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Using SliTaz 3.0 with GRUB2 loopback (boot ISO file) on a USB stick
  • QuiescerQuiescer March 2010
    Hello!
    Just saw SliTaz mentioned on Reddit and decided to look at it and am very pleased indeed!

    I have it installed on my USB key with another distribution, and am able to boot either distro from the ISO images directly on my USB stick. However I would like to be able to save some settings and installed packages so that I don't have to config/download each time.

    I've tried using "tazusb writefs ..." but that creates the rootfs file in the temporary unpacked ISO filesystem, which of course cannot be saved.

    Is there any way to give a device and path where SliTaz should look to find persistent config?

    I am thinking something along the lines of what Tiny Core Linux does, where you can give a UUID and path and it will load various settings from that location (after having searched for the drive with the given UUID).

    This works very well on Tiny Core. Is there a way to get the same with SliTaz ?

    Thanks in advance!
  • seawolfseawolf March 2010
    It just so happens there is! I've not tried this personally, but a lot of people have had success:
    http://www.slitaz.org/en/doc/handbook/livecd.html#usbmedia

    HIH.
  • QuiescerQuiescer March 2010
    Many thanks, seawolf. This goes some of the way to answering my question - I guess if I was to store packages in my home dir they'd be readily available to install after booting (presuming there exists a way to install a package manually from a file on the local system).

    Unfortunately my key is formatted as FAT, though. I guess I could partition it anew though. I suppose the Slitaz developers were reluctant to store the persistent home in an archive file (probably for performance reasons) as other distros such as Tiny Core do, and thus it must be a native ext3 on the USB.
  • seawolfseawolf March 2010
    Well, I'm unsure why ext3 is supposed to be the only compatible FS; you could try with FAT32 as it's supported. It may be that it is not built-in to the kernel but loaded as a module. It may also be a matter of file permissions when using it. I'm interested to know if it works with FAT32... ;-)
  • erniaernia March 2010
    you can use home=uuid with fat partitions, i did it. you will have problems with file's permissions , fat does not allow you to set permissions. if i remember well if tazusb find /home/boot directory it saves rootfs there backing up previous versions:
    http://hg.slitaz.org/tazusb/raw-file/tip/doc/tazusb.en.html
    if you want install packages after boot you could put http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/slitaz/iso/3.0/packages-3.0.iso somewhere on your key, mount it in /media/cdrom and make tazpkg setup-mirror point to /media/cdrom/packages/3.0 , so you can install all in the cdrom using tazpkg as usual
  • SteroniusSteronius June 2010
    menuentry "Slitaz" {
    loopback loop /slitaz-cooking.iso
    linux (loop)/boot/bzImage root=/dev/null
    initrd (loop)/boot/rootfs.gz
    }

    NOT answering the topic, just posting this because it applies to the subject line, not the actual question.
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