Ubuntu from stick - large casper-rw but need more space for system?

[nick208]

Running Ubuntu desktop (15.04) from a stick and am quite happy with it. But as I install new programs I am running out of space. I have about 9gb on casper-rw. Can I change so that this is used for the system?
Bit of a noob
Thanks

[sudodus]

You can use a casper-rw file or a casper-rw partition. If the file is in a FAT32 file system the size is limited to 4 GB. I suggest that you use a casper-rw partition. It should have a linux file system, for example ext2. You can use ext4 too, which is better, but then you should turn of journaling to avoid excessive wear.

Please tell me more about your system on the stick, in plain words, and also, please

- maximize a terminal window and

- run the following command and paste the output into a reply window (and put it within
tags.


sudo lsblk -fm

In the following links and links from them it is described how to use casper-rw partitions for persistence

One pendrive for all PC (Intel/AMD) computers - single boot, dual boot, multi boot (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2259682)

Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2230389)

Installation/FromUSBStick (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick)

[nick208]

Thank you sudodus, this is the output of


sudo lsblk -fm:

├─sda1 ntfs Recovery A6FE9AB8FE9A7FEB ├─sda1 400M root disk brw-rw----
├─sda2 vfat ESP F49A-D37B ├─sda2 100M root disk brw-rw----
├─sda3 ├─sda3 128M root disk brw-rw----
├─sda4 ntfs Acer B8CC9D83CC9D3D16 ├─sda4 58.6G root disk brw-rw----
└─sda5 ntfs F6B649C3B64984D9 └─sda5 450M root disk brw-rw----
sdb sdb 14.5G root disk brw-rw----
├─sdb1 vfat C72D-FE03 /cdrom ├─sdb1 4.9G root disk brw-rw----
└─sdb2 ext4 casper-rw
16d08e72-9e7f-4717-a9b2-c2781693eef7 /media/ubu └─sdb2 9.6G root disk brw-rw----
loop0 squashfs /rofs loop0 1G root disk brw-rw----
loop1 ext3 2ef7727d-a7b4-46f2-b3b8-547e23c03bcf /media/ubu loop1 1G root disk brw-rw----

I have a 16gb usb3 stick that I plug into a acer w700 tablet. I created the usb stick on anoter computer running ubuntu, but cant remember all the details at the moment (followed instructions from some ubuntu-page).
If I try to move something to casper-rw I get the message "The folder “xx” cannot be copied because you do not have permissions to create it in the destination."

[sudodus]

There is a configuration file, where you should have the boot option persistent, and that configuration file is different for different tools. It would help if you tell us which tool you used to create the USB boot drive. Unetbootin, the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, some other tool, or did you do it manually with several command lines in a terminal window?

Anyway, the casper-rw partition was mounted read-only or with root as owner. Please run a few more commands and post the output to get a few more details.


df
sudo ls -l /media
cat /etc/mtab

and please tell us which tool you used to create the USB boot drive :-)

-o-

I think that you will soon be able to

1. write files to the casper-rw partition (but it is probably better to avoid writing directly to it)

2. use the casper-rw partiiton for persistence (it will be there behind the curtain as an overlay file system).

[nick208]

I think I may have used method 0 on this link (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent), so that would be usb-creator. But cant swear on it Bit of a jungle navigating through these things and I tend not to memorize path chosen :). Option 2 sounds great.


