Changes not saving on a USB install of Trisquel
I used the Pen Drive Linux's USB Installer (Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.6.4.exe in Windows 10) to install trisquel_7.0_amd64.iso on a 16GB USB thumb drive with a max (4GB) persistence value. Install went smooth and I can boot the computer (Core i7 w/12GB RAM) from the USB drive into Trisquel using the no install option. It auto logs in using trisquel as the account. At that point I am in the GUI and can access all the local drives, internet, etc. When I download file(s) (total files <18MB) to the documents folder (or elsewhere, such as tmp), make changes to the settings, create a new user account, etc. all of that disappears upon reboot. I figure I either did the install wrong or that I am missing a command to write the files/changes to the USB drive. Help for this Trisquel/GNU noob would be appreciated.
Did you do any updates with Software Installer or with sudo apt-get update/sudo apt-get upgrade ? If so, there may be no space left in the USB stick. That has been my own recent experience.
There are two ways of getting around this impasse:
1. Use Synaptic Package Manager to unselect all but your native language (there's a recent discussion of this process on The List) so that Software Installer doesn't "run amuck" (that's the search term for the reference above).
or
2. Use GParted to subdivide the 16GB thumb drive into smaller pieces, such as 4GB for the Trisquel installation and all the rest as file storage. The files you subsequently save into the larger partition will stay there after any restarts.
I will give both those suggestions a shot and post results. Thanks!
Tried the SPM deselect. After deselecting all the unused language packs (and applying the change which erased >1GB of data supposedly) I did a reboot and all the language packs where back. I did step two and partitioned the thumb drive for a 4GB partition, restarted in Trisquel, and move my files from the computer's installed HDD to the new partition on the thumb drive. Then I created a new user account. After that I rebooted. Trisquel dropped the user account but the files where still on the new partition.
At this point I have a 16GB thumb drive with two partitions. Partition 1 (FAT) is 12GB with 5.8GB free (50.4% full) and Partition 2 (FAT) is 4.3GB with 4.3GB free (0.6% full). For partition 1 the Disks utility lists "Contents FAT (32-bit version) -- Mounted at /cdrom". Being that the mount type is considered read-only is that why it makes no change to the contents, and is it possible to change the mount type if so?
It looks like you do not actually have a (working) persistent storage. You could try using Trisquel's "Startup Disk Creator" in the "System Settings": https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/how-create-liveusb
If you use the Trisquel live, you need another pendrive though. What about installing on the disk? ;-)
I grabbed a second pen drive (32gb) and did the start up disk creator from the first Trisquel pen drive. I designated 4gb as the persistence size. Rebooted using the new pen drive and I am not seeing any persistence area and all changes are lost upon reboot. Doing an install to the HDD is not an option. I want to use the Trisquel pen drive as a platform to run DDrescue on the HDD.
Can I do a straight install to a pen drive, vice disk creator? If so how do I need to set up the partition(s)?