volumeid to be held back. So, I guess it could be any of those or something about the way they work together. Maybe it is somehow related to the elimination of dmsetup?

Feisty seems to contain a lot of blueprints about making udev play nicely with certain disk arrangements (i.e. LVM, EVMS). I'm wondering whether if and how casper was modified when scripts for e.g. udev were modified to run on the upstart (replacement init) model.

(According to https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/replacement-initscripts and various other blueprints for Feisty (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+specs), upstart replaced sysvinit in edgy, and many bootscripts were rewritten for upstart in feisty.)

I say this because I see no mention of casper on any of the blueprints I can find regarding upstart...

(I also think that building the right version of UnionFS for the kernel is probably important. Do the kernel maintainers know that they have to update the patch with every new kernel release? If/when it gets into mainline, it won't be a problem, but it's in -mm right now, so...)

> Do the kernel maintainers know that they have to update the patch with every new kernel release?

I assume yes, but I'm still attempting to patch UFS 2.0 into the Feisty LIveCD/USB kernel because Feisty contains bits and pieces of UnionFS 1.3, which is incorrect for the 2.6.20 kernel. I don't know if these bits are "active" or simply "vestigial."

This is, allegedly, the correct UnionFS patch for a 2.6.20 kernel:

ftp://ftp.filesystems.org/pub/unionfs/unionfs-2.x/linux-2.6.20-u1.diff.gz

I downloaded linux-source-2.6.20_2.6.20.orig and linux-source-2.6.20_2.6.20. (Forgive my Ubuntu newbishness--does anyone have a link to a wiki explaining the Ubuntu kernel/patch file naming conventions--I find all the seemingly redundant kernel source file packages that pop up in a Synaptic search to be very confusing.) Ideally, I'd like to find the patches to take the Ubuntu kernel all the way back to a vanilla kernel (Ubuntu + Debian diffs?)

I have not yet applied the -16.28.diff patch but decided to work, initially, with the original Ubuntu 2.6.20 source. I removed the "config UNION_FS" section from the bottom of /usr/src/linux/ubuntu/Kconfig and applied the UnionFS patch from above. It reported that some of the UnionFS patches were already applied to the Ubuntu kernel source and I answered "N" to not reapply those sections. I built the .deb packages and successfully installed and booted the new kernel with UnionFS 2.0 on my development machine. I have not yet had time to install the new kernel on the Feisty LiveCD/USB system and I have no idea if UnionFS 2,0 is even working. I may soon find that the UnionFS scripts in the Feisty LiveCD (scripted for UnionFS 1.3?) don't even work with UnionFS 2.0, regardless.

-Cal

Hmm... what about downloading the 2.6.13 patch, and applying it in reverse before applying to 2.6.20 unionfs patch?

i.e.:
(under linux src dir)
zcat <2.6.13 patch> | patch -p1 -R
zcat <2.6.20 patch> | patch -p1

That might work better...

> ... what about downloading the 2.6.13 patch, and applying it in reverse before applying to 2.6.20 unionfs pat

That would be fine, but the Unionfs 1.3 patch won't reverse the unionfs source in /usr/src/linux/ubuntu/fs

-Cal

As best as I can tell, it looks like persistence may actually be working on gutsy tribe2.

I get a .ICEauthority issue, however, that prevents me from re-booting into persistent mode. But, I think that that issue may show up because persistence may be working and there may be some sort of issue related to the .ICEauthority file that is created in the home directory on the casper-rw partition.

I confirmed that e.g. my network settings appear to show up on the casper-rw partition. So, it appears files may be getting created on the casper-rw partition, which I assume would not happen if persistence wasn't working.

It looks like a number of changes were made to the files that we "held back" in the custom iso's that we created. So, maybe those changes somehow fixed the persistence problem? Maybe we need a separate bug report for this .ICEauthority issue?

Persistence definitely appears to be working in the latest tribe2 daily build (7/12), except that I have to re-enter my WPA key every time I reboot in order to log back in to my wireless network using the gnome network manager. But, the system maintains changes I make to my nautilus and firefox configurations, for example, and has maintained newly installed applications. Not sure why the system would maintain these other types of changes but not the WPA key that I entered using the gnome network manager. Maybe that is a separate issue (e.g. with the gnome network manager?).

I also did NOT experience the .ICEauthority issue in this latest daily build.

The build does still seem to experience a failure in un-mounting local file systems when shutting down from a persistent mode booted system. That failure seems to produce errors in the casper-rw partition.

But, if you revert to the edgy versions of the upstart files, as I indicated above, that error goes away.

