Hi! I'm trying to have a debian-live USB drive with some additional data on an extra partition.
Starting point: * download debian-live-11.6.0-amd64-standard+nonfree.iso * verify the sha256sum (correct) * dd it to a 23GB USB mass storage * verify it boots Now my first attempt was to create an aditional partition in the free space at the end of the medium, mark that as "LVM" type, and create a PV/VG and some LV in it. Suddenly, the medium didn't boot anymore. I still got the boot menu, but at some point the "BOOT FAILED" screen, pointing to /boot.log (but that's empty) and the following error message: Unable to find a medium containing a live file system That's weird given that the existing two partitions exist unmodified. Removing that new third partition (with the PV/VG/LV in it) made the medium boot again. Ok, then I though let's start from a documented setup and use https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/LiveUsbPersistence Just to be safe, I actually 'dd' the iso image again to the medium, then created a primary partion for all of the free space, did a mkfs.ext4, set the label and added the persietence.conf just like documented in above wiki. However, same behavior. Boot fails, again with the "Unable to find" message. See the partition table below: ======================================================================== Disk /dev/sdc: 29.81 GiB, 32010928128 bytes, 62521344 sectors Disk model: SDDR-113 Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x312b9e27 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/sdc1 * 0 3909119 3909120 1.9G 0 Empty /dev/sdc2 1656 11729 10074 4.9M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32) /dev/sdc3 3909632 62521343 58611712 27.9G 83 Linux ======================================================================== and the correct label in the partition: ======================================================================== nataraja:/# tune2fs -l /dev/sdc3 tune2fs 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023) Filesystem volume name: persistence Last mounted on: <not available> Filesystem UUID: 3cf1795a-3939-49bf-8d1e-5b9669b2bb03 Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53 Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic) Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype extent 64bit flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file dir_nlink extra_isize metadata_csum Filesystem flags: signed_directory_hash Default mount options: user_xattr acl Filesystem state: clean Errors behavior: Continue Filesystem OS type: Linux ... ======================================================================== Is the wiki page outdated? What I don't understand is why the presence of any additional partitions on the medium would make the initramfs fail to find the live file system in the first partition? The 'dmesg' log within the initramfs also shows the thre partitions as expected: "sdb1, sdb2, sdb3" (yes, it's sdb3 on the machine I'm testing to boot, but was sdc on the machine I used to install the drive). Any ideas? -- - Harald Welte <lafo...@gnumonks.org> https://laforge.gnumonks.org/ ============================================================================ "Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option." (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)