Trying to run a portable USB install with persistence [SOLVED]

[fehlix]

Does Ventoy offer Remastering?

It's kind of loop-mounting the ISO. Persistence boot option is injected into a re-written initrd.
So remastering is not possible.

[JimMX7]

Just to fire back a quick "thank you guys" for all your contributions. Probably i'll be back at this next weekend, just a quick update: Using either the rufus created USB pendrive or the "MX Live USB maker" version, and then trying a number of the persistence options in the menu before booting into MX Linux (i guess this is always a live version as i see options to "install MX" on the desktop environment still, so assume it is running like if you run a "live" linux from a DVD etc), I have not yet been able to make changes to the running version; some GUI changes like moving the taskbar to the bottom of the screen horizontally and installing Brave browser via the console, adding bookmarks or extensions to the browser (firefox and Brave). Whenever i then shutdown the session/logout the PC/shut it down etc, whenever i then reboot back into the MX usb keydrive (either one of the two i currently have) I have to redo all those changes again.

So i'm obviously not doing something important here, like a manual command to "fix" the persistence onto the USB key? Not sure based on my quick experiments over the last 48hrs or so. So i've used two types of rufus install, both the standard version and the "p" version (special for a specific "persistence" version), i've created the other USB key with the "MX Live USB maker" and had the same kind of issues getting anything to stick on the USB keydrive for the next boot/use. Inside those advanced options of MX linux (on both USB installs) i've tried maybe half of the "persistence" options from top to middle, not yet tried any of the "frugal" options but will look at those if i just can't get the other options to do what I'm aiming for. Does this sound normal? Should i atleast have seen some "persistence" stick or am i missing a step to make it so?

I'll pop back over the weekend and do some further reading to see what the issue might be and try some experiments based on all your advice so far given, and thanks for having such a friendly forum, refreshing and makes me want to stick around and give MX Linux a proper run as i'm loving it, and will certainly be running a full native install on that borked windows system, just really loving the idea of a portable "agnostic" USB keydrive version I can use on any PC and keep my install as I want it across different PC's.

And by the way I really like the general GUI and look and feel of MX, as a windows longtime user, then Linux Mint user for a few years, I think the dev team of MX and antiX (i'm learning the history as i go!) have got something very compelling here, fingers crossed i get past my newbie steps soon. Cheers for now guys.

[m_pav]

Have yo done all the preparatory steps to each machine to facilitate MX Linux?
In the BIOS...
Disable fastboot (if it exists)
Disable SecureBoot**
Enable the Fn key interrupt to choose another boot media, e.g., from USB, there are many titles for this particular item.
Check the status of CSM. If it exists and is enabled, I suggest you turn it off.
** runnung live with persist should work with SecureBoot enabled when using our regular builds excluding AHS variants (KDE uses AHS)

For Dual-booters
In Windows, disable Fast Startup
Provision disk space, the more the merrier, but do not format it in Windows, format it within the Live Linux environment as ext4.
Hint, you can provision a swap partition if you wish, the Live system will automatically use whatever swap partitions it finds. I recommend 8GB for swap.


With these things taken care of, you'll have a good starting point for each machine.

[JimMX7]

Success! (touch wood!)

Ok so i followed some of the advice given in this thread, and found a few other options that made it work for me, as far as I can tell. I had to use the 2xUSB keydrive method as Grok explains here, with a little modification:

https://grok.com/chat/2e8fc626-eace-453 ... c9809b6e23

So i ended up using Rufus for the initial Live USB1 install and then used MX Live USB creator to "clone running live session" onto the second USB2 key drive. Then after removing the first USB1 drive that Rufus created, i booted into the second USB2 (F12 on my laptop brings up the boot menu on boot up) and set persistence options in the advanced menu selection. I went with persist_static, this then gave the options to set the default sizes for "rootfs" and "homefs" during that intital boot into the MX Linux environment. After that first bootup into this USB2 keydrive I installed some things, made changes etc to test persistence was working.

Note: after shutting down and restarting, IF i just boot right into the MX Linux "desktop" it looks like a normal Live session with no persistence. I have to first select the persistence options in the advanced menu, picking that persist_static option to get my changes to load back in. So a small hoop to jump through, it does not automatically boot up with persistence, but it is a small menu manipulation so i'm not worried about it.

The one thing i'm not sure on is keyboard and timezone settings? I did also set those up during the initial setup (my keyboard is French and my timezone is Brussels in Belgium! But my language is English) but it seems these are not kept in the persistence files? I could be wrong on that, and maybe just got nervous seeing them back to defaults before booting into the MX Linux "desktop" environment, so changed them again, just in case i got a keyboard that did not work as intended!

Anyway thanks to all the pointers here, i'm seemingly now working with persistence, which is a huge relief, and i'll test this all out over the coming months and report back on anything i think might help others trying this out. I'm looking forward to my MX Linux road ahead and coming from Linux Mint feel pretty at home so far. Thanks to the devs and guys and gals that made this really nice looking Linux

[fehlix]

The one thing i'm not sure on is keyboard and timezone settings?

Lang, keyboard and timezone are set with LiveBoot at the LiveBoot Menu.
So you would select first Lang,Kbd,TZ and next any of the desired persistence option
and finally, select "Grub Save" under saved options (grubsave boot option).
With grubsave" the live boot-parameter are saved/stored into the grubenv.cfg (text file) under /boot/grub/grubenv.cfg
on the LiveUSB ( not within the running system persistence files)
During LiveBoot-up the LiveGrub reads the parameter back from /boot/grub/grubenv.cfg
and pre-populates the boot-parameter onto the kernel command line.,
also visible as pre-selected within the Live GRUB menu itself.

[JimMX7]

Thanks for all your assistance fehlix! (and others too) Everything is looking good, working well. This is my first "portable" OS and it has huge potential and usage scenarios for me, so i'm stoked to carry on this journey with MX.

Keyboard and timezone settings are all saved in the persistence settings too it seems. Thanks everyone.

[JimMX7]

Just a little update:

All working perfectly. The USB key i used was 32GB, this seems the best minimum size for running MX Linux in this mode (16GB may be a little small for an all on disk setting?).
If I understand correctly using the persistence option of "persist_static" keeps everything running from the USB key, so this may be harder on the USB drive over time, but i need to be able to use it on all laptops/PC's and keep all my settings with me etc.

I was a fan of Linux Mint previously, had a nice dual-boot (with Windows) desktop system; but your MX Linux version seems faster overall (maybe it is lighter on resources than Mint?) and i'm enjoying it as my daily driver.