I.e. I can make that error go away by pinning the following files in a preferences file that is placed in /etc/apt:

Package: upstart
Pin: version 0.2.7-7
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: upstart-compat-sysv
Pin: version 0.2.7-7
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: upstart-logd
Pin: version 0.2.7-7
Pin-Priority: 1001

I reported that as a separate bug because I don't really know whether or not it is related to this persistence issue.

In the latest gutsy daily build, when trying to boot into persistent mode, the boot process stops at an (initramfs) prompt right after it states "can't access tty; job control turned off." Seems like something was broken.

I'd like to draw attention to this forum post which looks interesting: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3228722#post3228722

Persistent mode still doesn't work on Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 5. It's been busted ever since some buggy Debian scripts were put into Feisty Fawn between Feb 10 and Feb 16.

From preceding post 2007-08-27 looks like there could be a solution; please investigate.

Thanks, Jerry Amos

Persistent mode actually does work for me in Tribe 5. There are two issues that I experience, though: gnome-network manager does not seem to maintain the WPA password that I enter for my access point; and I get a "umount" failure on shutdown. But, booting in persistent mode saves my installed programs; it saves my changes in firefox; and it saves my configurations in nautilus. So, it seems possible that persistence is actually fixed and there are some different issues causing these other problems. Don't know.

Looks like someone is working on the umount failure - looks like they confirmed there is an issue (see bug report 125702).

As far as the gnome-network manager not maintaining the password, I wonder if that is a persistence issue or a different issue given that other persistence functionality works (at least it did for me the most recent few times I tried it). While I don't understand all the details of the functionality of persistence, it seems it would be odd for persistence to work partially (e.g. maintain installed programs, but not network manager settings). As far as the gnome-network manager issue I experience, see bugs 131233 and 132473, for example. Bug 131233 sounds a lot like what I experience when using gutsy persistence. I also think some people reported this same network manager issue in the "patched" feisty iso that was prepared where persistence otherwise worked.

Jerry, did you try installing a program to see if it is still installed upon reboot? Or configuring firefox or nautilus? Just curious if persistence might be working for some people and not others. I have actually been wondering if this bug has actually been fixed, but if you are still having issues . . . . Anyone else tried it?

I reverted to the feisty version of network-manager (0.6.4-6ubuntu7) and to the feisty version of network-manager-gnome (0.6.4-6ubuntu7), and the network manager now seems to be remembering my WPA key on a persistent liveUSB drive. So, at least on my system, I'd say persistence seems to be working fine. I don't know if the umount issue is related to the persistence issue, but that umount issue has been given medium priority. So, hopefully that will be fixed by the time Gutsy is released. Even if it is not, reverting to the edgy versions of the upstart files seems to fix that issue. So, it may be that you can get a version of Gutsy working with persistence by simply removing the gutsy version of these two network manager files and installing the feisty versions (while you are booted in persistent mode on a liveUSB) and also reverting in the same way on the upstart files.

So, making those changes while booted in persistent gutsy fixes those two remaining issues for me; meaning, at least on my system, they don't appear to be persistence issues, and gutsy's persistence seems to be working fine on my system. I suppose I'll keep using to see if issues crop up. But, by definition, if persistence wasn't working, I shouldn't be able to modify those couple packages and have the changes stick. Definitely would be interesting to hear from others, though.

I tried Ubuntu 7.10 Alpha 5, hoping there was compiled love... No avail..
Not sure what's going on, but doesn't seem to do persistent on ext2 or ext3
Settings don't save AND running off USB doesn't behave like running off CD. Meaning, changing anything like Theme, background, doesn't work.
Reboot USB and changes are not there.

Is there a recent build of Ubuntu- kubuntu, etc...
That has this working besides older 6.04?

A) When you booted, did you add the word "persistence" to the boot options line? (I believe you have to hit one of the F-keys before Ubuntu starts booting...)
B) Have you tried the daily CD build?

Yes, I boot and type persistence at boot. do you know what config file I can mod to have this as default?
Have you gotten 7.10 Alpha 5, persistence to work?

Settings don't save AND running off USB doesn't behave like running off CD. Meaning, changing anything like Theme, background, doesn't work.
Reboot USB and changes are not there.

Is there a recent build of Ubuntu- kubuntu, etc...that has this working besides older 6.04?

I fell in love with Ubuntu the minute I booted a 7.4 CD.

It saw all my hardware... and especially.... had no problems with my new HP Laptop wireless network connection.

Persistence works for me on Ubuntu < version 7.4.

Networking (wireless) does not work for me on Ubuntu < 7.4.

