Install BT3 live onto flash, save changes, with compiz

[ziplock]

Balding_Parrot and pure_hate have each written excellent tutorials on installing BT2 as a live install to an SD card or USB flash stick with "save changes" feature, the same procedures also work for BT3. After following one of them, I then booted BT3 from the liveCD, mounted the flash device, browsed to /boot/syslinux on the device, and edited sylinux.cfg

I realized there was a problem with compiz on the original 7" Eeepc; it runs fine but some config windows are too large for the screen so one has to click alt + doubleclick and drag to view the OK buttons etc, but this doesn't work well with compiz. My first edit of syslinux.cfg was to make a boot menu item which I named Eeepc, it uses the live install and saves changes, but doesn't use compiz

LABEL eeepc
MENU LABEL Eeepc save changes
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sda3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=255

Second, I made an entry for other machines to use compiz and to also save/use changes made from other machines

LABEL compiz
MENU LABEL BT3 with Compiz and persistent changes
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=255 load=cubez autoexec=xconf;cubez;startx changes=/dev/sda3

Note: changes=/dev/sda3 will have to be the correct path to your Changes partition, you may need to edit this. Also, be sure to create a folder titled changes inside the Changes partition if it's not already there

Finally, I kept all the default menu items beneath these two, booted into the flash, and began to enjoy BT3

[BTuser3]

Good tutorial. I was going to research for all this, so you saved me some time. I will try it and hopefully things will work. Thanks.

[Archangel-Amael]

Again thanks for the tutorial Ziplock.
I have changed my eeepc to reflect the same thing, and it works really nice.

[Barry]

Click on the start menu(what is it really called?) then system, then click on the compiz fusion icon. That will put the settings icon in your panel on the bottom of the screen. Right click that and hit settings manager. In there hit window management, then click on move window. Where it says constrain y click off the check box. Close out of the settings manager and you'll be able to move windows up off the screen.

[ziplock]

Wonderful, Barry. Thanks!!

[Natty Dreed]

Nice

Thanks For You're work

[BigMac]

i love how im the first little turd with problems... when i boot off of the usb i have to boot from VESA KDE with acpi=off and noapic... in the middle of the boot backtrack tells me to hit ctrl-alt-delete to reboot...

i did edit the file with wordpad... i think my problem is how you say "must be a single line"

LABEL eeepc
MENU LABEL Eeepc save changes
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND changes=/dev/sdb3 vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=
6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=255

this is how mine looks and i dont know how to edit it to look like it is supposed to

I even tryed to just add changes=/dev/sdb3 to the VESA menu, it still dont look right...

[brad8299]

I was trying to make a usb flash drive install of bt3final. I did everything in the tutorial but when i got to the syslinux.cfg part to edit that the file is empty. Has anyone had any problems with this. I used winrar to open the iso and had it extract to my thumbdrive. Ive tried looking at the .cfg file in windows wordpad as explained and also in linux command prompt using nano syslinux.cfg. Both ways shows an empty file. anyone else have this problem. Ive redownloaded the bt3file again and the same thing keeps happening, empty .cfg file.

[ziplock]

You shoud be using the USB/DVD version of BT3 for this procedure, it sounds like you're using the CD version.

[balding_parrot]

I've just checked, and although the syslinux.cfg file is smaller in the cd version (because of the lack of compiz modes) the file is not empty. I would suggest opening the file in notepad as a test, even though wordpad should open it better than notepad. With Nano, if you have not specified the path or have not changed to the directory, it will assume you are opening a new file, hence it is blank. Also you should check the md5 of the iso to be sure it is not corrupt.