I haven't used Linux LiveCDs for a couple of years. But before that, I was quite deeply into it. And I remember that the custom LiveCDs I put together were persistent across the whole root-filesystem. So, some the above doesn't sound quite right...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleancut Callahan
Are there any Live Linux distros that can also enable a user to make & save persistent changes to the Filesystem Folders on a Bootable USB Stick/SD Card? If there aren't any, how can one be made?
|
I think you should keep looking, until you find a LiveCD distro that does what you want. Because there is no technical reason that prevents persistent changes to the whole root filesystem. Seriously, most LiveCDs are based on a union file system like
aufs, and changes can be saved across the whole root filesystem. But if a limitation on that exists, then it is entirely because the designer of that particular LiveCD decided to dumb things down intentionally.
But like I said, I'm not currently using LiveCDs. But if I needed to... well, I believe that Puppy Linux allows you to install new packages, with persistence. And I would look at
Porteus Linux too, which is a specialist LiveCD distro. And I just can't imagine those guys tolerating half-assed persistence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
I don't think there is any live cd that can properly do full updates. Most live cd's installs that you are talking about use a split sort of file system. One is the original live cd part and the other is the persistent part.
|
I agree that yes,the persistent changes are stored separately. But no, I don't agree that this restricts a LiveCD from installing new packages etc. Because basically, a persistent layer can store changes for the entire root filesystem. During boot up, the changes in the persistent layer are transparently superimposed over the read-only layer, and if
aufs works as advertised, then everything in the root filesystem should look similar to how it would with any other filesystem like ext2.
The read-only and persistent layers are typically stored on the USB as compressed squashfs fiiles. But if the persistence layer grows large and unwieldy, then the read-only layer and the persistence layer can also be combined, to create a new larger read-only layer. And to then start anew with an empty persistent layer...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro
As 273 suggests, almost every distro can be used to install to a usb drive just as if it were a real hard drive. An internal and usb is basically a scsi drive to the OS. The only thing you loose is the compressed disk image. It could be replicated if you are tight on space.
|
Well, if your PC uses usb-2.0, then your main performance bottleneck will be data transfer to/from your USB. And it could be very,
very slow. Basically data transfer to/from a USB isn't fast anyway, but its data-transfer is the fastest when transferring large compressed files, which is typically what a LiveCD does. But a full-install to USB does the opposite... it's data isn't compressed, and it contains lots and lots of small files. So the data-transfer times can be large, and your cpu will be forced to sit idle, while it waits for data-transfer from the USB to catch up.
So yes, it is doable. But no, I wouldn't choose to go that way. Not if I could avoid it.