I am a complete noob to Linux,but, I am willing to learn, and I am willing to test,

I have tried EVERY Ubuntu release I can get my hands on... and I downloaded and tried every daily release for the last couple of weeks.

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

I will continue to test and try every version I can find, and will help test.

Please let me know what if any info I can provide that might help developers fix this bug.

Here is a new solution to 7.04
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/21/usb-ubuntu-704-persistent-install-for-linux-users/

I have tried the above with 7.10 alpha 5 without success.. It might only be
specifically for 7.04

I would use 7.04 as it states but,
I haven't been able to boot a live 7.04 for some reason. Every 7.04 ISO I
downloaded is an install only.

On 9/23/07, lazerd <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> I fell in love with Ubuntu the minute I booted a 7.4 CD.
>
> It saw all my hardware... and especially.... had no problems with my new
> HP Laptop wireless network connection.
>
> Persistence works for me on Ubuntu < version 7.4.
>
> Networking (wireless) does not work for me on Ubuntu < 7.4.
>
> I am a complete noob to Linux,but, I am willing to learn, and I am
> willing to test,
>
> I have tried EVERY Ubuntu release I can get my hands on... and I
> downloaded and tried every daily release for the last couple of weeks.
>
> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/
>
> I will continue to test and try every version I can find, and will help
> test.
>
> Please let me know what if any info I can provide that might help
> developers fix this bug.
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--

At the least, Jesus is our Ultimate example of what love is and should be.
What you are is God's gift to you... what you do with yourself is your gift
to God!

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
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<email address hidden>
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ty wilsonb for responding to my post.

That is a solution that I had not tried yet.

And although the instructions at the link you provided are 'idiot proof'... I have not had success yet.

I can not get the 2nd partition formatted, because it won't show up in the list of devices with fdisk -l .

My usb drive is a Kingston 4gb... but my issues are noob fdisk partition issues not related to this thread.

ty again. I will keep trying of course.

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 3997 MB, 3997695488 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 486 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 487 3903968 b W95 FAT32
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(485, 254, 63) logical=(486, 6, 31)

yet within fdisk I see...

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fdisk /dev/sdb1

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb1: 3997 MB, 3997663232 bytes
123 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7626 * 512 = 3904512 bytes

     Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1p1 * 1 180 686309 6 FAT16
/dev/sdb1p2 181 1023 3214359 83 Linux

And.. if I format the 1st partition.. using mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n usb /dev/sdb1... with no errors.

Then.. even the 1st partition disappears... according to fdisk.

Anyway, ty again. I either have a weird USB drive that wont cooperate, or I am an idiot and need to do more studying up on fdisk.

Sorry, Not sure what I was doing wrong, but I got both partitions created and formatted correctly.

Trying to set up Ubuntu on the drive now. ty again for all of your help.

Well... I can boot off of my USB disk now. woot!

But I get a kernel panic error.. something regarding cant find the init thingy.

And of course I have the modified initrd.gz on my usb drive root.

I am giving up for the day, but ty for your patience.

Well after working on this WAY to long, I always get an error when it's
about to get completely loaded and log in screen.

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
initramfs

What ever that means..'
I am giving up and waiting for the official 7.10 to be released. Supposedly,
they will have persistent working in that build.

Anyone?

On 9/24/07, lazerd <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Well... I can boot off of my USB disk now. woot!
>
> But I get a kernel panic error.. something regarding cant find the init
> thingy.
>
> And of course I have the modified initrd.gz on my usb drive root.
>
> I am giving up for the day, but ty for your patience.
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--

At the least, Jesus is our Ultimate example of what love is and should be.
What you are is God's gift to you... what you do with yourself is your gift
to God!

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
Mobile (512)589-3227
<email address hidden>
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
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===========\_)==(_/=============

I give up too.

I loved the persistent feature of 6.10 on an USB stick.
( I had my Ubuntu always with me :-) )

I spent a lot of time (may nights) trying to get it working with 7.04. Unfortunately with no success.

It would be very sad if the 7.40 Bug would still be on 7.10.
Guess I have to switch than to an other Linux again. (with Knoppix it still works)

But anyway thanks a lot for all the effort you made to fix this bug.
:-)

I was not able to create a persistent USB Stick. With 6.10 it worked.

New Version release; named 'Gutsy Gibbon',
http://distrowatch.com/index.php?distribution=ubuntu&month=all&year=all

Maybe, it's fixed in that.
I
============,,,================
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AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
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=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
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On 9/27/07, myself <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> I was not able to create a persistent USB Stick. With 6.10 it worked.
>
> ** Changed in: casper (Ubuntu)
> Status: Triaged => Confirmed
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--

Have you tried this mini-tutorial?
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/27/making-ubuntu-710-casper-persistent/

Nice Angelo, but:

"The only reason to revert back to casper is because the live-initramfs live-rw is currently broken and only the home directory is available for read/write."

