[Bug 1863672] Re: The 'new' persistent live method starting in 19.10 no longer works

[Akeo]

Thanks for the update.

Initial testing seems to indicate that the extra delaying appears to
work, but I still need to check this out a bit more.

I will point out that during one boot (after rebooting the same machine
a few times), I got the following fatal error:

ln: /tmp/mountroot-fail-hooks.d/scripts/init-premount/lvm2: No such file
or directory

I've only seen it once so far, using the new initrd, and, at the moment,
I don't exactly believe that this is related, but since it mentions
mount scripts, I'm not entirely sure.

Another thing I've been consistently observing (I'll open a new issue --
haven't had a chance to do that yet) is that, when persistence is
active, and regardless of whether the partition is labelled 'casper-rw'
or 'writeable', I'm seeing "access beyond end of device" for /dev/sda
and "I/O error while writing superblock" for /dev/sda2 (peristent
partition) on powerdown/reboot. On occasion, this actually seems to
freeze powerdown altogether and I have to perform a hard reset, whereas
none of this happens when persistence is not in used. If it can be
replicated, you should see it if you follow the persistent partition
process I gave above (again, using either 'writable' or 'casper-rw').

All this to say that it still seems to me like, even if you are doing a
good job fixing problems, the persistent partition handling process of
20.04 appears to be a lot more brittle than it was in 19.10, so I would
still advise you to consider reverting, and wait for a non LTS release
to "upgrade" it...

Oh I have to still URGE you do change your choice of introducing
'writable' as the newly allowed label for persistent partitions to
'persistence', which is what Debian and derivatives use.

By supporting 2 labels, you have a unique opportunity to bridge a gap
that has been causing a lot of pain for many Linux users, by UNIFYING
the means in which users are advised to create a persistent partition,
and finally stop this utter nonsense of having this or that distro doing
something entirely different for persistence, when the fundamental
underlying user-process (add option XYZ to the kernel boot options and
create an ext# partition with label ABC) is the same and has no valid
reason to deviate that much from one distro to another.

So can you please at least switch to using 'persistence' instead of
'writable' for the 20.04 release? If you need additional validation that
Debian Live uses 'persistence' as its persistent partition label (since,
from regularly testing the automated persistent media creation process
of my app with the latest Debian Live I believe I do have a pretty
accurate view of what label Debian requires), you can find some at
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/538665/314167.

I'll post some more about my testing as well as provide a link to that
additional issue I'm planning to open when I get a chance.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1863672

Title:
  The 'new' persistent live method starting in 19.10 no longer works

Status in casper package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I am iso-testing Focal Fossa and I am creating and maintaining tools
  to create live and persistent live USB drives. Lubuntu Focal daily
  live dated 2020-02-12 works. But the current version of Lubuntu Focal
  dated 2020-02-16 (zsynced approx. one hour ago) does not work when
  using exactly the same method using mkusb-plug, that edits the iso
  file to replace 'quiet splash' with 'persistent  ' /12 characters/ and
  creating an ext partition behind it.

  I noticed that the version of casper has changed from 1.438build1
  (when it worked) to 1.439 so I suspect that this has caused the
  failure.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: casper 1.439
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-14.17-generic 5.4.18
  Uname: Linux 5.4.0-14-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu16
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperVersion: 1.439
  CurrentDesktop: LXQt
  Date: Mon Feb 17 20:54:54 2020
  LiveMediaBuild: Lubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Alpha amd64 (20200216)
  SourcePackage: casper
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
  mtime.conffile..etc.casper.conf: 2020-02-17T20:52:45.667205

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