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 1916740 0 1916740 0% /dev
tmpfs 385744 10880 374864 3% /run
/dev/sdb1 5130440 2171112 2959328 43% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 1075968 1075968 0 100% /rofs
/cow 999320 782096 164796 83% /
tmpfs 1928708 84 1928624 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1928708 0 1928708 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 1928708 4 1928704 1% /tmp
cgmfs 100 0 100 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 385744 36 385708 1% /run/user/999
/dev/sdb2 9757624 22092 9216828 1% /media/ubuntu/casper-rw
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /media
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jul 18 01:22 cdrom -> /cdrom
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 Aug 3 14:13 ubuntu
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/mtab
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
udev /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=1916740k,nr_inodes=479185,mode=75 5 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode= 000 0 0
tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=385744k,mode=755 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /cdrom vfat rw,noatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,ioch arset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs ro,noatime 0 0
/cow / overlay rw,relatime,lowerdir=//filesystem.squashfs,upperdir=/cow/upper,workdir=/cow/work 0 0
securityfs /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
tmpfs /run/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k 0 0
tmpfs /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs rw,mode=755 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agen t=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd 0 0
pstore /sys/fs/pstore pstore rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars efivarfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset,clone_child ren 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,hugetlb,release_ag ent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.hugetlb 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event,release _agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.perf_event 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/memory cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio 0 0
cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/devices cgroup rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices 0 0
systemd-1 /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc autofs rw,relatime,fd=20,pgrp=1,timeout=300,minproto=5,ma xproto=5,direct 0 0
mqueue /dev/mqueue mqueue rw,relatime 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
hugetlbfs /dev/hugepages hugetlbfs rw,relatime 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
cgmfs /run/cgmanager/fs tmpfs rw,relatime,size=100k,mode=755 0 0
tmpfs /run/user/999 tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=385744k,mode=700,uid =999,gid=999 0 0
gvfsd-fuse /run/user/999/gvfs fuse.gvfsd-fuse rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=999,group_id=999 0 0
/dev/sdb2 /media/ubuntu/casper-rw ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,data=ordered 0 0
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[sudodus]

I think I may have used method 0 on this link (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent), so that would be usb-creator. But cant swear on it Bit of a jungle navigating through these things and I tend not to memorize path chosen :). Option 2 sounds great.


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 1916740 0 1916740 0% /dev
tmpfs 385744 10880 374864 3% /run
/dev/sdb1 5130440 2171112 2959328 43% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 1075968 1075968 0 100% /rofs
/cow 999320 782096 164796 83% /
...
/dev/sdb2 9757624 22092 9216828 1% /media/ubuntu/casper-rw
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /media
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jul 18 01:22 cdrom -> /cdrom
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 Aug 3 14:13 ubuntu
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cat /etc/mtab
...
/dev/sdb2 /media/ubuntu/casper-rw ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,data=ordered 0 0
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

df: When the sizes of / and /media/ubuntu/casper-rw are different, you have no persistence

drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 Aug 3 14:13 ubuntu shows that only root has write access to the partition

cat /etc/mtab: The partition is mounted rw, read-write.

So in order to write to the casper-rw partition, you should be able to write with root privilages


sudo cp source /media/ubuntu/casper-rw/some-directory

but as I wrote in my previous post, it is better to make it active for persistence. You should add the word persistent into a file.

Please search for files with the extension cfg. You can try with the following command


find /cdrom -name "*.cfg"

and tell us which files you find (the file names). You can also start looking into them, and post them if they are not too big. We are searching for a rather small text file, I think much less than 100 lines.

-o-

But if we cannot solve it this way, maybe we should try another method to create the persistent live system, either with Unetbootin from the developer's PPA

Installation/FromUSBStick#Unetbootin (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick#Unetbootin)

or with a method, that I have developed recently, see post #6 and the following in this link

One pendrive for all PC (Intel/AMD) computers - single boot, dual boot, multi boot (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2259682)

