Daily builds are no longer livecd images

[Jerry Vonau]

On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 15:56 -0400, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> > When you use livecd-iso-to-disk to burn a liveUSB, you get a read-only
> > system on the USB stick.
> > 
> > However, if you use the "--overlay-size-mb <size>" to the
> > livecd-iso-to-disk script, it will create a unionfs persistent storage
> > of <size> Mega Bytes _on the same USB stick_.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> I added the "--overlay-size-mb <size>" to the script invocation, so 
> it now is:  'livecd-iso-to-disk.sh --format --overlay-size-mb 600 
> --xo --xo-no-home /media/disk/20090519.iso /dev/sdf1'.  That caused 
> additional file '/LiveOS/overlay-LIVE-AA00-0383' to be allocated on 
> the USB stick when its content was being built.
> 
> [But note that when I run 'livecd-iso-to-disk' on my Ubuntu 9.04 
> (Jaunty) system (with latest kernel released by Ubuntu), I'm still 
> getting the error:  "running kernel cannot mount the squashfs from 
> the ISO file to extract it.  The compressed squashfs will be copied 
> to the USB stick."]
> 
> When I booted the XO using that USB stick;  made system changes; 
> shutdown;  powered off;  rebooted with the USB stick -- the changes 
> I had made had "evaporated".
> 
> ----
> 
> What can I do to make my changes "persistent" when booting an XO 
> from an USB stick ?  [It is not realistic for me to acquire a Fedora 
> desktop system to run 'livecd-iso-to-disk'.]
> 
> Thanks,  mikus
> 
> 
> 
> p.s.  On the USB stick, in the file '/boot/olpc.fth' (generated
>        by 'livecd-iso-to-disk'), the line that sets up the boot
>        parameters specifies: 'reset_overlay'.
> 
>        What does 'reset_overlay' as a parameter do ?  Should it be
>        there ?

That would re-create the "/LiveOS/overlay-LIVE-AA00-0383" file, thus
wiping out the changes made prior to the reboot. I'd remove that from
the olpc.fth file.


Jerry