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YUMI is used to put an operating system on a drive, generally a flash drive and you can create a persistence file or partition on it with some distributions to use to test before you do an actual install to a hard drive.

I'm not sure why you thought that. I don't see anything on their site indicating it does. Also, it states specifically on their site that "Installing Linux from the YUMI created USB Drive to a Hard Drive is not officially supported. If the installer portion of any Live Linux distro does work, consider it a bonus". You won't be able to use it to install unless you get lucky.

I'm not sure what you are doing. It seems you are putting the various Linux Live CD images on a 500GB flash drive. You can do that but I don't know why you would want to. You would need to unmount and shrink the partition(s) on the drive to make unallocated space. Were you actually planning to install Mint and Kali or just test them?

I've never used YUMI so can't help much with that. I've had good luck using unetbootin to create a Live system on a flash drive with persistence so you might try that.

I'm sure you are aware that Kali is designed specifically for computer forensics and for experts in the field. If you want to use it to learn about computer forensics, you are much better off putting it on a flash drive. It's a very poor choice for a Desktop computer user, especially if you are new to Linux and they indicate this on their site. How to do this is explained at the Kali site below.

http://docs.kali.org/downloading/kal...ve-usb-install

Creating persistence is explained at the link below.

http://docs.kali.org/downloading/kal...sb-persistence

Hello, yancek! Thank you for taking the time to reply!

I am aware of what you are saying. I'm doing all of this because I am taking a Computer Networks course at school. Our professor instructed us to use YUMI because we would be working with various distros.

I am not trying to install them for permanent use on my notebook/desktop, I always run them live from a drive. In this case, it's a 500GB USB3.0 external HDD. YUMI allows the drive to be used as a normal storage device, but it is also a bootable drive. YUMI creates a folder called multiboot where all the Linux info is stored.

I will attach an example picture of YUMI. I selected a 4GB partition space, and, again, I suppose this is shown in MINT because when I go to my Home folder the bottom says "4GB of free space". However, the info is not saved across reboots. As far as MINT goes, I'm just confused because I don't know if there are additional steps to have my info written in the persistence space.

As far as KALI goes, I will also attach a picture of what my GPARTED shows. I had already visited those links but I am stuck because my drive shows no available unallocated space. I am unsure if this is because I am using a YUMI multiboot drive.

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Have you successfully installed Linux Mint?
Are you saying that the Linux Mint distro doesn't have persistence or that you've installed Yumi bootloader onto USB and the USB doesn't have persistence?

I've always had difficulty getting persistence on my debian-live USB. There are many tutorials out there about how to do it, but there's always people complaining that it doesn't work for them.

Another method of installing a linux distro would be to copy the .iso file onto a USB. Once you've then booted from USB, the distros installer should open up and you can target the install onto your 500GB drive.
This worked for me with Debian, although Ubuntu may be more preferable for you.

Yumi is a multi-boot installer which lets you 'try out' different linux distros. They're not proper, full distros.
You're meant to try them out to see if you like any particular distro and choose a different option to have a full distro installed.
This may explain why the distros don't have persistence.

I really can't understand why Yumi is offering you Kali Linux. It's not for normal users.
Ubuntu and Linux Mint are the most popular distros. You could install just one distro, get comfortable with the command line, how to install programs and join the forum supporting the distro.
After that, you can check out other distros.

Persistence is only for live-USB and live-CD distros. You don't need persistence for full distros installed on your hard disk.
If the .iso files you're using on Yumi require 'persistence' then they're 'live' lightweight versions of distros which should be copied to USB or burnt to CD.
If you want a full distro on your hdd, then Yumi can't do that for you.
Instead, see if you can copy a full .iso file of Ubuntu or Linux Mint (from their respective sites) onto your USB. Then boot from USB and the installer should do the rest.

Clearly something is wrong here. You could simply delete all the installs you've made to the hdd as they're 'live' versions of distros and not full versions.

Hi, Higgsbosson, thank you for taking the time to reply!
My intention is not to fully install Mint. I run it live off my 500GB External Hard drive. I mounted the MINT .ISO with YUMI there.

I am taking a computer networks course in college; which is being taught in Linux and I need to be able to run multiple live distros off a drive (in this case, my 500gb external drive). Again, I have no intention of permanently installing any of them right now. I need to run them live, but I need persistence on them to save my configurations.

Thanks for the explanation of your intentions. I think you'd be better off using a flash drive but it should work on a usb drive. Most of the systems you will be using will only be around 1GB. I see in the image you posted that there is an option to create persistence, missed that when I was at their page. Did your instructor require you to create persistence accessible from multiple distros? Good luck with that. I tried it a couple of years ago and I think I eventually got some persistence for both systems but it was a very convoluted process and I don't have any notes. Maybe someone else knows?

I've never used YUMI but usually these types of software will create a casper-rw persistence file, that is for the Ubuntus like Mint. If you can take a look at the drive you have Mint on, see if there is a casper-rw file. If not, it didn't work.

Yes, post an image from GParted of the 500GB drive you are using so we can see that.
Also, post which distributions you intend to put on. Is there a list of distributions at the YUMI site they expect to work? I'd check that first.

I've never used YUMI but have created numerous multi-boot DVDs and flash drives so might be able to help with that

I think the main question is why do you need persistence, or why do you think you need persistence? What is it you're trying to save? YUMI works great with standard [non-persistent] live distros, plus it creates a separate partition that can be used for storage. I have a YUMI-created USB drive on my key chain with about 8 different live distros (mostly system repair types), plus a separate FAT32 partition where I can dump misc tools or install files, plus a TrueCrypt encrypted container containing any sensitive info.

While the distros themselves don't have persistence, anything I want to save can simply be copied onto the spare partition on the drive. You can consider it like a persistent storage spot that's shared between all of the distros. You just need to pay attention to what you're trying to save and where you put it.

Here is a tutorial on how to add persistence to Ubuntu live-usb: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence

If it works, then perhaps you may repeat the procedure with other live distros.

how many distros are you going to be using. honestly, with a 500 gb drive, you might be better off doing multiple installs rather than try to use live w/persistence.

personally, rather than use YUMI, i would just make a bootable usb stick for each distro I wanted to keep around. 8gb sticks are going for 5 dollars or so around here, and you don't need one that big typically.

mx-15 runs great live w/persistence, is debian-based, although unlikely to be a part of your classwork, it does have a great persistence system. but the live system does not work right with yumi.

Hey guys! I think I am on to solving my issue! Thank you everyone for taking the time to respond and for your suggestions.

As it turns out, the YUMI website says the persistence it creates doesn't work with NTFS drives. I feel silly for not noticing or thinking about this.

I partitioned my external HDD and allocated 32GB as FAT32. Persistence now works with MINT. I will create some more unallocated space for Kali and try to make it work.