Mageia forum

Is it possible to make a live usb of Mageia that will save my settings and installed programs?

Thank you.

Well, you can do a regular install to a flash drive, just tried that recently. Works quite good.

Thanks, Dok! I ran into troubles the first time I tried it that way... I'll try it again and let you know how it turns out.

There is bug open to add this feature. Not sure when Thomas (or someone else) has time to do it tho'.

https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7796

It works well to install on USB. ( I used mga2 a couple months ago, should work the same with mga3)
A good trick i think is to use the live DVD to install from, as you will then have broad hardware support so it works on many computers;
It will ask if you want to remove unused drivers, answer no.
As i prefer reliability i used ext4 partition, with journal as usual, but to reduce wear and speed up, in fstab used noatime, nodiratime .. and some flush delay i forgot how to express right now.

Thanks for the tip, Morgano!

I'm still having trouble installing to USB. How much space is need? I have an 8G stick. Thanks.

tkmm wrote:I'm still having trouble installing to USB. How much space is need? I have an 8G stick. Thanks.

8GB's is tight but it can be done.
Probably best to only have one partition of /

Which particular troubles do you have when installing to USB?

doktor5000 wrote:Which particular troubles do you have when installing to USB?

I don't recall the specific errors at the moment... I'll try again sometime in the next few days and capture the errors - if there are any. At least one time I couldn't complete the installation, but I don't recall what errors I was getting.

I have a couple of curiosities: If I am installing the OS to /dev/sdb will it automatically install the bootloader there? Could it be that some issues were caused by either:
A) Installing the OS to USB with the internal hdd detached?
-OR-
B) Installing from one USB to another?

tkmm wrote:B) Installing from one USB to another?

Well, normally not, if you don't unplug them during installation. But that's what i've done, installed from one flash drive to another.
And also the bootloader needs to be written to the "MBR" of the flash drive which you're installing to.

Ah yes, i remember now the quirk!
When the installer asks where to put the boot loader, be sure to select the correct stick (not the hd nor the installer stick!)
To be safe, unplug the normal disk before booting on installer stick, and then the target stick should be sdb
It defaulted to wrong disk for me, probably worth a bug report!
If this happens also with mga3 and you have better detail, please file a bug on the installer.
(search first if there is such bug issued already)

Hello,
I found this topic interesting. Thus I started a page in the wiki funded on this.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Papoteur
I will move it in a specific page after adjusting.
Can you review it?
Thank you in advance.

Hello,
The page is yet at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installing_M ... able_drive

Hi! I want to say using GRUB2 at end of tutorial is not working. There are errors. Other alternatives of bootloaders are also not working for me.

I am thinking of alternatives. about draklive:draklive --record --device /dev/sdb1 ... also need to be updated.
liveusb-creator package can not work with mageia liveDVDs. If i am honest, i cannot get it work also with fedora
if i look on web:
Susestudio looks fine but got errors with network.
live.debian - you can browse files on usb but they are readonly

tadej wrote:Hi! I want to say using GRUB2 at end of tutorial is not working. There are errors.

Can you say us which version of Mageia do you use for that?
Papoteur

I am using Mageia4 Network installer, Free Software CD, 32 bit, 27MB size of boot.iso.

At work also have old usb key debian based with persistance. I can share it so we can study together how this persistent live usb was made and later i hope we get knowledge to build Mageia based persistence live usb. Is deal ok?

As you can see on the wiki page, the recommended iso is a live one.
We are of course interested to a real method with persistant data.

papoteur wrote:As you can see on the wiki page, the recommended iso is a live one.

Yes, i tried this one and works - thanks.

papoteur wrote:We are of course interested to a real method with persistant data.

Of course we are. That''s why i created page dedicated to studying example: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Tadej
I hope this will wake up more interested people which feel free to edit this draft.

Try this it's to make mandriva live persistent it should work with mageia too.
http://lordikc.free.fr/wordpress/?p=674

ozky wrote:Try this it's to make mandriva live persistent it should work with mageia too.
http://lordikc.free.fr/wordpress/?p=674

Unfortunately creating usb stick with this tutorial ended at my computer with boot error

Code: Select all

bio too big device loop0 (2>0)
SQUASHFS error: squashfs_read_data failed to read block 0x0
SQUASHFS error: unable to read squashfs_super_block


Ok it won't work with mageia and it's old method and i didn't tested it myself.

I noticed also this topic appear between https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Wiki_TODO_pa ... user_skill

Since my last post i tried several ugly things to achieve persistance but without success.
From initrd.gz I added to scripts init and usr/sbin/mgalive-root lines:

Code: Select all

mkdir /live_media
mount -t vfat /dev/disk/by-label/MGARWLIVE /live_media -o remount,rw,noatime


Of course i added additional partition on USB named MGARWLIVE.
Boot to live USB was successfull, but partition was not mounted. Not even dir /live_media was presented on /. What i am still doing wrong?

First of all what is exactly a live usb for each one of us?

My first one was this:
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=5501

Then I got myself a 128GB pendrive on which I have 4 partitions, one NTFS for different Windows installations, one EXT4 for different live Linux distros, one NTFS for sharing and general purpose data storage and a last swap partition..

And my now definition is to have all Mageia flavours, install DVDs and live ones, on a partition with all the possible updates and architectures..
I am even trying to combine the small media of about 2GB of each architecture on one DVD.

So; the definition of a live usb should be clear so that we can all work on an easy way, hopefully automatic, for Mageians as papoteur started that page..

Persistent is yet another one to define;

Is it the respect for configuration, updates, user data ...etc

I am one of the interested people in this topic and we sure shall need the Mageia team to modify the script a bit for live media so that we don't modify it ourselves with each new release.

If someone is going to work on that, count on me with you..

To follow here: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=12314&p=72476&hilit=persistent#p72476

New page: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Persistent_live_systems