Alternatives to Debian Live for persistent Debian system on USB
Alternatives to Debian Live for persistent Debian system on USB
You can create a debian Live USB with persistence using the mkusb tool :
How to install mkusb in Debian
These methods are tested in Debian Wheezy. It contains an instruction to install the ppa 'manually'. There is also an alternative to download the file(s) and check the download manually.
The mkusb is tested and work fine on debian jessie and debian Stretch. There is no dependencies problem.
To install mkusb , add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mkusb/ppa/ubuntu xenial main
Import the gpg key :
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 54B8C8AC
Update and install mkusb:
apt-get update
apt-get install mkusb
The command line tool is mkusb-nox (txt mode) , the GUI is mkusb.
The are a few steps to create a Debian Live Persistent USB using the mkusb GUI :
Download the Debian Live ISO from the official website.
Run mkusb from the terminal. Choose d option then validate:
d: dus , guidus, mkusb-dus - New, easy to use
- Choose : Install (make a boot device)
- Choose
p: 'Persistent live' only Debian and Ubuntu - Select your debian.iso file and validate
- Select your USB device
- Select
upefi: usb-pack-efi (default grub from ISO file) then validate - Choose the percentage reserved to your persistent partition then validate
- Select GO and validate (Yes , i want to go ahead), your USB will be formatted and partitioned
The 5 partitions :
partition 1 - ntfs 'usbdata'
partition 2 - bios_grub
partition 3 - fat32 boot,efi
partition 4 - iso9660 - cloned system
partition 5 - ext4 - 'casper-rw'
You can reboot into your Persistent USB when you receive the following message :
Done :-)
The target device is ready to use.
I have not tried that on a live session with persistence but it should not be any different than a regular install.
The live CDs are quite limited but you can add another flavor if you want. Removing one would be a bugger.
There is the "standard" live CD. This is not truly live. It installs the basic Debian desktop stuff and offers the usual DEs as tasksel options. You could pop it on a stick and then try finishing the install from there at tty console.
I have never tried that but see no reason why it wouldn't work. Sounds interesting enough that I may just have to do that.
I eventually used the live-build tools in Debian itself to build a custom image on a separate Debian system. I discovered that using the hdd option to build a binary that consists of separate files (as opposed to an ISO image), and then copying that to the pen drive and setting up Grub legacy on the pen drive, works perfectly. A separate kludge is necessary to boot on UEFI systems. That's what I'm using now.