Difficulties w/ LM 19.1 "live" persistence

I ran Mint on a USB stick for a couple years on my work laptop. So in a sense I was dual booting my work laptop. During the day, Windows, and at night Mint. You don't need to do anything special to have "persistence". You need installation media, this is the Mint installation iso. I have several USB sticks, so I used one for that. I got a great deal on a 128 gig stick so that was the one I used for installing Mint to. Boot up to the installation media, insert your OS stick, then start the install as you would to a hard drive. When it gets to the point of choosing the disk and disk layout, make sure you select your correct destination USB stick (don't accidentally select your hard drive). Then before going to the next screen, ensure you select the option to install the boot info to the same USB stick. If you don't, you won't have a bootable stick. Just as an FYI, the entire stick can be formatted to ext4. Then after the install you have a normal installation of Linux (Mint) on the stick. All updates are written to it. While it could have been slower than if it were written to a hard drive, it ran perfectly fine that way. I never thought it was slow. The only reason I don't do it that way anymore is because I bought my own laptop and don't need to dual boot my work laptop anymore.
 


RE: Technojunkie;

Appreciate your response. I see that you've not read some of my other posts, but you are in a minority...by that I mean your stating it's OK to "install" to a stick. I for one, agree and that the "possible" degradation of the drive due to the many read/write cycles isn't what some think it'll be. I've gotten a lot of grief for suggesting it would be better to install than to run live... concerning a pendrive. Now...you mentioned "Then before going to the next screen, ensure you select the option to install the boot info to the same USB stick. If you don't, you won't have a bootable stick." OK...forgive me....I'm not sure where, in the "install" is that option? or that I've ever seen it when performing an install....but I'll surely look for it. I, also, believe an 'install" would solve the "persistence" issue I've been having. I only backed-off installing to a pendrive because of all the flack I received. After "bing" about the subject (installing vs. "live") and reading an extreme amount of information and discussions, I feel installing is a better, more efficient method and am not concerned about a premature "wearing out" of the drive. Curious...I've been doing a lot of reading up on using "dd" for installs especially concerning pendrives, have you ever used "dd" and if so, your thoughts on it performance.

THANX:

;)Rick
 
The pen drive I used still works. I probably used it on that work laptop for at least 2 years. As I said, I had Mint on it, which doesn't get a lot of updates, compared to Neon which I use now on my personal laptop. If you install it once and only do updates and personal document creation, I'm sure you'll get plenty of longevity out of your pen drive as well. I wouldn't install a website and database on it that's going to be connected to by hundreds of people, but a personal Linux box isn't that big of a deal. And as for 'receiving flack', tell them it's your computer, you'll do what you like and if they don't like it they can kiss your behind :). The only thing I'd totally suggest is that saving important docs should be backed up somewhere else (second pen drive, external hard drive, etc).
For DD, I only use it for writing ISOs to pen drives, and previously CDs. I know others on the forum suggest other processes/apps, but I've never had issues using it and I don't need to install anything to use it. Here's the command line I use. You only need to modify which ISO you want to use for the write (including path for you) and which sd(b, c, etc) you want to write to.
sudo dd bs=4M if=/home/carl/Downloads/LinuxDistros/Neon/neon-user-20190502-1122.iso of=/dev/sdc
The only thing is this doesn't give you any options like the persistence partition, you just basically have a CD Rom to boot to.
 
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"Then before going to the next screen, ensure you select the option to install the boot info to the same USB stick. If you don't, you won't have a bootable stick." OK...forgive me....I'm not sure where, in the "install" is that option? or that I've ever seen it when performing an install....

You may have to choose "Something else" at the partitioning screen. Then the next screen, at the bottom, gives you the choice where to put the bootloader. Be sure your other options at the top are correctly set also.... that you are using your USB drive and that you have at least set a mount point (/) on the USB to install into. Below are a couple of pics I grabbed off the web (that show a hard drive install to /dev/sda4). Personally, I would not put a SWAP partition on a USB either.

installer-install.png



installer-partitions.png


Cheers
 
RE: Technojunky & atanere;

