TUTORIAL: live install with changes, swap and data partitions

[KingMidas]

Thanks for taking the time out to answer that guys, that was exactly what i was looking for i think i've finally tailored a guide for me now.

One thing- reading through some of the threads re partitioning and 'qtparted' some people have said it comes with BT3 and others say you have to d/l it, is this an extra feature on the USB as oppose to cd ISO.

[frezasaga]

at last it worked..........it took me hrs to make it( i wont tell how long ^^)........glad it worked now..........

[Jos Lohan]

Thank you so much balding_parrot for posting this tut. I have a successfull working installation on my USB hard drive.

however,

I was wondering if its possible (without ruining my installtion) to make this dual boot with ubuntu server edition. I have followed your directions to the latter.

1. How do i make this dual bootable?
2. Do i need to make changes to batch file, if so, what?
3. Should i make another partition or use existing partitions?

Best Regards

[BTuser3]

you say you sacrified your swap partition, in my latest variations on this nifty method, i now everytime mix my data(changes) partition with my swap. i explain , i don't create a swap partition but only a swapfile ONTO the changes partition , afterall work is done . you can easily set bt to use the swapfile auto at each reboot , that way you have benefit of swapping memory into a file & can use no extra partition to get more memory available. i think it's the best thing to do , this prevent you to do extra partioning stuff. and your swap is even moveable in that way , more flexible.

just my little $0,02

Thanks everyone for your posts.

shamanvirtuel, your post is kind of related to what I am trying to do: Use that same FAT32 partition where BT3 resides, and include a created ext2 loopfile (say 1GB), which where the changes will be saved at. Technically, I should be able to use your method to create the swapfile and include it as well. I am trying to understand why is it not possible to put everything (changes loopfile and folder, swap file, etc) under one FAT32 partition? I think it is.

From live-linux.org's website:

" Use 'changes=...' boot parameter to specify persistent changes directory or file. If a directory is used, eg. changes=/some_dir/ and the /some_dir/ is found on some partition on your disk, then all the changes made to the root filesystem will be saved to that directory. This works even if /some_dir/ is on NTFS or VFAT, thanks to posixovl overlay (an userspace filesystem, already included). Important note: if you plan to save changes on VFAT, make sure to modify your distribution's shutdown scripts. It must not execute killall, else posixovl is killed and everything is wrong. Instead, call the cleanup script from /mnt/live/cleanup. If a file is specified for the changes boot parameter, eg. changes=/path/file.dat, and the file has a valid filesystem inside, then the file will be loop-mounted and changes written to it. You may also use changes=/dev/sda1/path/ and changes=/dev/sda1/path/file.dat ... to specify particular device where to look for. Other devices will be skipped (will not be even mounted)."

To create a "persistent storage file", I used:

dd if=/dev/zero of=storage.dat bs=1024 count=1024k
mkfs.xfs system.dat

That would create a 1 GB file.

I tried to boot BT with changes=storage.dat (and changes=/dev/sda1/storage.dat) but BT fails to boot. Dont know why, yet. Something that it does not like.

It has to be possible. For instance, I got BT3 to boot from within Windows using Qemu (without rebooting), I included a loopfile image under the root directory of the FAT32 USB key partition, and specified changes=/dev/hda1 --> that booted BT3 with persistent changes just fine. I just dont know why when I actually boot from the USB it does not work, even using the same method, and with changes=/dev/sda1 or /dev/sda1/somefile

balding_parrot, shamanvirtuel, any ideas on this?

[lovena.2008]

The tutorial worked nice. Thanks

[malbolgia]

Thanks for the guide, worked flawless. Backtrack 3 is up and running great.

[rdrey]

Followed this with BT3Final on USB HDD, worked like a charm. (After I figured out that my second FAT32 partition (which I had created before playing with BT and didn't want to format away) had to be logical!) Getting ipw3945 to inject packets, I'm a happy man! Thanks to everyone who has posted in here, all posts were useful not just Balding_Parrot's initial how-to!

[f3ntanil]

Just installed BT3 final this way with no issues. I also used this method with BT3 beta and it always worked great. I just renamed my old changes folder for reference.

Thanks again to Balding Parrot and the other contributors to this method.

[Mallard]

Fatal error occured - BT3 data not found

I've tried this twice and get the same result. I know the files are on the usb stick... I put them there! Any ideas on what might be causing this?

[cleanwithit2008]

Hello, I'm trying to install BT3 to my external harddrive. I'm at the part where you open the syslinux.cfg and edit it, and on BT3 this looks slightly different and I don't know what to change. I'm just making sure I do this right. My guess was I start changing "Label BT3".

PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 40
DEFAULT /boot/vesamenu.c32

LABEL cubez
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (Compiz) - Experimental
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 load=cubez autoexec=xconf;cubez;startx

LABEL cubez
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (Compiz Nvidia) - Experimental
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw chexpand=256 load=cubez,nvidiadriver autoexec=xconf;startnvidia.sh;startx


LABEL xconf1
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (KDE)
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=xconf;kdm

LABEL xconf2
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (Flux)
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=xconf;flux

LABEL startx
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode (VESA KDE)
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=kdm

LABEL BT3
MENU LABEL BT3 Text mode Frame Buffer
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw

LABEL BT3_no_DHCP
MENU LABEL Run BT3 no DHCP
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw nodhcp

LABEL BT3_no_HD
MENU LABEL Run BT3 no Hard Disk
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw nohd

LABEL BT3_Safe
MENU LABEL Run BT3 Safe Mode
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=normal initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666
root=/dev/ram0 rw

LABEL pchanges
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode with Persistent Changes
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw changes=/changes/slaxsave.dat autoexec=xconf;kdm

LABEL copy2ram
MENU LABEL BT3 Graphics mode, Copy To RAM
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND vga=0x317 initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw copy2ram autoexec=xconf;kdm

LABEL msramdmp
MENU LABEL msramdmp
com32 /boot/msramdmp.c32

LABEL memtest86
MENU LABEL Run Memtest utility
KERNEL /boot/mt86p