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[SOLVED] Porteus from a USB drive

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 15:29
by jymm
Hello, I am a relative newbie. I have used mostly Debian OS's for about a year. Zorin and Solus. I wanted to try a Slackware derivative and found Porteus which impressed me greatly.
I installed Porteus to a USB drive using Linux Live installer. I partitioned an eight gig USB drive into two 4 Gig partitions. I had to use Fat for the install and I made my second partition Ext4 for the save file and downloaded packages. I then made a 512 gig save file on Ext. 4, edited the save file text and downloaded Audacious, Audacious plug ins and SeaMonkey which I then installed. I set Yahoo as my homepage and made a test folder on the desktop to check that everything was working. I then rebooted. Nothing.

I then redid all and this time used end current session, which said it saved my settings. On reboot my Test folder was on the desktop, and Yahoo was my homepage. My question, my installed programs where not there. No Audacious and no SeaMonkey, no plugins. Am I doing something wrong? Can Porteus not save the installations? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I could not find any answers in the forum and a few links I tried in the Wiki where missing.

I have one other questions. I have tried using sudo and su in the terminal and neither work. Is there a Slackware command I am not aware of? If I use nothing as in the cheat sheet and faqs I am denied permissions, and su and sudo are not recognized.

Again thanks for any help.

Re: Porteus from a USB drive

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 15:47
by Hamza
No Audacious and no SeaMonkey, no plugins.
How did you installed these software? In case of using xzm module, you should copy/move them onto your modules folder present in /porteus directory.
I have tried using sudo and su in the terminal and neither work.
su command should be what you want as it elevate you on root account.

Re: Porteus from a USB drive

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 16:48
by Ahau
Welcome, jymm!

Using "saved changes" does not save which modules are activated. As Hamza pointed out, placing them in the folder /mnt/sdXY/porteus/modules/ on your flashdrive will cause them to be loaded each time you boot up.

Also, you do not need to create a '.dat' save file to store your changes on an ext4 partition (only on a FAT, NTFS or other non-unix filesystem). You could just create a folder on your ext4 partition, e.g. /mnt/sdc2/porteuschanges and then edit your cheatcodes in /boot/porteus.cfg (/boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg in Porteus 2.0) to point to that folder: "changes=/mnt/sdc2/porteuschanges" or "changes=UUID:5476-U7S53-7878/porteuschanges". using the UUID: option will make sure it points to the same location even if you boot on machines with different hardware setups (device name could be sdb2, sdc2, sdd2 depending on other hardware, but UUID is always the same. Read /boot/cheatcodes.txt for more info on that. Of course, you can still use the '.dat' container file on an ext4 partition, but I find saving changes directly to a posix filesystem this way is a bit more convenient.

I'm assuming you are booting in as the user 'guest', in which case, you should definintely be able to use 'su'. Just enter 'su' at the command prompt and then type the password, which is set to 'toor' by default, and you should become root. For any graphical programs that prompt you for the root password, just enter 'toor' as the password and you should be good to go -- if not, let us know and we'll get it sorted out :)

Re: Porteus from a USB drive

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 19:30
by jymm
Problem solved

Thank you. I now have my new programs staying on reboot. I assumed Porteus would find the modules on my Ext4 partition. It took me a bit but I found the Porteus directory on the USB drive Fat partition and copied the modules to there. I rebooted and everything is there. Thanks.

I guess coming from Debian based OS's I didn't understand how su worked in Porteus. I use "sudo apt-get update" and then the terminal asks me for my password, (sudo assumes root). I played with the terminal and now understand that I need to "su root" and then I am asked to enter the password. I know Linux is Linux, but I will have to learn the differences in OS's.

The only other OS I use with Persistence on a USB is Saluki, a Puppy derivative. That also is quite different, as it has it's own system of saving changes, Pupfile, and gives you a button to save the changes on the main menu.

I am also experimenting with an Arch, Bridge Linux, but it does not have Persistence, so I have to start over each boot . What I really like about Portreus is the ability to save to the USB, and learn before I do an install.

Thanks again, for your knowledge, time and patience.

Re: Porteus from a USB drive

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 19:36
by Hamza
Glad you solved your problem! Please add [SOLVED] into the initial topic :)

Solved

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 19:55
by jymm
Problem Solved

Re: [SOLVED] Porteus from a USB drive

Posted: 13 Feb 2013, 23:42
by brokenman
I assumed Porteus would find the modules on my Ext4 partition.
I will add that you may still store your modules on your ext4 partition inside a directory and load them at boot using the extramod= cheatcode

Code: Select all

extramod=/mnt/sdb2/myfolder