Hi
I just installed a liveCD of Fedora Core 9 on my 1GB USB stick using the liveusb-creator I found on https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator . I must say its a good tool and the LivePersistent feature of FC9 works like a charm.

However, the machine won't boot until I changed the root=LABEL=FEDORA parameter in the syslinux.cfg file to root=/dev/sdb1 .

Afterwards, while I was using the FC, plush with new looks thanks to KDE4, it suddenly hung up and nothing would happen. Restarting the X-server using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace resulted in a blank blue screen with a mouse cursor.

Eventually, after a hard reboot, the machine started but with an error!
It said Bug in initramfs /init detected. Dropping you to shell. Good Luck!
And that was the worst luck I've ever had... coz I couldn't find a single solution after hours of googling. The only way to solve this was to install the liveOS all over again, all the updates lost.

Can anybody provide with a proper solution to this?

Short answer, after a long time spent trying: NO.

I've been tinkering with USB memory sticks with Fedora9, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and Knoppix. I could get all except Knoppix to boot, but within a couple of days at most, they would develop one or another form of indigestion that dropped me to the bash: shell with the message
And each time, that was it.

I wonder if there's anything that can be done from that point. If there is, I've not found it.

"Exit" brings up a Kernel Panic. ./init brings up an error.

The good news is that Fedora 9 and the one-step install is easy to do. But after an hour or two setting up the stuff I want to be "portable", it's a pain when it dies soon after. There doesn't seem to be a "repair" or an "update" or an "install but keep existing user settings" option.

I'd be happy if I could boot from the CD, and use the memory stick as a "Home" folder, which would hopefully avoid the problem, but I've not found a way to do that. A CDROM boot can see the pendrive but not the Home etc folder on it.

So I carry my laptop with me, rather than just a memory stick. I can't rely on the memory stick thing working when I need it.