Persistent storage on boot stick

Any advice on how to create a persistent storage on a boot stick? I tried

  • resize the stick partition when mounted external using GParted

  • save a file on the Desktop of the live user

but failed. Thanks!

If I am not mistaken, Rufus has support for creating persistent storage for Debian/Ubuntu.

For Arch (-based), there might be more involved.
I found the following. It is for Manjaro but it might give you some ideas while waiting for others to chime in.

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Another question is why the partition cannot be resized for an existing stick and/or why does it fill its entire size?

BTW I use Fedora Media Writer but rather modify the existing stick.

I am afraid I don’t know that. Please wait for more technically well versed forum members to chime in.

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I assume you mean a Linux installation on a USB stick with regular read/write ability.

alma is the tool to do that.

I might be alone here, but I still don’t understand the point of persistent storage on a rolling-release distro installer image.

If you want a portable Arch then install it to the USB (with free drivers only) and use it like a normal distro. If you want a recovery USB then use a distro that’s designed for that. :confused:

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I’m with you on this one. I don’t see the point in persistent usb sticks. Most don’t work well. They are also usually pretty slow. I have tried many and the only one i have any respect for is MX linux but i myself would never even install a distro on a usb stick. On the other hand i have USB 3.0 ssd 2.5" external drives mounted in a case that work as if it’s installed. That’s the way i use them. Sure they are larger but way faster and is a self contained OS with bootloader. Doesn’t affect anything you plug it into. USB sticks are not my thing!

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I have a working EOS installation on a workstation in multi-boot environment. As opposed to other Linuxes, the EOS bootloader is trashed when e.g. upgrading Windows. Since I am lazy, I would like to store the rescue script on the EOS boot stick to spare typing or looking up commands leading to arch-chroot to restore it. On Tails, a persistent storage space seems to work well.

Off topic: the default for a thread in user preferences should be set to watching not to miss any posts IMHO.

Is this a Legacy/MBR system?
For UEFI, that should not “normally” happen.

If UEFI and you still experience this issue, one “workaround” could be to create a new ESP for only EnOS, install its bootloader there and mount it at /boot/efi via /etc/fstab.

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With alma you can basically put your existing installation onto a USB stick and use it as a regular installation. I have used alma to create a USB stick with endeavourOS on it. Very nice for recovery purposes. I have the zfs modules installed on it an all my customized scripts. And I frequently boot into it and update it with pacman/yay/paru. For me this is better for recovery than booting a default live iso image.

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Right. It means an effort which for some reason other Linuxes seem to avoid.

Good idea. I will give it a try.

I forgot to mention that the EnOS live iso seems not to work well on my 4K monitor: tiny fonts and when scaled by 2x, then the taskbar does not function any more.

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