Follow this tutorial to create a Live usb flash drive with persistence on a separate partition, allowing persistence over the 4GB FAT32 file size limit.
Benefits of persistence and separate partition over full installation:
- persistence not limited to 4GB (on par with full installation)
- compressed Live image, the gain is around 2,6GB disk space, allowing the use of a 8GiB usb flash drive
- non persistent Live session still available, can be handy in some situations
- read only base image, persistence can be reset without reinstalling, boot a Live session to backup your /home data and personal settings, then reformat casper-rw.
Code: Select all
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot all main'
wget -q -O - http://liveusb.info/multisystem/depot/multisystem.asc | sudo apt-key add -
apt update
apt install multisystem
- a 2GB FAT32 partition for Multisystem and Linux Mint iso image. Multisystem can offer to boot any iso image, so you are free to decide a larger FAT32 partition to install more iso images.
- an ext2 partition labelled
casper-rw
lowercase for persistence. ext2 filesystem is fast and has lower workload over ext4, so should be sufficient for such usage. You can format to ext4 if you prefer.
- insert the usb flash drive, Linux Mint should mount available partitions automatically. If you configured Linux Mint to handle removeable drives differently then mount the FAT32 partition (click on said partition).
- launch Multisystem and select usb flash drive partition to use. On first launch Multisystem will initialize the partition, follow the steps suggested regarding the label and grub.
- from main screen install Linux Mint iso image
- click the eye icon to make appear advanced options
- left click linuxmint-18-cinnamon-64bit.iso, then press the pen icon to edit boot options.
persistent
, press Backup button to save boot options. Note that for an unknown reason when returning to boot options persistent does not appear but was properly saved.
You can check if necessary:
select Menus tab > GRUB settings > grub.cfg > search for wordpersistent
Should appear line starting withlinux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz persistent
...
Left click iso image entry and enter option
Tips:
To launch a Live session from flash drive, on startup from Multisystem screen edit Linux Mint entry and remove persistent parameter.
Nemo automatically mounts casper-rw partition. When persistence in use, casper-rw should not be considered as a removeable media, hence not mounted as is. You can change this behavior in Nemo Preferences > Behavior > unselect Automatically mount removable media.
Use Multisystem to create multi boot usb flash drives.
Multisystem also offers to enable persistence by creating a casper-rw file container up to 4GB on the FAT32 partition.