I suppose whoever wrote that has reported that bug? If so, does anyone know where I can find it?

www.pendrivelinux.com = possible workaround (why need to 'work around?)

www.pendrivelinux.com = I cant find a forum for their stuff to discuss

www.pendrivelinux.com = time sink

www.pendrivelinux.com = I would pay them to follow their instructions on MY hardware

www.pendrivelinux.com = close.. but no cigar

Sorry, I am just frustrated.

Please ignore my previous post.

I realize tons of effort has gone into pendrivelinux and Ubuntu.

I am a noob and will not post anymore.

Sorry.

Thanks for that link Angelo. I have a feeling it's getting closer to being
fixed, if nothing else!

I've been following the instructions at that page, and also the related page
which has the downloadable initrd.gz file. The furthest I've got so far is
to get the boot-up selection screen, where I select the 'persistent' option.
It tries to continue booting, but then I get dumped out to a 'BusyBox'
command prompt.

Anyone know how to progress past this point? - Is there anything I can do at
the BusyBox command prompt apart from tell it to reboot? Are they any log
files I can see to check how far it got?

On 9/28/07, Angelo Lisco <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Have you tried this mini-tutorial?
>
> http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/27/making-ubuntu-710-casper-persistent/
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Hello, yes, it looks we are getting closer and closer,.

This was my mail to pendrivelinux.com

-----------
Hello,
first of all, thanks a lot for your webpage and your help in generating a pendrive.

In the description of " USB Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon install " is an error.

While copying the files the error " cannot create symbolic link /media/ubuntu710/dists/stable" shows up.
I guess this is related to Fat16.

Ignoring this error, during a boot Ubuntu comes up with the error " could not open /lib/modules/2.6.22-12-generic"

In the file -U710fix.tar- initrd.gz is the old folder "/lib/modules/2.6.22-10-generic/ "
It should be /lib/modules/2.6.22-12-generic/

I hope I could help.

may the force be with you,

It sounds like it is not working for some people, but I am using the Gutsy beta in persistent mode. Vincent, do you know if it is working for you?

I haven't tried the beta yet, but as I am now in possession of the Xubuntu beta LiveCD I'll give it a try right away.

OK, I've just tried putting Gutsy beta on my USB drive following a mixture of my own [1] and pendrivelinux.com's instructions [2]. However, I had the same problem as before: I can't choose the way to boot (and I can't memorize the boot lines).

I suppose something has been changed in that e.g. syslinux.cfg should now still be named isolinux.cfg or something, but since I haven't really kept tabs on this I wouldn't know of it.

Mike, do you happen to know if anything, and if so, what has changed in the process of putting Ubuntu on your USB drive?

[1] http://xubuntublog.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/ubuntu-feisty-on-your-usb-drive-finally/
[2] http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/27/making-ubuntu-710-casper-persistent/

I haven't figured that out completely myself. But, I typed "persistent" at
the "boot " prompt and hit return and it booted into persistent. You might
try that, but I'll see if I can look at it more closely.

On 9/30/07, Vincent <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> OK, I've just tried putting Gutsy beta on my USB drive following a
> mixture of my own [1] and pendrivelinux.com's instructions [2]. However,
> I had the same problem as before: I can't choose the way to boot (and I
> can't memorize the boot lines).
>
> I suppose something has been changed in that e.g. syslinux.cfg should
> now still be named isolinux.cfg or something, but since I haven't really
> kept tabs on this I wouldn't know of it.
>
> Mike, do you happen to know if anything, and if so, what has changed in
> the process of putting Ubuntu on your USB drive?
>
>
> [1]
> http://xubuntublog.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/ubuntu-feisty-on-your-usb-drive-finally/
> [2]
> http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/27/making-ubuntu-710-casper-persistent/
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Vincent,

When booted into the system from which you are issuing the "syslinux" command to create your persistent drive, make sure you are using the gutsy versions of syslinux and mtools (mtools may not have changed from edgy and feisty). That fixed the problem for me completely. If that system isn't gutsy, and you don't want to upgrade the entire system to gutsy, you can still upgrade only those two packages by changing your sources.list temporarily to gutsy, and then issuing sudo apt-get update, and then sudo aptitude install syslinux, for example.

