fulltime portable OS, LiveUSB creation options

[roundsquare]

Hello,
I am thinking to make a external usb ssd as my main MXlinux OS drive with persistence. Using a M.2 256GB ssd in a external USB caddy

I have created a 8GB MXlinux bootable installer with the MX live USB maker.

Method 1. With M.2 ssd installed in the laptop. Install the normal way. Then remove the M.2 ssd and put in a caddy
or
Method 2. With the M.2 in a caddy, run Mx live USB maker and pick the M.2 caddy as the target and pick full-featured liveUSB mode

Whats the difference between these creation option?
pros \ cons?

Thankyou.

[Huckleberry Finn]

Imho 1 is better.

That way it'll be a normal installation.

2nd way (if Live Usb Maker doesn't object as "this is not a flash drive, please select blah blah...") it'll be a squashed file-system.

[Adrian]

#1 creates a regular installation (not a live environment with persistency), while Linux is pretty portable there might be some issue with that, on one computer that might show as /dev/sda on another /dev/sdb that can create problems booting, same with video cards, if you have Nvidia on one computer and Radeon on another.

#2 creates a fully-featured Live USB which I think is more appropriate for your scenario. Just make sure you enable persistency.

[Huckleberry Finn]

Ah, yes, if you intend to use that on different pcs, or particularly want a live session.

[roundsquare]

thanks,

[roundsquare]

Hi, I did a snap shot of my laptop. 80GB. Ran the MX live USB maker. Picked live mode not dd mode.
Rebooted to booted to the usb (256GB m.2 in a caddy)
Boots and runs, all files and packages are there.
Do updates and crated a new test.txt file.
rebooted, the updates want to ran again and the test.txt is not there.
What am I missing please ?

[roundsquare]

I did option 2, but its not saving anything. Did a enable persistency by picking - fully-featured Live USB ?

[BitJam]

You can enable (or not enable) persistence on every live boot. You select it from the boot menu. For your system I recommend using static root persistence. The first time you enable persistence it will ask you what size to make the root persistence file. For you I suggest 10 Gig. You can also have persistence enabled by default so you don't have to remember to enable it on subsequent boots.

Once that root persistence file starts to get full, you should do a live remaster which will re-compress the entire (80 Gig) file system and free up all the space in the root persistence file.

Note: there are two different bootloaders on the live system: legacy and UEFI. You may end up using both of them if you run your live-ssd on different systems. You will have to set up persistence a second time when you switch bootloaders.

[Geek3579]

Any full installs I do now are using VirtualBox (or QEMU) . I run the ISO in the virtual machine and install on the target SSD, USB etc.

That way you achieve a full install which is portable and persistent with no risk to your existing drives, except that one must select the correct target SSD, of course. You also need to set the EFI flag in VBoxor you will end up with a Legacy boot only.

[roundsquare]

You can enable (or not enable) persistence on every live boot. You select it from the boot menu. For your system I recommend using static root persistence. The first time you enable persistence it will ask you what size to make the root persistence file. For you I suggest 10 Gig. You can also have persistence enabled by default so you don't have to remember to enable it on subsequent boots.

Once that root persistence file starts to get full, you should do a live remaster which will re-compress the entire (80 Gig) file system and free up all the space in the root persistence file.

Note: there are two different bootloaders on the live system: legacy and UEFI. You may end up using both of them if you run your live-ssd on different systems. You will have to set up persistence a second time when you switch bootloaders.

Thanks, this is the 'penny drop' moment