Wish to THANK both of you for your your contributions. I believe I'll go the "install" route. I (nor many others) can explain why I've encountered so many different issues since the use of LinuxMint 17.3. (if you look up my threads, you'll see what I'm talking about). Plus, the inherent "If you don't do what I say...then you'll be dammed to hell and your stupid at that!!!" Geez...got so much of that kinda response. Just responded (with intelligent language and prose) to one self-appointed "guru" who took offense to my NOT employing HIS ahmmm..."suggestions".(actually...he seemed to think they were God-sent..him being God!) So, #1. it was refreshing to not have to deal with a lot of backlash and detrimental attitudes 2. To fly in the face of the masses and "go your own way". Why do so many have such a problem with that? So, here's my thoughts (NOT rigged, set-in-stone)... I believe(?) using the "install" to the "stick" will work well, and would solve the "persistence" issue(s) I've been dealing with. I wish you could see just how many "professors"(LOL) have challenged that thought. Alright, just one last little question: have either of you used dd to "install" and .iso and if so, I would entertain your thoughts about it!.
THANX;
;)Rick
 
Alright, just one last little question: have either of you used dd to "install" and .iso and if so, I would entertain your thoughts about it!

Hi Rick! Yes, I use dd somewhat regularly. It's a powerful tool, but you have to be especially careful about the "output file" as it will overwrite the target drive without warning. It doesn't ask, "Are you sure?" :eek::D

But dd does not fully "install" the Linux operating system to a flash drive, like we were discussing above. It also doesn't provide persistence. Basically, it just burns the .iso image to a flash drive and makes it bootable... similar to Rufus, Unetbootin, PenDriveLinux, and all the rest. Then you can use the flash drive to do a full install to a hard drive. dd also doesn't give any kind of progress report (unless there is a switch that I'm unaware of).... so once you give the command, you just have to wait patiently for it to finish.

Let us know if you need any examples on using it.

Cheers
 
I use DD as well. Like @atanere said, you have to just sit an wait for it to finish, but it usually only takes a minute to complete, for me. Nice thing about it is that you don't have to install anything to use it, it's already installed by default. I have a persistent home drive partition where I have a list of commands that I don't want to forget because I don't use them everyday. I have the dd line in it so I just have to update the ISO name and copy and paste into terminal.
 
RE: atanere

Thank you for responding. Quite a bit of useful information. I will heed your advice and give those distro's a look/see. I'm still running/learning puppy, which is unique and quite a bit different than LM. But, it has been an ongoing "learning" experience and there's nothing wrong with that!! As far as my endeavor with the "persistence" issue of LM 19.x. I believe I'll just install it to the pendrive and that should solve a lot of issues. I've done a bit of searching about "install to a USB stick" and have come to the conclusion that, really, it's not a bad idea. The flack I've received(not here) about it wearing out the drive isn't worth the alarm some make it out to be. And besides, it's my drive so WTH!!! Boy, I wouldn't be allowed to express that opinion over at https://forums.linuxmint.com/!! You wouldn't believe all the sh*^ I've received there. I'm thankful that is not the case here. Now, after a few tweaks with the LM distro, I'll let everyone know the results and would gladly entertain any suggestions/cautions/ advice anyone would care to pass along. And, I'll check out those distro's you suggested. Never hurts to teach an 'ol dog new tricks!!! Thanx to all who contributed to this thread!

:D Rick
 
Hopefully you have your pen drive working as intended by now. Something you should consider is this thread https://www.linux.org/threads/ssd-support-in-linux.23652/#post-70274. It can help extend the life of your pen drive Linux. And remember, regardless of this, backup any important files either to a legit backup system or by copying them to the hard drive of the computer you're dual booting....just in case your pen drive dies. It can happen simply by dropping an item on it while plugged into the computer.
 
EVERYONE:

Well, wish I could say this was going to be a "turned out well" chat. Alas, that's not to be. At the third session of the "install" the O.S. crashed completely. Once again I reinstalled. That "install" was fraught with lags and freezes. Tried to "work them out", but it just got worse. I've since deleted everything and am back to the drawing board (goggle/bing). There just seems to be no end to the difficulties(?). I looked at atanere's screen shots of the install. Really, don't no what I did that was any different. Did find out why the O.S. was not recognized on the second partition...MSWin does not recognize any second, third...etc. partition without doing some modification to it's O.S....which is a minor nightmare and impossible for me to accomplish for I do not have admin rights to my work or the library's comps. So, for now, I'm burning up youtube and help forums trying to understand just why I can't install an O.S. and have it be stable. I've read many others accounts of how they are doing the very thing I'm trying to accomplish. Well...off to "beat-my-head=against-the-wall" a bit more. Appreciate EVERYONE's help!!!
 

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