So, all I did was boot up on a drive other than the one I wanted to make persistent. I took a usb drive on which I had been using the patched feisty system (so prepared exactly in accordance with your tutorial). I then deleted everything from the partition containing the cd-rom files except for syslinux.cfg (i.e. I am using exactly the same syslinux file as for the patched feisty system). I then copied all of the gutsy beta files onto that partition, except for the isoconfig (or whatever the syslinux.cfg file was called before we renamed it to syslinux.cfg). I also deleted everything off of the casper-rw partition other than the lost and found directory (and my home directory). I then issued the syslinux command (again with the gutsy version of syslinux installed), and I am good to go.

Note, if this works for you, I did experience a large number of freeze ups with firefox, which I believe is a reported firefox issue. I currently have the "fasterfox" add-on installed because some people said that fixed the problem for them. So far I haven't re-experienced the firefox freezes, but I need more time to assess whether or not that really fixed the issue.

I also downgraded to the edgy versions of the 3 upstart files as I described above. That fixes a failure to unmount local filesystems that I have been experiencing since the feisty upstart upgrades. You will probably run fine if you don't do that downgrade, but if you receive the failure to unmount local filesystems error on shutdown, you probably will need to do that downgrade to avoid causing errors on your persistent drive.

Sorry, when I said "all of the gutsy beta files" above, I meant all of the appropriate gutsy beta files, again per your feisty tutorial.

So, everything is per your original feisty tutorial, except you need to be sure you issue the syslinux command with the gutsy version of syslinux installed.

First of all: I'm writing this from my persistent USB, which worked after I typed "persistent" at the boot prompt, as you wrote.

I did realize I had forgotten to clear my casper-rw partition, so the theme looks a little bit odd and during boot up Xubuntu wanted to start MySQL which wasn't installed...

Anyway, it's great that you found a way to fix the problem. When I've booted into the normal system again I'll try using a newer version of syslinux.

Also, I found that the pendrivelinux tutorial was a bit unclear unless you already knew how to make it persistent. Is there anyone who could use a more extensive tutorial? If there is, please add a comment here then I'll write one.

Great work again Mike :)

Great news that you've got it working Vincent.

I'd love to see a complete step-by-step tutorial for this, covering how to
create a bootable USB drive and how to make it persistent. Most of the
instructions for formatting the drive etc. are over at
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ so I'm sure these can be used as a starting
point.

On 10/1/07, Vincent <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> First of all: I'm writing this from my persistent USB, which worked
> after I typed "persistent" at the boot prompt, as you wrote.
>
> I did realize I had forgotten to clear my casper-rw partition, so the
> theme looks a little bit odd and during boot up Xubuntu wanted to start
> MySQL which wasn't installed...
>
> Anyway, it's great that you found a way to fix the problem. When I've
> booted into the normal system again I'll try using a newer version of
> syslinux.
>
> Also, I found that the pendrivelinux tutorial was a bit unclear unless
> you already knew how to make it persistent. Is there anyone who could
> use a more extensive tutorial? If there is, please add a comment here
> then I'll write one.
>
> Great work again Mike :)
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

jhonan, I've already posted a previous tutorial on Ubuntu Feisty, and I've done it so often by now anyway so I could probably do it by heard ;-)

I'll probably just write a normal tutorial on putting Ubuntu or any of its derivatives on a USB drive, and get the reader to download the edited initrd.gz.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCDPersistence

Isn't Ubuntu 7.10 going to be release any day now with Persistent working?

On 10/1/07, Vincent <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> jhonan, I've already posted a previous tutorial on Ubuntu Feisty, and
> I've done it so often by now anyway so I could probably do it by heard
> ;-)
>
> I'll probably just write a normal tutorial on putting Ubuntu or any of
> its derivatives on a USB drive, and get the reader to download the
> edited initrd.gz.
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love themselves
first.
-- WB

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
Mobile (512)589-3227
<email address hidden>
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
=========( )===( )=============
==========\ (====) /=============
===========\_)==(_/=============

I am not sure you need to edit the initrd.gz (at least I didn't have to). I
really think persistence may be completely fixed in the beta iso; at least
it is working for me without any mods.

On 10/1/07, wilsonb <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Isn't Ubuntu 7.10 going to be release any day now with Persistent
> working?
>
>
> On 10/1/07, Vincent <email address hidden> wrote:
> >
> > jhonan, I've already posted a previous tutorial on Ubuntu Feisty, and
> > I've done it so often by now anyway so I could probably do it by heard
> > ;-)
> >
> > I'll probably just write a normal tutorial on putting Ubuntu or any of
> > its derivatives on a USB drive, and get the reader to download the
> > edited initrd.gz.
> >
> > --
> > feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> > You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> > of the bug.
> >
>
>
> --
> Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love
> themselves
> first.
> -- WB
>
> ============,,,================
> ===========(o o)===============
> =======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
> Mobile (512)589-3227
> <email address hidden>
> http://www.WilsonBradley.com
> http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
> AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
> Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
> MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
> =======ooooO==Ooooo===========
> =========( )===( )=============
> ==========\ (====) /=============
> ===========\_)==(_/=============
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

"I am not sure you need to edit the initrd.gz (at least I didn't have to). I
really think persistence may be completely fixed in the beta iso; at least
it is working for me without any mods."

