[Discuss] Persistent mode with Mandriva live CD

[John Blomfield]

Murray Strome wrote:
> John Blomfield wrote:
>> Murray Strome wrote:
>>> I wonder if anyone knows how to make the Mandriva live CD 
>>> persistent. This is easy with Knoppix, difficult with Kubuntu, and I 
>>> have been unable to find anything that would tell me how to do it 
>>> with Mandriva.  Has anyone discovered an easy to do this?
>>>
>>> The reason I am trying Mandriva is that it is the distribution I 
>>> have found that actually detects my wireless card and lets me 
>>> configure it to access my secure wireless network without any 
>>> difficulty at all.
>>>
>>> I don't want to actually install in on my laptop until I can be 
>>> certain that I can find a way to do it that does not touch the MBR 
>>> (I would want to boot from either CD or USB Flash Drive using the 
>>> built in Boot Manager).
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help.
>>>
>> I am not sure I understand what you are doing with the Live CD?  When 
>> you run a Live CD it does not do anything to your MBR or harddrives 
>> although it might use a swap partition if it finds one that exists. I 
>> simply installs Linux in RAM and then accesses the various programs 
>> on the CD and brings them into RAM as required. i.e. uses your CD 
>> like a hard drive.  The only way a Live CD will affect anything on 
>> your HD is if you click on the "Install" icon!  As I mentioned before 
>> the Live CD instance of Linux will access a Pen Drive if its plugged in.
>>
>> John Blomfield
> The problem with the Live CD is that I cannot install or update 
> programs.  With Knoppix, for example, I can use a pen drive to 
> AUTOMATICALLY save any changes I make to the system (such as adding 
> software, saving documents to /home/<user>, changing configurations, 
> etc.    I would like to do the same for a live distribution that 
> supports my wireless card.
> Of course, I can save documents, etc. on USB devices OK with any of 
> the distributions, but that doesn't get me upgrades and I have to redo 
> my configurations every time I reboot.
> Kubuntu has a method, which is very complicated -- but since I haven't 
> gotten my wireless card to work with it, that doesn't do me any good.
>
> Mandriva has a way of installing nicely onto a USB drive that does not 
> affect anything related to Windows, but I would need an installed 
> version of it somewhere (which I don't have right now, and won't be 
> able to get going before I have to go out of town tomorrow). I think 
> Fedora also has such a method, again requiring an installed version 
> somewhere.
>
> I was hoping to find something a bit easier.
> Murray
>
Which Distro do you have installed,  if any???

John