Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

[linxuser]

I just wanted to post this. I had gone thru getting 8.04 persistent working on a 64GB flashdrive so that part of it is searchable with many good leads and experiments to go thru as guides. Mostly posts by Qqmike. Thanks for all your posting on this Qqmike. I'd thought to add Gparted Live. So I've been experimenting with my 2GB flashdrive. I used the grub method to make
the 8.04 persistent USB flashdisk:

Qqmikes post 2829
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...6353#msg106353

----- Kubuntu HH 8.04 on Live Persistent Flash Drive
using GRUB (no Syslinux)
Bug fix: It addresses a well-known bug at the time
“[hardy] livecd: keyword "persistent" results in busybox and (initramfs)”

To make a Gparted-live partition, I found a link:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

The area for linux install is:

Extract files and make USB flash drive bootable under GNU/Linux

I used Gparted-live CD. Resized kubuntu8 partition to almost smallest allowed for it, leaving some room for editing /boot/grub/menu.lst later. I also resized casper-rw to 1.2GB. Moved each partition to the end of USB flashdrive's available area. Leaving me with space to create a 170MB fat32 partition and then labeled it GPARTEDLIVE. I then made the GPARTEDLIVE partition bootable. I followed the instructions from http://gparted.sourcforge.net/liveusb.php to install gparted-live to it. Afterwards booting it to make sure it worked. Back to hard drive kubuntu to edit
/media/kubuntu8/boot/grub/menu.lst.

## I'll edit this later ...-

[later edit] I added this boot selection to dev/sdb2/boot/grub/menu.lst:

title ***New*** Gparted Live Version 0.4.5.3
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

So grub is chainloading to syslinux on /dev/sdb1.

[end edit]

I then used konsole:
fdisk /dev/sdb ## my flashdrive comes up as that.
[Correction edit here, did NOT have to move the boot partition to /dev/sdb2.] I had to also rerun grub using geometry (hd1), root (hd1,1), setup (hd1), and quit. I've tested it and it works fine. Very cool, I think. 8.04 persistent and Gparted-live on a 2GB flashdrive.

P.S. I would've liked to have just created the GPARTEDLIVE partition as new, but it'd be /dev/sdb3. And I think it would work except you might not be able to view the GPARTEDLIVE partition in winDoze, so I actually backed up kubuntu8 and casper-rw to my /dev/sda8 's /home/\\\/Documents/Backups/. I attempted to do this with keep, but I didn't understand what it was doing, then deleted all the partitions and created the GPARTEDLIVE fat32 partition 1st so it could be /dev/sdb1. ([edit] I could have made it 3rd but not being /dev/sdb1 winDoze probably wouldn't be able to see it.) So winDoze would for sure be able to see it. I then recreated kubuntu8, casper-rw at the end. Resized casper-rw to 1.2GB and moved kubuntu8 right ahead of casper-rw. And resized GPARTEDLIVE to fill the rest, Making any available space accessable in winDoze. I also had to edit my /media/boot/grub/menu.lst so all other selections referenced (hd0,1) instead of (hd0,0) for boots to kubuntu8. (being that on my new partition /dev/sdb - kubuntu8 was now /dev/sdb2 instead of sdb1) I found that grub didn't like more than 1 active partition on the flashdrive, so my kubuntu8/boot/grub/menu.lst chainloads /dev/sdb1 and boots Gparted-live. Unfortunately kubuntu8 persistent didn't work with the restored casper-rw partition. Even with just /dev/sdb3/home/ retained so I had to start over with a 1st time persistent (clean casper-rw) but then persistent works.
Its cool.

[Qqmike]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Nice work, linxuser.

Btw, here's another of my how-to's that fits into this "bootable flash drive" thing, also putting GParted Live USB on the UFD using GRUB:

How To Make GRUB Thumb Drive
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081748.0
How to install K/Ubuntu 7.04 to an external USB hard disk drive (HDD), Reply #1

1 How-to do it: The basic how-to
3 USB drive shifting: Very important! Super Grub Disk for USB usbshift
4 Appendix: Put GParted in the same partition with SGD
List of Notes
Note 1: BIOS issues, assumptions: “Boot from USB”
Note 2: Compressed files (bz2 & bzip) and using Ark in Kubuntu
Note 3: Using the special SGD USB
Note 4: Use K3b (in Kubuntu) to burn your GParted Live CD
Note 5: How to zero-out your flash drive
Note 6: Setting labels at the command line
Note 7: Open a file manager as root
Note 8: Copying hidden folders and files in GUI and CLI
Note 9: Accessing files on a downloaded iso file (without burning a CD)
Note 10: Find out how Kubuntu & GRUB see the flash drive
Note 11: Using GParted Live CD -- logistics
Note 12: md5sum (of downloaded files)
Puppy Linux on USB Flash Drive (UFD) Reply #9.
******** And --->
Super Grub Disk, GRUB, GParted & Puppy on a flash drive Reply #10

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Thanks again Qqmike. And I should say thanks to everyone else's input/suggestions, and dibl's work on getting persistent / storage usable in winDoze also work.

I see by your last reply these posts may be un-needed and/or redundant but thanks for all the heads-ups on your posts, Qqmike. I'll check em out as I find time.

[Qqmike]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Well, now ...........
strictly speaking, "these [my] posts" are neither "un-needed" nor "redundant."
More accurately stated, and to your credit, you are discovering these things on your own.
And that's about how I did most of what I've written about--reports of my own experiments and trial-and-error.

