Disabling the Persistence Layer at boot time (LiveCD on USB)

[James Gallagher]

I have two situations where I require to boot from my Fedora 9 LiveCD on usb but
temporarily disable persistence for the session (So I have a normal LiveCD session)

1. I want to boot random machines at work (So don't want the network/graphics config
stored in the persistence layer to load up)

2. The persistence layer gets corrupted and I can't boot at all unless I disable the
layer.

I have been doing this by editing syslinux.cfg and adding an entry with the overlay
parameter removed from the initrd line (Or pressing tab at boot and deleting the
parameter). This boots up ok but generates an ugly error message about not being able to
find the persistence layer.

Is there a clean way to disable persistence in a usb image created with persistence? (It
seems to me that this would be useful in any case, since most people will want to use the
livecd stick on disparate machines which cannot share common system settings in a single
persistence layer.)


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[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

James Gallagher wrote:
>  I have been doing this by editing syslinux.cfg and adding an entry
> with the overlay parameter removed from the initrd line (Or pressing tab at boot and
> deleting the parameter). This boots up ok but generates an ugly error message about not
> being able to find the persistence layer.
>   

Is "Unable to find persistance" really that nasty of an error -it's like 
the "unable to find a suspend signature on a swap partition"-message, or 
are you getting another type of message?

-Jeroen

[James Gallagher]

No, that's the message I get. Ok, perhaps it's not so ugly to look at :) - but I
mean ugly in the sense that the boot process is still trying to load up a persistence
overlay even though it's not referred to in the boot parameters. 

I just wondered if there was a "proper" method to disable the overlay, so the
boot process won't try to load one, eg overlay=none, nooverlay etc

I'm setting up a multiboot usb stick with x86/x64 liveCD images, and an option in each
to boot with or without persistence. I'd like it to look as clean as possible as I may
be distributing to slightly skeptical colleagues.


--- On Fri, 13/6/08, Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip(a)kanarip.com&gt; wrote:

>  From: Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip(a)kanarip.com&gt;
>  Subject: Re: [Fedora-livecd-list] Disabling the Persistence Layer at boot time (LiveCD on
> USB)
>  To: fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com
>  Date: Friday, 13 June, 2008, 10:31 AM
>  James Gallagher wrote:
>  > I have been doing this by editing syslinux.cfg and
>  adding an entry with the overlay parameter removed from the
>  initrd line (Or pressing tab at boot and deleting the
>  parameter). This boots up ok but generates an ugly error
>  message about not being able to find the persistence layer.
>  > 
>  
>  
>  Is "Unable to find persistance" really that nasty
>  of an error -it's like 
>  the "unable to find a suspend signature on a swap
>  partition"-message, or 
>  are you getting another type of message?
>  
>  -Jeroen
>  
>  --
>  Fedora-livecd-list mailing list
>  Fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list 

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[Jeremy Katz]

On Fri, 2008-06-13 at 09:42 +0000, James Gallagher wrote:
>  No, that's the message I get. Ok, perhaps it's not so ugly to
> look at :) - but I mean ugly in 
>  the sense that the boot process is still trying to load up a persistence overlay even
> though 
>  it's not referred to in the boot parameters.  
There actually isn't any attempt to load up a persistent overlay unless
you specify what the persistent overlay is.  The message is given mostly
just to help out if you expect an overlay and then it's not found.

Jeremy

how to add specific version of rpm packages in kickstart manifest

[jie sun]

Hi,
   I am building custom fedora 7 CD. 
   In kickstart manifest %packages, we usually put rpm package names
without verison number. It will pick up the latest from the repo. 

   I wonder if there is a way to modify the manifest so that it only
pick up specific version for some rpm packages?

Regards,
Jie

how to add specific version of rpm packages in kickstart manifest

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

jie sun wrote:
>  Hi,
>     I am building custom fedora 7 CD.
>     In kickstart manifest %packages, we usually put rpm package names 
>  without verison number. It will pick up the latest from the repo.
>  
>     I wonder if there is a way to modify the manifest so that it only 
>  pick up specific version for some rpm packages?
>   
Revisor has this functionality. Look into using --kickstart-exact-nevra

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip