Comment 12 for bug 1851123

I tried booting a Startup Disk Creator 19.10 flashdrive with F6.
I typed a space and then "persistent".
The drive booted persistent and stayed persistent every time I used this
procedure, otherwise it just booted Live.
I then tried F6 with the word "toram", it booted to RAM.
Then with "nomodeset" and combinations of these and they all worked.
Finally I tried F6 and "nopersistent".
I was able to unmount the casper-rw partition using Disks.
I tried formatting it FAT and NTFS but that did not work.
Finally I was able to wipe the partition using Disks and it just went back
to ISO9660 space.
I lost everything that was in casper-rw, but it was all in the name of
research.

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 9:20 PM sudodus <email address hidden> wrote:

> Exploring the boot option 'nopersistent':
>
> The bug is there, but there is a workaround: add the boot option
> 'nopersistent'. This means that with 'nopersistent' and 'toram' all
> partitions on the boot drive can be unmounted and the drive can be
> unplugged or the casper-rw partition can be repaired or backed up
> without problems.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1851123
>
> Title:
> Ubuntu 19.10 and focal live cloned create and mount casper-rw
> partition
>
> Status in casper package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> It is very good that it is easy to create and use a casper-rw
> partition to run Ubuntu persistent live in the versions 19.10 and
> Focal Fossa, and that it is even created automatically, when there is
> unallocated drive space behind the used part in a live drive.
>
> But I think the system for doing that is 'too eager'. Maybe it is a
> feature that is left from the development and debugging phase.
>
> - It would be enough (best), if the casper-rw partition is created
> only when it is needed, that is when the live system is booted with
> the boot option 'persistent'.
>
> - We (I am talking for users who like persistent live drives) can
> accept that the casper-rw partition is created even when the drive is
> booted live only (without the boot option 'persistent').
>
> - But we think it is a bug, that the live-only system is also mounting
> the casper-rw partition on the mount point /var/log and/or /var/crash
> and keeps it busy so that it cannot be unmounted.
>
> This way the drive is not really live-only, and it is not possible to
> manage the drive space behind the system in an independent way. For
> example, it is not possible to detach the drive by using the boot
> option 'toram', and it is not possible to repair the casper-rw
> partition when running live in the same drive. It will be necessary to
> have two linux systems to do such tasks.
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
> Package: casper 1.428
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-18.19-generic 5.3.1
> Uname: Linux 5.3.0-18-generic x86_64
> NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
> ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu9
> Architecture: amd64
> CasperVersion: 1.428
> CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
> Date: Sun Nov 3 11:15:29 2019
> LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Alpha amd64 (20191103)
> ProcEnviron:
> TERM=xterm-256color
> PATH=(custom, no user)
> XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
> LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: casper
> UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
>
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>
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>