Has anyone successfully set up a live boot of Linux Mint with persistence on a USB drive, similar to how Tails OS operates? I’m looking to save files and installed applications across reboots. If so, could you share your method or any guides you found helpful? Thanks!
Yes, I have 2 computers running off of USB with Mint, with persistence. And I’ve set up that for my father in law and a friend too. You boot with one drive, you insert the other one, you UNMOUNT it, and then you load the installer. Please note though, that the bootloader will be installed into the internal drive instead of the usb one. To go around this problem, would be best to disable the internal drive temporarily during installation (either in the bios, or just remove its cable). Then the installer will be forced to write the bootloader on to the usb stick.
I usually set up the partitions as such: 1 GB of fat32 boot partition with the boot flag set, a 4 GB swap partition, and the rest / (root).
Can’t you just partition the SD card and mount the second partition as your persistent storage? Why do you have to unmount anything?
These are the instructions at the mint forum.
I don’t do this thing, so it’s a real question. If I were doing it from scratch, my instinct would be to go with the partition.
I don’t think you’d even have to make your own image, although you’d be mounting /home by hand every time if you didn’t. Hm. If you built your own image, you could mount everything as an overlayfs, and persist even application installs.