[Bug 1358932] New: How to create an USB stick with overlay persistence with graphical tools?

[Red Hat Bugzilla]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1358932

Bug ID: 1358932
           Summary: How to create an USB stick with overlay persistence
                    with graphical tools?
           Product: Fedora Documentation
           Version: devel
         Component: install-guide
          Assignee: [e-mail]
          Reporter: [e-mail]
        QA Contact: [e-mail]
                CC: [e-mail], [e-mail]

Hello,

Description of problem:

The online guide at

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB#Data_persisten...

which is installation-related, describes how to create a Fedora bootable USB
stick using the graphical tool liveusb-creator with overlay persistence.

However, the current graphical tool available in Fedora (called "Fedora Media
Writer") offers no obvious option (button, slider, etc.) for adding an overlay
persistence space to the official .iso image.

Actual results:

The current graphical tool offers no option of adding overlay persistence to an
.iso image that is written on an USB stick.

Expected results:

The tool should offer such an option, in order to easily create USB bootable
sticks with persistence. The existing documentation should be consistent with
the actual tool.

Additional info:

IMHO, adopting and documenting a STANDARD set of tools (graphical & CLI), as
DISTRO-INDEPENDENT (cross-distro) as possible, for the (easy) creation of
bootable USB sticks (including overlay) is the way to go.

[Bug 1358932] How to create an USB stick with overlay persistence with graphical tools?

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1358932

Bugzilla account termination  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
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           Assignee|[e-mail]          |[e-mail]

[Bug 1358932] How to create an USB stick with overlay persistence with graphical tools?

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1358932

Chris Murphy  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #2 from Chris Murphy  ---
This isn't an install guide problem. This is a media writer feature request.
It's also non-trivial as there's no livecd-tools integration in Media Writer,
which also isn't portable anyway, and it requires some significant gymnastics
to modify the partition map. The whole live boot with persistence needs a
redesign and refactor to use either overlayfs or btrfs seed/sprout feature, so
it just works out of the box and natively without complicated pieces that
easily break.

[Bug 1358932] How to create an USB stick with overlay persistence with graphical tools?

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1358932

Boyd  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #3 from Boyd  ---
Appreciate the comment and issue.  Just want to add that Fedora USB writer
suppoted this in the past and that this is an important issue.  I would like to
distribute for example a remix in West Africa.  Pelple here only have ancient
windows pcs.  A bootable Fedora USB withh persistence would be awesome but....
1)  There is no fedora gui to do this even on linux.  2)  Although it seems
that Fedora Media Writer is available on Windows, I can't find a binary
download anywhere.  3) Some other tools support persistence with Ubuntu, but if
you select a Fedora iso the option is not available.  All of this puts Fedora
at a disadvantage.  The media writer on Fedora should be widely available on
Linux Windows and Mac.  It should support persistence.

Currently my workaround is to get my users to download Rufus and then manually
copy a home.img file into the LiveOS folder.