No persistence file when creating live usb session

[Melvin Garcia]

Binary package hint: usb-creator

I'm trying to test Unity on a live session but the startup disk creator is not really creating a persistent session.

It installs the system and even creates the persistence file but when I use the live session and make changes it loses everything. I've tried my external HDD (which I always use for this) and a usb stick and both have the same problem.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: usb-creator-gtk 0.2.25
Uname: Linux 2.6.37-020637rc2-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Dec 8 13:44:25 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: usb-creator

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

What sort of changes were you trying to make?

Also, did you specify the persistence space be 100% of available space?

[Melvin Garcia (virtualspectre8)]

Yes I specified the persistence to be 100% of available space, like I always do.

I updated the system, installed CCSM and tweaked the new launcher to autohide. Since I had to reboot because of a kernel update, when the system logs in every change made disappears.

I've tried it many times and it always fails. I don't have a clue if it's the Startup Disk Creator or the daily .iso file's fault.

I'm gonna try again with today's image.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Since you reserved 100% of the space to documents, and since the issue occurred after a kernel update, this sounds like bug #562312.

What size is your USB drive?

Try setting your persistence to be a lower value, such as 20% or 50%.

[Melvin Garcia (virtualspectre8)]

My two usb drives are 4 GB Sandisk Cruzer and a 80 GB external Seagate HDD.

I'll try making a smaller persistence file band let you know.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Okay, yeah I also have a 4 GB drive, and found when setting persistence to 100% that it didn't leave room for doing a kernel update. In my case I attempted to install the nvidia driver, but it's obvious that any kernel update requiring initrd changes would fail.

I'll go ahead and dupe this bug report at this time since I'm 99% sure you're running into the same issue. You should find that with a smaller persistence file, things work better. But if not, undupe this bug from 562312 and it can be investigated further from there.

[Melvin Garcia (virtualspectre8)]

Well it isn't exactly a duplicate of that bug, because I've always been able to update the system. My problem is that the live USB creator supposedly creates the persistenced file, but it really doesn't. When I check the available space I get 917.4 or a similar quantity instead of the usual 3.7 GB.

I never got the problem of bug #562312.