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I recently installed the newest version of lubuntu live to a USB, but as my USB is only 4 gig it wont save the persistence correctly, I was wondering if there was a loophole, that would let me put in a file to be installed onto the temporary hard drive created in the RAM. so my question is, where is the information to load/ install the applications on the USB.

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    Please tell us: 1. which version (name of the iso file) that you downloaded; 2. which tool you used to create a persistent live drive; 3. Have you got more than one USB pendrive, hard disk drive or solid state drive? Or are you considering persistence in an internal drive?
    – sudodus
    Apr 11, 2018 at 17:11
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    1. I used lubuntu-17.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso 2. i used PDL-Casper-RW-Creator.exe after using rufus to burn it. 3. i have two 4gb usbs and 1 1gb usb and i cannot use the hard drive on the computer (work) Apr 12, 2018 at 2:55
  • The information to load/ install the applications on the USB is stored on a file or partition named casper-rw, Casper-rw can be located anywhere on the boot path from a partition on the internal drive to a partition on the Persistent USB to a file on the root of the USB to a folder anywhere on the drive if the folder name is listed as persistent-path in grub. Apr 17, 2018 at 17:46

1 Answer 1

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What you can do with your two 4GB USB pendrives

I think the best thing you can do with your current USB drives is the following.

  • Boot from the drive with Lubuntu 17.10.1 (which is live-only)

  • Install mkusb,

    sudo add-apt-repository universe  # only for standard Ubuntu
    
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa  # and press Enter
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi
    

    This works but will not be persistent.

  • Make the lubuntu-17.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso file available to the live-only system (by connecting a drive with the file and copying or downloading the file again).

  • Use mkusb to create a persistent live Lubuntu system in the second 4 GB USB pendrive. See this link: help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent

    Select 100% for persistence (which may cause complaints, but it should work anyway).

  • Shutdown and remove the first (live-only) USB drive.

  • Boot into the second and now persistent live USB pendrive. You can stop here.

  • If you want more drive space for persistence, you can connect the first (live-only) USB drive.

  • Use gparted to

    • remove the partitions on the first (live-only) USB drive,
    • create a partition with an ext4 file system
    • and put the label home-rw on that partition.
    • If problems with gparted, install mkusb in this persistent live system and use it to wipe the first mibibyte. After that gparted should work (Select 'device' and create a partition table and after that a partition ...)
  • Reboot into the persistent live USB drive and select Try Lubuntu (not with persistence).

    • Connect the home-rw USB drive.
    • copy the content of /home to the home partition, dry run to check,

       sudo rsync -Havn /media/lubuntu/casper-rw/upper/home/ /media/lubuntu/home-rw
      

      and the real copying (without the option n)

       sudo rsync -Hav /media/lubuntu/casper-rw/upper/home/ /media/lubuntu/home-rw
      
  • Reboot with both USB pendrives connected.

    • If you cannot select the correct USB drive for booting, the one with the operating system, you can boot and when at the grub menu connect the other USB drive (with home-rw). Then continue from the grub menu.

    • Now you should have a persistent live system with a maximum 3 GB casper-rw partition for the root file system (to install programs etc) and a 4 GB home-rw partition for /home, and you can use a total of 7 GB for persistence.

    • When you have confirmed, that your system is persistent, and that it uses both casper-rw and home-rw, you can remove /media/lubuntu/casper-rw/upper/home/.

Check that it looks like this:

You can right-click on the screenshot and open it in a big window to see it in full size.

enter image description here

Command lines and output from them:

lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs           384M  6.1M  377M   2% /run
/dev/sdc4       925M  925M     0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0      863M  863M     0 100% /rofs
/cow            2.6G  137M  2.3G   6% /
/dev/sdb1       3.7G  8.0M  3.4G   1% /home
tmpfs           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           1.9G  4.0K  1.9G   1% /tmp
tmpfs           384M  8.0K  384M   1% /run/user/999
/dev/sdc5       2.6G  137M  2.3G   6% /media/lubuntu/casper-rw
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ sudo parted /dev/sdb p
Model: SanDisk Cruzer Blade (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 4005MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  4005MB  4003MB  primary  ext4

lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ sudo parted /dev/sdc p
Model: JetFlash Transcend 4GB (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 4052MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags
 2      1049kB  2097kB  1049kB               primary  bios_grub
 3      2097kB  258MB   256MB   fat32        primary  boot, esp
 4      258MB   1247MB  989MB                primary
 5      1247MB  4051MB  2804MB  ext2         primary
 1      4051MB  4052MB  681kB                primary  msftdata

lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ sudo lsblk -f
NAME   FSTYPE   LABEL               UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
loop0  squashfs                                                          /rofs
sda                                                                      
├─sda1 vfat                         AD68-7CA2                            
├─sda2 ext4     lubuntu             0162276e-c99e-43b5-87c3-59bb064af44b 
├─sda3 swap                         b66eb718-af47-41d0-9932-e35cdaae11c3 [SWAP]
└─sda4 ext4     xubuntu-core        ad262cdc-ba80-4536-b686-1caf1b5ef441 
sdb                                                                      
└─sdb1 ext4     home-rw             d43d50f7-f372-47da-9f22-eb075e725164 /home
sdc                                                                      
├─sdc1                                                                   
├─sdc2                                                                   
├─sdc3 vfat     usbboot             BF5D-50BE                            
├─sdc4 iso9660  Lubuntu 17.10 amd64 2018-01-06-00-29-08-00               /cdrom
└─sdc5 ext4     casper-rw           03f25a82-d74b-497e-b86e-a6efaf749d6f /media/lubuntu/casper-rw
sr0                                                                      
zram0                                                                    [SWAP]
zram1                                                                    [SWAP]
zram2                                                                    [SWAP]
zram3                                                                    [SWAP]
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ sudo lsblk -m
NAME     SIZE OWNER GROUP MODE
loop0    863M root  disk  brw-rw----
sda    111.8G root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sda1   512M root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sda2    15G root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sda3   3.9G root  disk  brw-rw----
└─sda4    15G root  disk  brw-rw----
sdb      3.7G root  disk  brw-rw----
└─sdb1   3.7G root  disk  brw-rw----
sdc      3.8G root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sdc1   665K root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sdc2     1M root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sdc3   244M root  disk  brw-rw----
├─sdc4   943M root  disk  brw-rw----
└─sdc5   2.6G root  disk  brw-rw----
sr0     1024M root  cdrom brw-rw----
zram0  478.9M root  disk  brw-rw----
zram1  478.9M root  disk  brw-rw----
zram2  478.9M root  disk  brw-rw----
zram3  478.9M root  disk  brw-rw----
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ 

More powerful alternative

Things will work better (and be easier), if you get a fast USB 3 pendrive with at least 16 GB, and create a persistent live Lubuntu system in that drive.

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