Arch Linux

ahmed.alamassi

Member

Registered: 2015-08-01

Posts: 7

how to make my root system behave like a live system ?

one of my friends doesn't have an hdd , so I will install linux distro on a usb stick. it will be a full install just like installing to hdd but it will install on a flash stick instead of hdd.
the problem here is usb 2.0 stick are very slow , If you write a lot on it , it will wear out quickly because if have limed number of write cycles

so I want to do a full system install on a usb stick, and make it something like read only filesystem so that any changes like installing packages will written on ram , at the end before I shutdown run a script to write all the changes on the flash drive over the old system.
this is good for flash sticks because all writes are in ram and then are written to flash drive only ""ONCE"" per session when you shutdown.
I think this is possible because puppylinux does a similar thing when you shutdown it asks you to save all the changes you made to a sfs file and it will loaded next time you boot. I want to do the same thing but instead of the sfs file I want the changes to be written over the old system , also don't want to run the full system on ram like puppy.
I read about overlayfs and rsync , but didn't quite understand , I need some help here.

you may ask why I didn't the following options ?
1- install the system on flash stick and use it just like hdd ? tried that it was painfully slow maybe because of the simultaneous read and writes.

2- live cd ? tried it , it was very fast , but the customization I made will be lost if I shutdown.

3- live cd with persistence ? it also was very slow because changes are continuously written to the usb stick , and there's hidden services that always write logs something like that.

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,976

Re: how to make my root system behave like a live system ?

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

Might be what you're looking for.

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: how to make my root system behave like a live system ?

Moving to "GNU/Linux Discussion".