Trouble making an Ubuntu flavour (dual-boot) USB stick with persistence file(s)

[ubuntu-users mailing list]

Hi,

I try to make an USB stick providing a dual-boot or multi-boot
containing Xubuntu 20.04 + something else, perhaps just Xubuntu 20.10,
all with persistence supported by a file.

I tried Ventoy, but I'm willing to test anything else, too.
Booting into a live user session works without issues, but persistence
doesn't work. Actually the Ventoy menu only shows one Xubuntu entry, no
persistence related entry at all.

At first I run

# ventoy -i -r 13615 -L v1.ventoy /dev/sdf

then I used gparted to reformat the exFAT partition to Ext4.

"you can reformat the 1st partition with other filesystem,
exFAT/FAT32/NTFS/UDF/XFS/Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 are supported"
- https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_disk_layout.html

After that I wanted to add persistence by a file as described by
https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html , taking into account
that "The persistent file/partition name in Ubuntu 20.04 has been
officially changed from  casper-rw  to  writable "
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1236445/casper-rw-persistence-files-not-working-with-20-04
by running

# /opt/ventoy/CreatePersistentImg.sh -s 6400 -t ext4 -l writable
# mv -i persistence.dat xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat

This is the used and probably faulty ventoy.json:

# cat /mnt/VTOYEFI/ventoy/ventoy.json
{
    "persistence": [
        {
            "image": "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso",
            "backend": "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat"
        }
    ]
}





This is how the USB stick does look like:




# lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size,fstype /dev/sdf
NAME   MOUNTPOINT     LABEL      SIZE FSTYPE
sdf                             29.3G
├─sdf1 /mnt/v1.ventoy v1.ventoy   16G ext4
├─sdf2 /mnt/VTOYEFI   VTOYEFI     32M vfat (fat16)
└─sdf3 /mnt/V1FAT32   V1FAT32   13.3G vfat (fat32)


# /usr/bin/ls -hAl /mnt/{V1FAT32,VTOYEFI,v1.ventoy}
/mnt/V1FAT32:
total 0

/mnt/VTOYEFI:
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2.0K Dec 23 11:23 EFI
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 2.0K Dec 23 11:23 grub
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2.0K Dec 23 11:23 tool
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 2.0K Jan  5 07:07 ventoy

/mnt/v1.ventoy:
total 7.9G
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.6G Jul 31 18:51 xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6.3G Jan  5 06:55 xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat



I only edited /mnt/VTOYEFI/ventoy/ventoy.json all other directories or
files stay with the defaults. FWIW I didn't test  casper-rw . I suspect
another user error. Maybe a broken ventoy.json or missing to add/mount
the persistent file manually when running the live session or something
else.

Any hints are welcome!

Regards,
Ralf


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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

On Tue, 05 Jan 2021 09:24:52 +0100, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users wrote:

>After that I wanted to add persistence by a file as described by
>https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html , taking into account
>that "The persistent file/partition name in Ubuntu 20.04 has been
>officially changed from  casper-rw  to  writable "
>-
>https://askubuntu.com/questions/1236445/casper-rw-persistence-files-not-working-with-20-04
>by running
>
># /opt/ventoy/CreatePersistentImg.sh -s 6400 -t ext4 -l writable
># mv -i persistence.dat xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat
>
>This is the used and probably faulty ventoy.json:
>
># cat /mnt/VTOYEFI/ventoy/ventoy.json
>{
>    "persistence": [
>        {
>            "image": "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso",
>            "backend": "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat"

                       ^ ^
Maybe I need to add a leading dash to the files?!
 

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 10:11:32 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>># cat /mnt/VTOYEFI/ventoy/ventoy.json
>>{
>>    "persistence": [
>>        {
>>            "image": "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso",
>>            "backend": "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat"  
>                       ^ ^
>Maybe I need to add a leading dash to the files?!

This didn't solve the issue, so I subscribed to
https://forums.ventoy.net/index.php ... waiting for activation.

I'll report back.

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[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 at 09:26, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> I tried Ventoy, but I'm willing to test anything else, too.

I like and use Ventoy myself, and it's very useful, and works well on
both UEFI and BIOS.

However, I would not expect persistence to work. If you want that, use
a dedicated key, IMHO.

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 14:48:54 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:

>On Tue, 5 Jan 2021 at 09:26, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users
><[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> I tried Ventoy, but I'm willing to test anything else, too.  
>
>I like and use Ventoy myself, and it's very useful, and works well on
>both UEFI and BIOS.
>
>However, I would not expect persistence to work. If you want that, use
>a dedicated key, IMHO.

With some help I got closer, but it's still not working.


longpanda https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1948068#p1948068

Re: [Ventoy] Trouble making an USB stick with a persistence file

ventoy.json should be put in the 1st partition (the bigger partition)
not the 32MB VTOYEFI partition. So firstly you need to create a ventoy
directory maunally under /mnt/v1.ventoy and then put the ventoy.json
there. That's /mnt/v1.ventoy/ventoy/ventoy.json

The 32MB VTOYEFI partition is only for ventoy internal use.


Ralf      https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1948154#p1948154

Re: [Ventoy] Trouble making an USB stick with a persistence file

Thank you longpanda,

now the Ventoy menu shows "xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso" and when
choosing it, the choice between "Boot without persistence" and "Boot
with /xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat" follows. However, when booting
with "/xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-pers1.dat", then after a restart nothing
is kept. Since the default user "xubuntu", UID 999 might be kind of a
guest account, that anyway does forget everything, I added a user
"ventoy", UID 1000. After a reboot the user is gone. I'll try with
"casper-rw" instead of "writable", when I've got time to continue.

Regards,
Ralf

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[ubuntu-users mailing list]

Hi,

the short story, a ventoy update and/or using "casper-rw" instead of
"writable" solved the issue. Persistance works. The longs story:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1948404#p1948404

Regards,
Ralf

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