persistent install is limited in storage size (4GB FAT32 Max Filesize Limitation)

[Jean-Paul]

Binary package hint: usb-creator

I created a LiveUSB disk on, in my case, an 8GB usb disk and slided the "When Starting up from this disk, documents and settings will be: Stored in reserved extra space"-option all the way to the right (according to the tool, this would give me a solid 6.8 GB of free room to use within the LiveUSB disk). I put the Intrepid Beta on it (because the daily build of October 14th failed to boot, I tried it). Afterwards, I booted up the LiveUSB disk, this part went fine. But when looking at the free disk space in nautilus, it always gives me at most just shy of 1GB. This is roughly (or maybe even exactly) the same amount that nautilus shows when booting from an actual LiveCD (at least, as far as I've been able to see).

The problems with this are:
1. that I basically can't update since when I try it, I get "no disk space left" errors from synaptic/aptitude/apt-get/whatever
2. somehow the LiveUSB installation claimed the extra disk space, but is incapable of using it; Therefore, I'm effectively losing space on my usb drive.

This is an annoying bug as I can't install a daily build (at least not the one from October 14th, as mentioned before) of Intrepid, and I can't update the beta. Therefore, I'm hampered in my attempts to test Intrepid (installing the preproduction versions on my hdd is not an option).

All this said, I know it is a very young project, and it has great potential; I just think that this is a useful bug to get fixed before the rc of intrepid.

[Evan (ev)]

The Intrepid Beta CD had broken persistence support. Can you please try with the latest daily-live CD and report back on whether or not the issue is still present:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live

[Roel Huybrechts (rulus)]

I had a similar experience with the final Intrepid desktop .iso. We used a (final) Intrepid desktop to create a live usb stick (16 GB in size) from a (final) Intrepid desktop .iso. We set the option "Stored in reserved extra space" all the way to the right, to a value of approximately 15 GB. When booting the created USB device, Nautilus showed we had 3.6 GB of free space left; a good 11 GB being vanished.

Might this be related to the FAT32 filesystem of the USB device (which can handle files of maximum 4 GB)? What's the rationale behind the formatting to FAT32 instead of (f. ex.) ext3?

[Zerocool3001 (timfall)]

Bug <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator/+bug/296163">#296163</a> seems to be a repeat of this with the final version of Intrepid and a 1GB USB stick.

[YoBoY (yoboy-leguesh)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

@Roel Huybrechts: this size problem can effectively be a limitation of the vfat format, have you tried in ext2 or ext3 or other? If it's a vfat limitation, please report another bug entry to signal this and ask for an automatic limitation of the persistent space based on the format of the usb drive.

[YoBoY (yoboy-leguesh)]

@Roel Huybrechts: Sorry, i haven't tested but usb-creator want only vfat and format back to vfat .

[Jean-Paul (jeanpaul145)]

I don't think this problem is happening anymore: I installed the Jaunty Beta to my Sandisk Cruzer 8GB, booted it, installed fglrx, and upon the reboot I only got a completely corrupted screen. That tells me my changes were persistent, albeit not completely the outcome I was looking for in this particular instance. I've already filed a separate bug report for the corruption.
I don't know if Intrepid still has the broken persistence support.

[jruss (jruss)]

This is still a problem. In my case it is definitely an issue with the file size limitations of vfat. I tried to make a persistent usb with jaunty 9.04 beta DVD. Everything went fine and no errors were reported. The usb boots up fine but nothing is persistent across reboots. I went ahead and tried to recreate the USB from the live DVD but this time I looked more carefully at the log in ~/.usb-creator.log. I allocated 5 GB in usb-creator and here is the error in my log:

['dd', 'if=/dev/zero', 'bs=5378073556', 'of=/media/DIESEL/casper-rw', 'count=1']
dd: invalid number `5378073556'
['mkfs.ext3', '-F', '/media/DIESEL/casper-rw']
mke2fs 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
mkfs.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to determine filesystem size

so it failed to create the casper-rw file, but no errors were reported in the gui. The gui indicated that the usb was created successfully and that I should reboot to use it. Ideally when vfat is being used the size should be automatically limited to 4GB with a note indicating why (otherwise you will have a bunch of new bug reports saying it won't let them use more than 4GB). At a minimum when there is an error like this with dd then usb-creator shouldn't exit without any indication that there was a problem.

I will try again but use less than 4 GB just to confirm that it is the 4 GB size limit that is the problem.

[jruss (jruss)]

I have tracked down the root of the problem. Usb-creator in jaunty beta tries to create the casper-rw file as one large block. Notice the "count=1" in the dd command. Actually it should use a reasonable block size like 1k and then create right number of blocks. Block sizes >= 2GB aren't allowed by dd. I don't know enough about dd or filesystems, but I think using a smaller block size is more efficient for something like the root filesystem. This is what is causing the "dd: invalid number" errors in ~/.usb-creator.log and causing the casper-rw file not to be created. If the 4 GB file size is surpassed it will give a file too large error (or something like that). There are patches with this bug that should address both of these issues.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usb-creator/+bug/321544

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.
There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test the current Ubuntu version (10.04). If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #>, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

[Jean-Paul (jeanpaul145)]

I put Ubuntu's desktop image on an 8GB usb stick using kubuntu's front end.
Maybe there's something I'm missing here, but my pc won't even recognize the prepared stick as bootable and goes straight to grub2, even when I specially select the stick from the built-in (in the on-mainboard ROM) boot menu.
Any suggestions?