Really? Great news! I'll go and replace my initrd.gz with the original, then, and just write a single definitive tutorial on putting any *buntu on USB :)

Im not sure how I missed this but,
7.10 Beta - 9/27/2007 ?
I figured it would have been renamed, but I guess it only changes with
official releases.

So, does this build work with persistence for sure? Anyone tried

Thanks

On 10/2/07, Steve Langasek <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> ** Changed in: casper (Ubuntu)
> Target: ubuntu-7.10-beta => ubuntu-7.10-rc
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love themselves
first.
-- WB

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
Mobile (512)589-3227
<email address hidden>
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
=========( )===( )=============
==========\ (====) /=============
===========\_)==(_/=============

I might focus on Puppy since new major release happened..

On 10/3/07, Wilson Bradley <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Im not sure how I missed this but,
> 7.10 Beta - 9/27/2007 ?
> I figured it would have been renamed, but I guess it only changes with
> official releases.
>
> So, does this build work with persistence for sure? Anyone tried
>
>
> Thanks
>
> On 10/2/07, Steve Langasek < <email address hidden>> wrote:
> >
> > ** Changed in: casper (Ubuntu)
> > Target: ubuntu-7.10-beta => ubuntu-7.10-rc
> >
> > --
> > feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> > You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> > of the bug.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love
> themselves first.
> -- WB
>
> ============,,,================
> ===========(o o)===============
> =======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
> Mobile (512)589-3227
> <email address hidden>
> http://www.WilsonBradley.com
> http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
> AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
> Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
> MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
> =======ooooO==Ooooo===========
> =========( )===( )=============
> ==========\ (====) /=============
> ===========\_)==(_/=============
>

--
Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love themselves
first.
-- WB

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
Mobile (512)589-3227
<email address hidden>
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
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=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
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wilsonb, Xubuntu Gutsy beta works for sure without any special modifications other than the normal steps required to make it persistence. The step using syslinux does need to be Gutsy's version of syslinux though (or you would end up at a boot prompt every time where you would have to type "persistent" to boot into persistent mode).

I saw 3-4 different guides to follow in creating a boot able Ubuntu with
persitance.
Could you post a link to the one that works with the latest 7.10 beta?

I spent to much time...

Thanks so much...

On 10/3/07, Vincent <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> wilsonb, Xubuntu Gutsy beta works for sure without any special
> modifications other than the normal steps required to make it
> persistence. The step using syslinux does need to be Gutsy's version of
> syslinux though (or you would end up at a boot prompt every time where
> you would have to type "persistent" to boot into persistent mode).
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love themselves
first.
-- WB

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
Mobile (512)589-3227
<email address hidden>
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
=========( )===( )=============
==========\ (====) /=============
===========\_)==(_/=============

wilsonb, PendriveLinux has one [1] but I haven't tested it and it seems that it makes you download some U710fix.tar which isn't required anymore.

Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, there currently is no such guide (though I will be writing one soon, I hope). However, my guide on Ubuntu Feisty [2] should work too, albeit that instead of the ISO named there you'd need the Ubuntu Gutsy ISO (and at a certain point it asks you to copy the dists folder or something, which doesn't exist but that doesn't matter), and where it asks you to do sudo syslinux -f /dev/sdx1 you'd best do it from a Gutsy liveCD or something, as you need that version. Hope that helped, and if you have any questions you can just ask :)

[1] http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/28/usb-ubuntu-710-gutsy-gibbon-install/
[2] http://xubuntublog.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/ubuntu-feisty-on-your-usb-drive-finally/

Thank you so much for the response..
I have spent so much time working on this... I will wait until you post
one.. or the Official release comes..They said it will be fixed.

 Should be soon..