There's plenty of room around here for more how-to's should you stumble upon a twist or something different or even a better version of something that's already done.

Nice work, again, linxuser.

[dibl]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

I agree with Mike -- there is no evidence that this forum has too many examples of anything that is useful!

Thanks for your contributions linxuser!

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

O.K. thanks for the info Qqmike and dibl. I'm posting this latest change I made to the 2GB flashdrive. I wanted to make more room available to the fat32-GPARTEDLIVE partition but gparted-live CD wouldn't let me do it. Probably cause of something to do with the way makeboot.sh made syslinux on /dev/sdb1 (GPARTEDLIVE partition). It would only let me delete it, so I did. I then booted to hard drive kubuntu to open a konsole and ran fdisk /dev/sdb. I created a new (n) primary partition (p) number 1 using the space I'd freed up while in gparted-live CD., and finished with write to disk (w). Then booting up again with gparted-live CD, I added label 'GPARTEDLIVE' and flagged it as boot. Then returning to booted in hard drive 's kubuntu I re-followed the steps as before making GPARTEDLIVE partition (unzipping gparted-live-0.4.5-2.zip to it, and running /media/GPARTEDLIVE/utils/linux/makeboot.sh) That put everything back to the way it was, giving some of casper-rw 's space to GPARTEDLIVE. My current space available GPARTEDLIVE has changed from 170MiB to 500+MiB.

[Qqmike]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Not a bad idea to give GParted Live some more space. As you know, the program itself doesn't require much room. However, while in a GParted Live session, you can use the Terminal and save things to root's home (/root). Also, TestDisk/PhotoRec are part of GParted Live, and you may wish to save recovered partitions/data to /root, just temporarily (of course, you can also save to a flash drive or another HD).

[dibl]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

@linxuser, here's something that might interest you, and maybe you'd like to try making a boot USB stick out of it:

http://partedmagic.com/

Here's why it is intriguing:

- when it boots and loads, it loads itself 100% into memory, and ejects the CD (leaving the optical drive available for other things, like burning a CD)

- it is developed, so I am told, by the author of GParted

- so POSSIBLY one could make a bootable USB stick, boot the system, and then eject the stick and have the entire computer including USB connections available for whatever you want to do next. If you went this way, you probably wouldn't care about persistence, so you could do it by booting it (the bootable USB stick), mounting the ISO image and letting it load, then unmounting and ejecting the USB stick.

OK, I'm talking out of my butt, but I think this could work.

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Cool piece of software, dibl. I'm running in it from cd load in ram. Messed around with the partedmagic-usb download but don't understand how to get it running. But cool running in ram. It has wireless and I'm posting this on it's Firefox 3.5 Preview. I'm gonna mess around with it for a bit before going to sleep. Thanks for the link.

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Woke up and was messing aroung with partedmagic CD. I came across a menu item System Tools -> Make Parted Magic USB. It walks you through. It explains how to copy files to your USB, gives you the info to install syslinux on the partition, etc... End result using my 8GB flashstick, was it was installed to the fat32 DATA partition with syslinux. I copied the /boot/grub/menu.lst from my 2GB flashstick to the 8GB's kubuntu8's /boot/grub/menu.lst and edited the line for gparted-live to say Parted Magic 4.2 and that was that. It works, as I'm on it now. I haven't used Firefox 3.5 before, but it seems the same. (Firefox 2 on my hard drive kubuntu.) Thanks, dibl. Now it's a storage between linux, winDoze,, kubuntu 8.04 with persistent, and Parted Magic. Neat. I can go back to sleep now.

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

REALLY COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Parted Magic saved it's current environment and settings to the USB for future boots. (Menu -> System Tools -> Saving Parted Magic - [radio button]2:Save the current enviroment's settings for future sessions). "you have to have the USB stick with partedmagic inserted." It's like persistent except I haven't found how to make it save current automatically. It's probably there somewhere unless it's already enabled upon first run. It's booted in it's default, running in RAM.

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB


Just did a reboot to USB's (grub menu) -> Parted Magic 4.2 -> (chainload) -> partedmagic's syslinux menu -> the default (1st) option and it restored my bookmarks i.e. settings. For cool.

[dibl]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Heh -- I thought you'd like that! Good job!

[Qqmike]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

May be time for me to (finally) have a look at partedmagic, which dibl has been promoting for a long time now.

Quite a nice list of programs included, including Firefox (which explains linxuser reference to such -- I couldn't figure out where the FX was coming from!). I also notice programs like dcfldd -- nice (it's a souped up version of dd, comes with progress reporting).
Programs included
http://partedmagic.com/programs.html
And adding programs looks easy enough (certainly for USB):
http://partedmagic.com/documentation...-programs.html
Of course it is GParted-based, so that part is easy and familiar, but the addition of FX is nice, inside the partitioning program.
Well, it's on my TODO list now.

[linxuser]

Re: Added Gparted Live to Hardy persistent USB

Qqmike, dibl,
partedmagic is a cool program. I'm by no means experienced enough to exploit what it most likely is potential of. It's slow on the 64G USB. Works fine on 8GB USB. Did it on fat32 partition there and it's on partition table thats in order. I don't think I have it on 2GB USB. I posted a final edit on the other subject about 64GB ---

--[EDIT - I FOUND 64GB FLASH STICK TO BE FALSE/COUNTERFEIT?]

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...3856#msg183856

Its been fun.