Why isn't persistence working on Lubuntu 12.04 Live-USB?

Solution 1:

Please try creating the persistent USB with Unetbootin; we've seen many problems with the Universal Installer here.

Note that I tried with Lubuntu 12.04 and persistence works perfectly for me:

• The persistent partiion /cow above is 256MB, and it works as expected. You can check for its presence on your Lubuntu...

Solution 2:

After using Universal-USB-Installer, you will need to modify txt.cfg and text.cfg to include persistent at the end of each of the boot lines ending with "--"

E.g.

..... boot=casper quiet splash -- persistent

My guess is that Universal-USB-Installer fails to add "persistent" to the end of the cfg files during the installation process.

Solution 3:

Previous answers only quote one of the two parameters needed by a live *Buntu to have a working persistence auto activated. Below was tested with Lubuntu/Ubuntu 14.04.1:

1. The syslinux menu (or grub.cfg if GRUB2 is used) must have "persistent" (not "persistence") added as a kernel boot parameter as @Jason pointed it out:

   • Example for syslinux:

     append  file=/preseed/lubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent initrd=/casper/initrd.lz ...
     

   • Example for grub2:

     linux /casper/vmlinuz file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent quiet splash ...
     

2. And the Flash-device's partition that is reserved for persistent data must be labelled "casper-rw" This is achived with a nice GUI tool such as gparted, or in command-line, eg:

   mkfs.ext2 -L casper-rw -m 0 /dev/sd<FLASH-DEVICE-PARTITION-FOR-PERSISTENT-DATA>