MX Snapshot/Live USB Maker Some Ideas

[mxrd]

Using this really wonderful tools maybe it would enhance the experience a tiny little bit more if

-when burning a live USB and starting from there, the shortcuts in the shortcut-sidepane of Thunar
have no link ( when they are linking to non-home-locations );
maybe it would be useful to be able to choose in the snapshot-tool to remove them

-maybe it would be useful when in the USB-Maker tool a different background could be set,
so that when starting instantly is shining up, that one is on the USB-trip

-maybe it could be useful in one of the tools to have the option for removing workspaces
(out of my xfce-view)

-would be charming when the snapshot tool have the option not only to suggest the name
"snapshot", but easily eg a date prefix/postfix a la 20250505, maybe with version behind ( eg _23-3 )

-would be even more charming, if the usb-maker-file made-by-live-usb-maker would comprize a optional
statement about the system on it

and, of course, to the Devs and Staff: Thanks for these great wonderful tools and the work!

[JmaCWQ]

-maybe it would be useful when in the USB-Maker tool a different background could be set,
so that when starting instantly is shining up, that one is on the USB-trip

I always do that before I create a full system live USB.
I change the Desktop background and I also change the image used by LightDM GTK+Greeter so there's no mistaking that it's a live system that I'm about to login to or am already using.
I have made mistakes in the past forgetting that I've been using a live USB at the time.

I use this for the Desktop:




And this for the Greeter:





The option to remember the last location a snapshot was created in would be nice

[Adrian]

-would be charming when the snapshot tool have the option not only to suggest the name
"snapshot", but easily eg a date prefix/postfix a la 20250505, maybe with version behind ( eg _23-3 )

I don't understand, don't you see the date postfix after "snapshot-"?

[mxrd]

-would be charming when the snapshot tool have the option not only to suggest the name
"snapshot", but easily eg a date prefix/postfix a la 20250505, maybe with version behind ( eg _23-3 )

I don't understand, don't you see the date postfix after "snapshot-"?

sorry for not being clear, i ment the directory;
once upon i time, i named one "snapshot19.4_mobil_20211030"
and of course, i never ever would state that i see everything

[Nokkaelaein]

I change the Desktop background and I also change the image used by LightDM GTK+Greeter so there's no mistaking that it's a live system that I'm about to login to or am already using.
I have made mistakes in the past forgetting that I've been using a live USB at the time.

I do something vaguely similar, more because of aesthetic reasons, but yep:

My preference for running a live system is just keeping it immutable without persistence (other than what project files reside in Live-usb-storage), yet I have added certain startup checks to see whether specific override files exist in Live-usb-storage, altering the session configuration based on them. I use fluxbox, and nitrogen there for loading the desktop background. So one of those override checks I have in place is:

Code: Select all

if [ -f /home/[username]/Live-usb-storage/overrides/x-wallpaper-override.png ]
then
  nitrogen --set-zoom-fill /home/[username]/Live-usb-storage/overrides/x-wallpaper-override.png
else
  nitrogen --restore
fi  

After that, just store an override wallpaper in that location. Then you can change it at will, without needing to alter the live system in any way. Of course you could just decide to permanently symlink your wallpaper from Live-usb-storage at all times and be done with it, but I don't find that as nice :) ... So anyway, usually the live system wallpaper is then something different but still cool, to differentiate it from an installed environment. (To be honest, I find myself running this system live more than installed these days, it just works so well. Hmm, I've also added alternative x sessions for fluxbox, selectable from lightdm, with separate startup scripts based on use case; also detecting running inside VM so that the configuration changes based on whether the system is running on bare metal or not, but that's not quite so relevant to this discussion here.)

[JmaCWQ]

It would also be nice if Live USB Maker did a check before beginning the create process and was able to notify users that there's not enough room on the USB they're trying to use.
I tried to create one yesterday without realising the 4.0 gb ISO was too large for the 3.6 gb USB stick I was trying to use.
It went through the process until it must have run out of space, with a message box that said something like "Live USB Maker has encountered an error" but nothing else.

All I could find in /var/log/live-usb-maker.progress was:

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Starting live-usb-maker 2.41.19-2302
Will use target device sdb (3.6G Verbatim STORE_N_GO)
Will use source  null
Ready to perform partition-clear action on sdb
>> partition-clear
>> done

I then used a larger USB stick, which was successful.
This was for a non-MX ISO, navigatrix x64.iso

My QSI

Code: Select all

Snapshot created on: 20250525_2107
System:    Kernel: 5.10.0-35-amd64 [5.10.237-1] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-35-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet 
           nosplash consoleblank=0 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.18.1 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm 4.18.0 vt: 7 
           dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: MX-21.3_x64 Wildflower June 03  2023 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: Dell product: OptiPlex 9020 v: 01 serial: <filter> Chassis: 
           type: 15 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Dell model: 00V62H v: A01 serial: <filter> BIOS: Dell v: A09 date: 11/20/2014 
CPU:       Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-4590 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Haswell family: 6 
           model-id: 3C (60) stepping: 3 microcode: 28 cache: L2: 6 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 26339 
           Speed: 1098 MHz min/max: 800/3700 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1098 2: 1098 3: 1098 
           4: 1098 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected 
           Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT disabled 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT disabled 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Unknown: No mitigations 
           Type: reg_file_data_sampling status: Not affected 
           Type: retbleed status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Retpolines, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP: disabled, 
           RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected 
           Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell 
           driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0412 class-ID: 0300 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: xfwm4 v: 4.18.0 driver: 
           loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.0x11.2") 
           s-diag: 582mm (22.9") 
           Monitor-1: VGA-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 96 size: 509x286mm (20.0x11.3") 
           diag: 584mm (23") 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5 
           compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio vendor: Dell 
           driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:03.0 chip-ID: 8086:0c0c class-ID: 0403 
           Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio vendor: Dell 
           driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:8c20 class-ID: 0403 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.0-35-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Ethernet I217-LM vendor: Dell driver: e1000e v: kernel port: f060 
           bus-ID: 00:19.0 chip-ID: 8086:153a class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 405.85 GiB (43.6%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Western Digital model: WD10EZEX-75M2NA0 
           size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: HDD 
           rpm: 7200 serial: <filter> rev: 1A01 scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 919.51 GiB size: 904 GiB (98.31%) used: 405.85 GiB (44.9%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 12 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
           dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8 C mobo: 27.8 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2943 lib: 1555 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ bullseye main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mx.debian.nz/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:      Processes: 201 Uptime: 5h 51m wakeups: 1 Memory: 31.26 GiB used: 2.38 GiB (7.6%) 
           Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: N/A 
           alt: 10 Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06 
Boot Mode: BIOS (legacy, CSM, MBR)

@Nokkaelaein

I don't use persistence when using live systems either, the code you posted and practically any other code is beyond me, so I just change the 2 images before creating the snapshot, only takes a few seconds.