I know the Knoppix liveCD can save the session's settings to the HD. Can the MEPIS (7) liveCD do that? Or use settings from a /home folder on a HD installation? I just got my wireless network running in it (first time I've gotten it to work in a liveCD environment), and it would be nice if I didn't have to do it all over again the next time.

Hi.


I haven't done this myself, but I guess you could mount your home directory. If you compile your own CD you can have this done automatically. You can even put your home directory on an USB pen.

Okay, I'll try that. Thank you.

Am familiar w/ Knoppix option, but What do you mean '..settings from a /home folder on a HD ..' How is that done from a normal Live CD ?*?

Congrats on WiFi, Mepis is a bit harder to configure LIVE, requires another step! Kubuntu & openSuSE maybe Fedora are a bit easier depending on your WiFi specs & chipset, no need to reconfigure each time, just select/connect.

Just what I said. Knoppix can save settings to the HD. About the other thing...someone probably suggested to me that a liveCD could borrow the /home folder from the hard drive.

As long as you're able to compile your own live CD you should in theory be able to use whatever storage device as your home file system (or any other file system). I friend of mine boots from a live CD and a uses a USB pen as the home directory.

Let us know how it goes.

There are a couple of things that you can do relatively easily to make changes stick while you are using the system, and a few more to save the context.

1. Add the aufs, a file system that is writable, to the Live CD boot line. All you have to do is select the line in the boot manager that you intend to boot from, then you should literally be able to type in aufs - which should go at the end of the boot line. Then press Enter and you should have a live system that can have parameters written to memory, until free memory is exhausted.

2. To save content, you can mount any existing file system and save data. If you do not have permission to write to any particular area, you can su root and then write it, or you can change file or directory permissions and put it there that way (and then change permissions back to the original settings.

3. Writing context (or anything) to a USB is a great way to make the information accessible and portable. MEPIS definitely supports this; in fact, you can install MEPIS itself to a USB - a 4 GB or 8 GB unit would be great for this purpose.

I'm pleased to say that I figured out how to add the AUFS. It's one of the GRUB options on the MEPIS 7 liveCD, and I hadn't paid attention to it till now. The option says something like "boot with r/w (if 1 GB RAM present)," and I noticed that it has "AUFS" at the end of the line. I needed to boot with VESA. so I selected the VESA option but entered "AUFS" at the end of the line, as you suggested. Anyway, it works.

Okay, so now that I have AUFS, how do I use it to save settings? When I quit the liveCD, will it now ask if I want to save? I'm googling it, but haven't found the answer yet.

If this works, I could use it to avoid buying a new HD until I have money to spare. (Bills ate up most of my last paycheck, and I'd rather not run up my credit card any further--I did recently, in buying Christmasss gifts.)

With aufs, you can do updates within the context of the current session, that is, as long as you remain logged in. If you shut off the system, unless you save the information to disk, USB, or some other non volatile medium, you will then lose those changes. The aufs option on the boot line basically creates a writable file system in memory. If you have plenty of memory, it works in live mode until your memory is exhausted. Having a large swap area will help this somewhat; then some of what you modify actually does get physically written to the swap area. But again, swap area is not considered static; it can change when you reboot or shut down.

Aufs is intended to be used as a volatile, in memory file system to the best of my knowledge. If there are Aufs file systems that are written to disk, I am not aware of them. Ext3, ReiserFS, and JFS are examples of permanent file system methods that are commonly used; ext3 is the default selection for a SimplyMEPIS system that is installed on disk.

Does that clarify or confuse you?

I know that there are distributions - Puppy comes immediately to mind, that are designed to run from memory, but it is capable of easily saving its context to another file system - Windows, Linux, USB, a variety of choices. SimplyMEPIS may have some of that capability, but this is not a specific strength of SimplyMEPIS, whereas it is a specific strength of Puppy, which operates in this mode by default.

SimplyMEPIS is really an easy to use desktop system that is primarily designed to be run from disk. It can and does work from a Live CD, but the heavy engineering goes into the disk installed product, whereas with Puppy, the heavy engineering goes into running directly from memory, and upon boot, reading to see if a Puppy save file is available, either on a Windows partition, a Linux partition, or a mountable removable media.

For every day use, I prefer SimplyMEPIS, but for the specific scenario you describe, it may be worth looking at Puppy until you can afford that new disk or a new system.

Thanks, that helped.