[Fedora-livecd-list] Re: How do I save and restore my overlay?

[martin.x.long at jpmchase.com]

Douglas McClendon <dmc.fedora at filteredperception.or wrote:

>If that doesn't help or answer you question, try to add more detail to 
>your question.

Douglas -

Thanks for the reply. 

I use the live usb tools to create my live USB stick with a 2047 MB 
overlay.  I boot from it and let it run updates. I reboot the LiveUSB to 
make sure it still boots, then I shut down.  I boot a system on a copy of 
Fedora 9 on the hard drive and plug in my Live USB so I can see the files 
on my USB stick. 

I see 2 folders:
LiveOS
and 
syslinux

in the LiveOS folder I see three files:
osmin.img
overlay-FEDORA-3099-53F2
and 
squashfs.img

======
assumptions

squashfs.img looks to be the size of the live iso
overlay-FEDORA-3099-53F2 looks to be the size of the overlay and has 
overlay in the file name 
osmin.img is only 8k probably a boot strap, I'm not sure.
=======

I'm sorry, I can't find anything on the LiveUSB file structure on the 
WiKi.  I've signed on as a writer for the Fedore project so I'd like to 
write it once I figure out what it is.

I was hoping that I could backup the overlay file and the syslinux folder 
from my completely updated LiveUSB stick and restore them to a newly built 
LiveUSB from my backup.

> I'm not entirely sure what you mean.  One thing that is possible is to 
> copy the overlay file from one liveusb and put it on another.  Though 
> the format of the overlay file is inherently tied to the specific liveos 

> it was originally with.  I.e. you won't be able to copy an overlay file 
> from an f9-x86 liveusb onto an f9-x64 or f10-x86 liveusb.  Or even a 
> customized f9-x86 liveusb that you created with livecd-creator/tools.

Nothing fancy - The same USB stick, built in the same way with the same 
iso and the same overlay size.

The overlay file name changes.  I've given the updated file (the overlay 
that was part of the LiveUSB for all of the updates) the same name as the 
new file that is created and left the updated file with its original name. 
I've overwritten just the overlay itself and the overlay and every 
combinarion of the osmin.img and squashfs.img files.

I could never get it to boot.  The boot starts but then hangs.

Ideally, it would be great to specify the overlay and the syslinyx folder 
that goes with that overlay in the command line to build the LiveUSB.

At this point I would be thrilled if I could get a set of manual steps 
together to have an updated system without going through the update 
process.  I loose a day each time.

> From an engineering standpoint, of course anything is possible.  One 
> use case I see, is to use the persistence feature to add an entry to 
> fstab, such that say, /mnt/data mounts to a ext3fs image located on a 
> file on your liveusb.  You can then add a user that has a home directory 

> under there, and perhaps install applications under there.  In this way, 

> you could then copy that ext3fs image file to an f10 liveusb, and then 
> only have to re-do the fstab and passwd modifications, such that 
> everything now pretty much looks the same.

Your suggestion of building a file structure that would transcend 
different releases would be awesome but alas I need to crawl before I can 
run.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again

Martin


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