On 10/3/07, Vincent <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> wilsonb, PendriveLinux has one [1] but I haven't tested it and it seems
> that it makes you download some U710fix.tar which isn't required
> anymore.
>
> Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, there currently is no such guide
> (though I will be writing one soon, I hope). However, my guide on Ubuntu
> Feisty [2] should work too, albeit that instead of the ISO named there
> you'd need the Ubuntu Gutsy ISO (and at a certain point it asks you to
> copy the dists folder or something, which doesn't exist but that doesn't
> matter), and where it asks you to do sudo syslinux -f /dev/sdx1 you'd
> best do it from a Gutsy liveCD or something, as you need that version.
> Hope that helped, and if you have any questions you can just ask :)
>
> [1]
> http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/09/28/usb-ubuntu-710-gutsy-gibbon-install/
> [2]
> http://xubuntublog.wordpress.com/2007/06/17/ubuntu-feisty-on-your-usb-drive-finally/
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love themselves
first.
-- WB

============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
Mobile (512)589-3227
<email address hidden>
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
=========( )===( )=============
==========\ (====) /=============
===========\_)==(_/=============

I finally got Unbuntu 7.10 working with persistence on a Thinkpad R60 with
external 4Gb USB drive - But I was messing about with initrd.gz and had
problems creating the casper-rw partition, so I can't replicate the steps
exactly. I got most of the instructions from pendrivelinux.com

On 10/3/07, wilsonb <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> Im not sure how I missed this but,
> 7.10 Beta - 9/27/2007 ?
> I figured it would have been renamed, but I guess it only changes with
> official releases.
>
> So, does this build work with persistence for sure? Anyone tried
>
>
>

jhonan, there is no more need to mess about with initrd.gz since the bug is apparently fixed :)

I think this tutorial has all of the required steps.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent

Hmm, will the fix to bug #144945 ..

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22/+bug/144945/comments/10

.. which reverts to unionfs 1.x, break persistence again? Has anyone tried with the image linked in the bug #144945 discussion, namely:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~bcollins/gutsy-desktop-i386-unionfs-1.4.iso

?

The Release Candidate of Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 works great on an USB Stick.
The persistent mode works again. :-)

Thanks a lot to everybody, who help to make this possible.

I used the tutorial mike mentioned on an 1Gb Buffalo- , 4 Gb Buffalo- and an 8Gb Ativa-Memory Stick and an IBM Think Pad T60)

-> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent.

Persistent mode doesn't work for me in gutsy. Followed the direction on the ubuntu wiki, and was able to get the USB drive to boot properly (actually writing this from a liveUSB right now), but Persistent mode does not save settings properly.

I believe that I'll have to edit up the init file in order for this to work properly, but I'll post back with my findings.

Clarification on the above.

Looks like I was able to get a bit further after reformatting my casper-rw partition.

Getting some odd KDE errors where its having problems reading/writing from certain files.

Originally it was /home/ubuntu/.kde/share/config/kdeglobals

Now it seems to be /home/ubuntu/.ICEauthority

It seems that for some odd reason, persistent mode is creating files with a chmod of 000. Whenever I try to change the permissions on these files, I get Input/Output errors.

Not sure what's happening here.

My issues may be (un)related to a bug where I'm getting a segfault in umount during shutdown.

Reference Bug #147117 and Bug #125702

waxhell: If I'm using persistent mode (home or root type) with the iso contents as well as the persistent fs on a USB key, I get block devices errors on the USB key on shutdown, the persistent fs isn't unmounted cleanly, and sometimes some files seem to get corrupted, particularly files that are likely to be open continuously during the session (e.g. ICEauthority) or immediately prior to shutdown (settings files.)

Booting from a CDROM (and still using the USB key for the persistent fs) seems to work OK (at least for home mode - root mode doesn't wait long enough for the USB key to settle before deciding there's no persistent fs to union mount.)

I need to look into the shutdown scripts more closely, I think.

Will this be working in Hardy?

probono, it already does. In fact, I'm on Xubuntu Hardy Alpha 5 on USB right now!
(Should I mark this as fix released?)

On Hardy I cannot achieve persistence, I follow the tutorial on wiki (LiveUSBPenDrivePersistent) and the Ubuntu starts but finish on a initramfs and as I a novice I have to reboot. AFAIK and reading this looong conversation looks like as someone else downgrade something and the persistent on USB thumb or HD fails in the final release after this guys fixed the persistent problem.

The problem is still there, because on www.pendrivelinux.com for ubuntu gutsy only convert the USB on Live Ubuntu but without persistence, and in some other forums and articles everybody ask about persistence unsuccessfully or we need to edit some files as <a href="http://www.ryancloke.com/ubuntu-804-hardy-heron-live-usb-how-to/"> this link shows </a> (for me it doesn´t work neither) and on somewhere else the line mentioned in the link <strong>mount ${cowdevice} -t ${cow_fstype} -o rw,noatime /cow || panic "Can not mount $cowdevice on /cow"</strong> is treated differently, because the solution from ryan is remove mode=775 and the solution from that site was defining another variable $cow_cowopt=rw,noatime,mode=775 (or 755 I don´t remember) and after the if before that line I have put the persistence before the else (I'm searching again the web page if I found it I put the link) and in the line mentioned by Ryan I have to replace after the -o option for the new variable. In that page explain that the problem isn´t the mode instead something isn't there that avoid that persistence option were taked in account. Of course I did al that but again the initramfs, so no one knows a real solution, or I do doesn't something.

