[Bug 1851123] Re: Ubuntu 19.10 and focal live cloned create and mount casper-rw partition

[sudodus]

@Olivier,

I think that the developers will stop looking at a bug report after the
bug is fixed. So they might not read what we write here. (A discussion
here is OK for me, but it may not involve the people who can change the
code.)

Until you have collected enough opinion for your issue, there are
workarounds to create a truly live-only USB pendrive:

- You can edit your binary iso file and replace the cosmetic boot
options 'quiet splash' with the boot option 'nopersistent' (both strings
contain 12 characters, so the replacement can be done without any offset
in the following part(s) of the iso file. You can do it with 'sed'

sed 's/quiet splash/nopersistent/' standard.iso > nopersistent.iso

and clone 'nopersistent.iso' or flash directly with

sed 's/quiet splash/nopersistent/' standard.iso > /dev/sdx

where x is the device letter for the USB pendrive.

- You do it with a safety belt using 'mkusb-minp' according to the
following link,

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/minp

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1851123

Title:
  Ubuntu 19.10 and focal live cloned create and mount casper-rw
  partition

Status in casper package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  It is very good that it is easy to create and use a casper-rw
  partition to run Ubuntu persistent live in the versions 19.10 and
  Focal Fossa, and that it is even created automatically, when there is
  unallocated drive space behind the used part in a live drive.

  But I think the system for doing that is 'too eager'. Maybe it is a
  feature that is left from the development and debugging phase.

  - It would be enough (best), if the casper-rw partition is created
  only when it is needed, that is when the live system is booted with
  the boot option 'persistent'.

  - We (I am talking for users who like persistent live drives) can
  accept that the casper-rw partition is created even when the drive is
  booted live only (without the boot option 'persistent').

  - But we think it is a bug, that the live-only system is also mounting
  the casper-rw partition on the mount point /var/log and/or /var/crash
  and keeps it busy so that it cannot be unmounted.

  This way the drive is not really live-only, and it is not possible to
  manage the drive space behind the system in an independent way. For
  example, it is not possible to detach the drive by using the boot
  option 'toram', and it is not possible to repair the casper-rw
  partition when running live in the same drive. It will be necessary to
  have two linux systems to do such tasks.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: casper 1.428
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-18.19-generic 5.3.1
  Uname: Linux 5.3.0-18-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu9
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperVersion: 1.428
  CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
  Date: Sun Nov  3 11:15:29 2019
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Alpha amd64 (20191103)
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm-256color
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: casper
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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