Create, customize, and duplicate Ubuntu Live USB sticks with persistence

persistent_ubuntu.md

1. If you are creating the image

1.1. Create the Live stick

Install DUS/MKUSB :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi
dus

1. i (install)
2. p (persistent)
3. Select the ISO
4. If there is a question about USB image source, answer NO
5. Activate EFI + MSDOS options
6. 50% of size
7. efi-1 most current cases
8. Go!

1.2. Enable fs journal of the casper-rw partition

sudo tune2fs -O has_journal /dev/sda5

Make sure the journal is enabled. The use_journal feature must be visible there:

sudo dumpe2fs /dev/sda5 | grep "Filesystem features"

1.3. Disable usbdata

Only applies if a partition usbdata. This partition acts as a regular USB stick, drop it to make the end image lighter.

sudo gparted

2. If you are editing an existing image on a stick (or if you have reached step 1.3.)

2.1. Customize the stick with your own need

Flash th image on a stick, boot on it and install everything that needs to be persistent.

Few interesting settings to setup:

• Etcher
• alias ll=ls -l
• Terminator x4
• VSCode
• net-tools git-cola python3-rosinstall

Things to delete:

• /var/cache/apt/archives/*
• /var/lib/dhcpcd5/*
• /var/log/*
• /var/tmp/*
• /tmp/*
• ~/.bash_history
• git config --global user.email ""
• git config --global user.name ""

2.2. Reduce size for duplication

1. With gparted resize partitions to a smaller size (e.g. 20GB for 32GB USB sticks. In any case keep >5GB of free space)
2. sudo dd if=/dev/yourstick of=disk.img bs=4M status=progress
3. sync
4. sudo fdisk -l disk.img
5. Read the last end sector = END
6. truncate -s $(((END+1)*512)) disk.img
7. Compress the img with 7z and share the archive to your recipients

2.3. Copy image to a target stick

1. Unzip the 7z into disk.img
2. dd if=disk.img of=/dev/yourtarget bs=4M status=progress
3. sudo sync

3. If you are duplicating your original image to multiple target sticks

3.1. Repair backup tables on the target stick

When copying a stick to another with a slighty smaller one, dd will complain that no space left on device and end GPT/partition tables are likely to be corrupted. To fix it:

sudo gdisk /dev/sda
r    recovery menu
d    use main GPT header (rebuilding backup)
e	   load main partition table from disk (rebuilding backup)
YES
w    write table to disk and exit
YES