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thank you for the update. Is this with the Lucid version of usb-creator? Have you tried with usb-creator-gtk/kde? I believe this may be a duplicate of bug 458482. It looks like the same problem, but can you confirm please? Thank you.

[Jean-Paul (jeanpaul145)]

the "kde frontend" I mentioned is indeed usb-creator-kde. I also think you were correct about the problem I mentioned. As such I subscribed to the bug.

I'd love to see this bug squashed but it looks like I'll have to wait for bug 458482 to be fixed; otherwise I can't test it.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Does it make any difference if you use the usb-creator-gtk version at all? Also is it Ubuntu 10.04 version of usb-creator you are using? Which version are you now trying to create a USB disk for?

[Jean-Paul (jeanpaul145)]

Right now I'm trying something to copy the same image I tried before (the desktop AMD64 version of Ubuntu Lucid, not Kubuntu), also using the same version of usb-creator-kde (the Kubuntu Lucid version on AMD64), to the very same usb disk as before.

What's different this time is that I'm using the dosfstools on John S. Gruber's PPA (https://launchpad.net/~jsjgruber/+archive/ppa) to see if my pc will recognize the disk as bootable this time.

But it's a slow process - my pc has been busy creating this image for at least an hour. To be specific, it's the "Creating a persistence file"-stage that's so slow.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Ok Jean-Paul. Let us know if this works for you, and if not can you try with the gtk version of usb-creator please? Also, would you be able to test if it works on the LiveCD of Ubuntu Lucid (to save installing it) as I don't have a USB flash drive to be able to test it.

Also, can you provide the output of "fdisk -l" (that's an L) so we can see how the USB flash drive has been set up with the normal method. It may be that usb-creator simply isn't making it bootable. We can then rule that possibility out. Could also be the motherboard, but until we get that information we won't know. Thank you again. :)

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

usb-creator-kde vs usb-creator-gtk

don't make a difference both of them use exactly the same backend udisk backend.

There is a package around which fixes the boot error at least for me.
I'll push it to the ppa along with the latest usb-creator code, there
were a few fixes in trunk since lucid release.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Thanks Dmitrijs but this report is for the size limitation, the boot problem is in the other report ;)
I wasn't sure if gtk/kde would make a difference and it's always best to check in case :)
If we can get that fdisk -l output we can see what is being done with the flash drive and if anything is missing that should have been done.

[Jean-Paul (jeanpaul145)]

I tried with both usb-creator-kde and usb-creator-gtk;
neither of them produced a bootable image on my usb disk, as expected.
Haven't tested it yet on a live disk yet, but attached is the fdisk -l output. The usb disk is /dev/sdf, my root drive is /dev/sde.

As you can see, the disk is set to bootable, but it still won't boot.
If you need any other info (like the lshw output for example) please let me know.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Why is it formatted for FAT32? Shouldn't it be linux 82, correct me if I'm wrong. Again this is a separate issue and should be put in the other bug report. This bug is purely for the size limitation *not* problems booting from USB. Please add all information regarding booting problems to the other bug report.
I assume that since booting from USB is a problem this size limitation bug can't really go anywhere for the time being. I will mark it Confirmed so it doesn't expire and keep an eye on it. If/when the other bug is fixed or you are able to boot from USB, please report back on this bug so we can do further testing as to why there is only a small amount allocated for the persistent install.
Thank you again :)

[xteejx (xteejx)]

From the other report: "For those of you who have a key that does not boot on every computer, I may have found something in Bug #326701 woth a test: usb-creator does it is not set to LBA (partition bigger than 512mb). To solve the problem use gparted and enable the LBA "flag"" Since your fdisk output doesn't show LBA it may be that the drive cannot access anything past the first 512MB or so. That's the one I was thinking not Fat32/linux ;)

[Jean-Paul (jeanpaul145)]

Well I put Fat32 on it because my ultimate idea is having a usb key that I can use to boot Ubuntu, but also for storing random data. Fat32 allows me to do that, and anything other than Fat/NTFS wouldn't because random windows pc's wouldn't recognize the partition.
Furthermore, I believe that the LBA flag is indeed set (should be visible on the fdisk output).

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Oops, sorry I should've noticed that, very late night!! Either way until that bug is fixed I doubt this one can be solved, so please let us know if you have any joy with the USB booting problem in the other report and we can try and solve this one. :)

[komputes (komputes)]

The 4GB limitation is a maximum file size limitation for FAT32. Supporting other types of filesystems (NTFS, ext3/ext4) is a subject which was discussed at UDS Maverick. After discussing this further with Evan Dandrea this feature will most likely land in 11.04.

[komputes (komputes)]

For those of you requiring a portable Ubuntu installation with more than 4GB of persistent storage, the recommended workaround would be to use ubiquity (the Ubuntu installer) to install directly to a USB disk. Please note that if you do this, be sure to manually specify the MBR/Bootloader in the advanced options at the last step of the installation (which is a bug). See Bug #549756 for more details on the workaround needed when installing Ubuntu to a USB drive.