Ubuntu Live CD Persistent Home on usb key.

[James Cummings]

On 6/11/05, James Cummings <cummings.james at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/10/05, Dennis Kaarsemaker <dennis at kaarsemaker.net> wrote:
> > On vr, 2005-06-10 at 15:37 +0100, James Cummings wrote:
> >
> > > Paul: I've been assuming that because it was possible in Warty, that
> > > is is possible *somehow* in Hoary, and it is just the syntax or steps
> > > or instructions have changed.  Are you saying that it currently is not
> > > possible to do persistent home directories in the Hoary LiveCD at all?
> >
> > Afaik it is not possible on the hoary LiveCD. The Hoary livecd uses
> > kernel 2.6 and the Casper system instead of kernel 2.4 and the Knoppix
> > system. This means that all underlying functionality such as hardware
> > detection has changed.

Ok this is my work around solution.  

- boot from live cd
- umount usb key
- Format usb key as ext3
- mount it
- copy ubuntu home directory contents to usb key
- copy the home.sh script below to usb key

Then each time you boot:

1) boot live cd as normal
2) when Gnome starts loading hit Control-Alt-F1
3) cd /tmp
4) cp /media/usbdisk/home.sh .
5) ./home.sh

where home.sh contains:

#!/bin/bash 
sudo umount /dev/sda1
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /home/ubuntu/
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
cd

A bit pathetic as a workaround I realise.  But it does get one a
persistent* home directory.

* Where 'persistent' means about 50 keystrokes to activate and
reloading of Gnome.

Can anyone think of a way to make this even easier?
-- 
James Cummings, Cummings dot James at GMail dot com