[nick208]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ find /cdrom -name "*.cfg"
/cdrom/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/grub.cfg
/cdrom/boot/grub/grub.cfg
/cdrom/boot/grub/loopback.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/adtxt.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/dtmenu.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/exithelp.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/gfxboot.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/menu.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/prompt.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/rqtxt.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/stdmenu.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/txt.cfg
/cdrom/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
If I did the grep below correctly, there looks like a lot of occurences of the word persistent.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ grep persistent -r --include=\*.cfg /cdrom
/cdrom/boot/grub/grub.cfg: linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash --- cdrom-detect/try-usb=true noprompt persistent
/cdrom/boot/grub/grub.cfg: linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity quiet splash --- cdrom-detect/try-usb=true noprompt persistent
/cdrom/boot/grub/grub.cfg: linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity quiet splash oem-config/enable=true --- cdrom-detect/try-usb=true noprompt persistent
/cdrom/boot/grub/loopback.cfg: linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} quiet splash --- cdrom-detect/try-usb=true noprompt persistent
/cdrom/boot/grub/loopback.cfg: linux /casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} quiet splash --- cdrom-detect/try-usb=true noprompt persistent
/cdrom/syslinux/rqtxt.cfg:append noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent vga=788 initrd=/install/initrd.gz rescue/enable=true --- quiet
/cdrom/syslinux/txt.cfg:append noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash ---
/cdrom/syslinux/txt.cfg:append noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true persistent file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash ---


By the way, settings, files and such are saved after reboot.
Thanks

[sudodus]

I think that the Startup Disk Creator alias usb-creator boots via syslinux, so I guess the relevant configuration should is in the syslinux directory or via that entry. Anyway, if your settings, files and such are saved after reboot, persistence is working now. Congratulations :KS

If you feel that the problem (in your first post) is solved, please click on Thread Tools at the top of the page and mark this thread as SOLVED

[nick208]

Thanks for guiding me through this. So my conclusion is that persistence is working, but casper-rw is not used. So I will soon run out of space. Does that make sense?

[sudodus]

Are you sure that casper-rw is not used? I think that persistance is working, and that it is using the casper-rw partition, unless you have a casper-rw file, that might be found first (before the casper-rw partition).

When you have persistence running, please run the command df and post the output!


df

You can search for a casper-rw file


sudo find / -name casper-rw

[nick208]

ubuntu@ubuntu:/cdrom$ sudo find / -name casper-rw
/dev/disk/by-label/casper-rw
/media/ubuntu/casper-rw
/cdrom/casper-rw
Does that meant that there is one partition and one file?
I havent changed anything so df should be the same. If I download files the free space of the home folder gets smaller and the casper-rw partition stays the same.

[sudodus]

These
/dev/disk/by-label/casper-rw
/media/ubuntu/casper-rw

point to the partition

This

/cdrom/casper-rw

is a file. Check the size of it


ls -lh /cdrom/casper-rw

If you remove or rename the file, the casper-rw partition should be used instead.

[nick208]

Working! Renamed the casper-rw file and then the partition was used. Thanks!
Now I just have to figure out how to move the settings and configurations (language, wifi, bluetooth etc) from the renamed casper-rw to the partition.

[sudodus]

You should be able to test it, 'dry run' (with the actual paths for sourcedir and targetdir)


sudo rsync -Havn sourcedir/ targetdir

The trailing slash is important. Then copy with


sudo rsync -Hav sourcedir/ targetdir

See
man rsync for more details.

[nick208]

Managed to get myself into an infinite loop with rsync.:eek: But now its pretty much working. Suddenly I seem to be able to access the win partition aswell.
Thanks again.

[sudodus]

Maybe you put a space before the slash. The slash should be directly after 'sourcedir', and there should be a space after the slash.

[nick208]

Possibly. Got the destination folder wrong, thought I could use "." but probablty should have been ~/.
Anyways, now I have another question about autostarting. Since I use the stick on a tablet (with no way of selecting) I have to plugin a keyboard to be able to select the boot option and start. I wonder how I can make it automatical - booting the first option automatically. But I guess that should be a new thread?

[sudodus]

Yes, it is a good idea to start a new thread with a good descriptive title for this new problem.

Explain what you have and what you want. (Tell them that you created this system with the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator ...)

You can post a link from this thread to the new thread, so that I and others who have followed this thread can find your new thread.

[sudodus]

I just found this link to a post by C.S.Cameron (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2289403&p=13333137#post13333137), that explains where to put the boot option persistent, when created by the Startup Disk Creator:


/cdrom/syslinux/txt.cfg