LM 20 USB with "persistence"

[WHVW]

Hi All:
In a reply to a post on this forum by phd21 on the 30th April 2017, he/she mentions making a bootable LM USB with "persistence", meaning that it would preserve your settings.
How is this done?
Does that mean the changes you've made to the live session or can it be an installed version?

Thank you.

[Menard]

Yes, of course it is for a live session, otherwise what would be different than without persistence ? A normal installation is allways persistent ... no ?

[mikeflan]

Install LM on a USB drive with persistence:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=287353

Install LM on a USB drive:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=287353


Install LM on a USB drive with mkusb:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

[WHVW]

mikeflan, Menard:
Thank you both for responding. Tons of great information.
To follow the "ask first so you don't cry later" rule, I figured: just to make sure that my conception of what "persistence" means jives with reality, I'd better check: "persistence" means to be able copy an install and carry-over all the preferences and settings, such as background colour and "list view", but not necessarily the installed programmes. Am I right?
Let me clarify what I am trying to accomplish:
A: a simple old-fashioned install to a USB for testing, etc. without the aggravation of waiting thirty years or so for a CD to boot.
B: a simple way to make a fresh install with all the preferences set...so I don't have more of that afore-mentioned aggravation of turning off the screensaver, idle timeout, get rid of that absurd "icon display" set this, set that.......
Will I be on the right track?

[Da Londo]

No, nothing will carry-over. You will have a fresh install on your internal disk.

[WHVW]

Da Londo, mikeflan, Menard:
Another idea: would it be possible to proceed thusly:
a: Make fresh, new install.
b: Fine tune it the way I like;
c: Copy the entire thing by making a .deb file using DPKG or some other method (as might be required)?

Thanks.

[mikeflan]

Copy the entire thing by making a .deb file using DPKG

I'd like to see you or somebody else try that and then tell us what went wrong.

I know of no fool-proof way to do what you want. What I do is I don't auto-mount my auxiliary drives at start-up. I manually do that every time with Disks. It takes about 4 seconds to do 3 auxiliary drives. Then I make full disk images of my 512 GB SSD. I can then burn that image to another 512 GB SSD (I have about 4 of those) and place it into another machine. Sometimes it just works, but recently I have to select the nouveau graphics driver in the new machine, and then maybe select the Nvidia driver to use after the next reboot. Everything else just works. I have done this with 3 different cloned machines and have not yet found a machine where this won't work. LM 19.3.

[WHVW]

mikeflan :

Thank you for replying.
If I read you correctly, you are saying that you plug in a drive with an install on it, along with some target drives, all unmounted, (using Disks) make an image of the install (how is that done, I don't know what could make an image of anything that large) then transfer that image to the other drives. Sounds good to me... just what I'm looking for, actually. Is there a special programme needed to do this?

[mikeflan]

Both Foxclone and Clonezilla can do that. There are others too. You burn the Foxclone program iso to a USB and then boot up to that USB. Foxclone is a GUI program and is easy to use. Clonezilla is more menu driven. After you boot up to the image program you take a Full Disk image, and yes, it puts the image (a directory) on another connected disk. Then you can burn that image to another drive of the same or larger size than the original. Foxclone has good documentation. I think this is it:
https://www.foxclone.com/download/foxcloneV46.pdf

[WHVW]

mikeflan:
Clonezilla can be a bit clumsy. I have used it, but then it started throwing errors on everything I tried. I'll look into Foxclone. It seems these programmes work by asking the source disk: is it O.K? rather than copying byte for byte, in succession what it finds.
Thanks.

[mikeflan]

It seems these programmes work by asking the source disk: is it O.K? rather than copying byte for byte, in succession what it finds.

I don't understand that question. Those programs copy block by block for all non-empty blocks.

[WHVW]

mikeflan :

What I mean is all these copy/analysis/clone/repair programmes (at least the ones I've encountered) will just stop dead in their tracks upon encountering an error, rather than saying: "those bytes of data seem to have problems. I'll copy them as I find them, make a note of it, and keep going"
This behaviour destroys recovery efforts because it prevents the arm from continuing through the disk (and on to some (intact) files you wish to copy). Kind of like a gouged groove on a record that keeps returning the needle back to the section before the gouge. So, to carry the analogy a bit further, If you were recording the song on another media, you would give the arm a little push past the obstruction, so you could then play it through (albeit with a glitch) without having to always get up and push the arm.
The "copy/analysis/clone/repair" programmes just won't let you "push the arm" so, you're done.
I imagine that advanced hackers and data recovery services have such programmes (otherwise how could they do it) but I have yet to find them.

[mikeflan]

Agreed. Most will stop dead in their tracks upon encountering an error. But I think there are one or two that do try to work through an error. Maybe Macrium Reflect, or maybe another one. Personally I would just fix the disk if possible before taking the image.

[WHVW]

[mikeflan:

Unfortunately, Macrium Reflect is a Winderz programme.

Personally I would just fix the disk if possible before taking the image

Yes, but how? "Disks", "Gparted" and even fsck have let me down.

[mikeflan]

So fsck says the disk is just fine, heh?

[WHVW]

mikeflan:
Fdisk and Gparted ignore it, (one of my sick disks) Disks and hdparm(8) recognise it but will do very little.

[sanmig]

Yes, but how? "Disks", "Gparted" and even fsck have let me down.

Check ddrescue or its GUI version Gddrescue (from Software Manager).

You are right in the assumption that usual imaging apps will only copy valid, used data blocks, ignoring blocks containing deleted file fragments and likely stop at damaged data parts or fill them with zeros.
Be aware that SSDs and SMR-HDDs use technologies which often prevent successful undelete / recovery.