Forgive me if I have some mistakes I'm not english native speaker.

Jorge Q:

See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/casper/+bug/219192

The post by FlipsideTech dated 2008-04-29 has a patched version of the initrd.gz file. Replace this file and persistence should work.

Thanks Mark, that is the link I was re-searching, I'll download the new initrd.gz file and try it.

Jorge - please confirm if it works. Thanks.

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Jorge Q <email address hidden> wrote:

> Thanks Mark, that is the link I was re-searching, I'll download the new
> initrd.gz file and try it.
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Hello:

Well, YES!!!, it works the persistence work with the instructions of LiveUSBPenDrivePersistent but you have to replace the initrd.gz from https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/casper/+bug/219192 on FlipSide Tech comment on casper directory. I recomend that reformat the FAT32 partition if you have done some tries. Even I can create a new user, right now I'm trying with some virtualization but that is another story.

Good work guys on being Persistent ;-) ...

When I tried it a few times recently, it seemed to work at first, but then
it got a lot of bad sector error when saving/shutting down.
Hopefully, the patch will resolve things.

Might be old news, but just in case..I saw a new post today @
Pendrivelinux.com

   - *New *Ubuntu 8.04 USB Persistent install using the Live CD
   <http://www.proxsafe.net/proxy.php?q=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5wZW5kcml2ZWxpbnV4LmNvbS8yMDA4LzA1LzA4L3VzYi11YnVudHUtODA0LXBlcnNpc3RlbnQtaW5zdGFsbC12aWEtdGhlLWxpdmUtY2Qv&p=1e3>
   - *New* Ubuntu 8.04 USB Full Blown USB install using the Live
CD<http://www.proxsafe.net/proxy.php?q=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5wZW5kcml2ZWxpbnV4LmNvbS8yMDA4LzA0LzE0L3VidW50dS04MDQtdXNiLWhhcmQtZHJpdmUtaW5zdGFsbC8%3D&p=1e3>

--
Individuals can not love others, until they have learned to love
themselves first.
-- WB

Ubuntu will crush Vista.
============,,,================
===========(o o)===============
=======oOO==(_)==OOo===========
http://www.WilsonBradley.com
http://www.myspace.com/wilsonbradley
AOL screen name; WilsonIsON
Yahoo screen name; wilson2bw
MSN Screen name; WilsonIsOn
=======ooooO==Ooooo===========
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===========\_)==(_/=============

Please post if everything working fine.

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Jorge Q <email address hidden> wrote:

> Hello:
>
> Well, YES!!!, it works the persistence work with the instructions of
> LiveUSBPenDrivePersistent but you have to replace the initrd.gz from
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/casper/+bug/219192 on FlipSide
> Tech comment on casper directory. I recomend that reformat the FAT32
> partition if you have done some tries. Even I can create a new user,
> right now I'm trying with some virtualization but that is another story.
>
> --
> feisty 20070210/herd5 persistent mode doesn't work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/84591
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--

Does this bug still exist in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala?
Feisty and Gutsy are EOL now.

I was testing burned disks of current 8.04.4 candidate iso, karmic release iso & lucid alpha 2 iso with a separate USB device and this behaviour still exists (i.e. no state info is saved - no bookmarks or history in firefox, no saved files, etc).

I am setting this bug report to Fix Released as persistent mode has been working for quite some time and there have been no reports of this issue about recent releases of Ubuntu.

Tried it with Ubuntu 14.04.2. Persistence does not work out of the box. Works only when manually adding the boot flag `persistence`.

When building a custom LiveCD adding `export PERSISTENT="Yes"` in `/etc/casper.conf` works.

Bootable USB-sticks should be fixed by editing the `/boot/grub/grub.conf` that you will find on your USB-stick. Replace the following part

```
menuentry "Try Ubuntu without installing" {
 set gfxpayload=keep
 linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash --
 initrd /casper/initrd.lz
}
```
with
```
menuentry "Try Ubuntu without installing" {
 set gfxpayload=keep
 linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash persistent --
 initrd /casper/initrd.lz
}
```
(the new thing here is the `persistent` flag).