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I've installed ArchCraft with a persistent partition on my USB key using Rufus.

Now, when I boot from the live USB, I have an additional empty partition called "persistence", with just "persistence.conf".

I have a total of 2 partitions:
/dev/sdb1 (boot partition, not saving changes)
/dev/sdb2 (persistent)

When I make changes to the system, e.g install packages or change settings, these changes do not persist as the entire system partition is still loaded in live mode.

I'd like to boot the system with the persistent partition and use it as my root partition. What is the best way to achieve this?

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What is the best way to achieve this?

Use either an Ubuntu or Debian-Live based derivative if you want to create a persistent drive using Rufus.

The problem is that Linux distro maintainers can't agree to a common method of enabling persistence (heck, they can't even agree if the kernel parameter to provide should be called persistence or persistent) and every other distro seems to be falling prey to the NIH syndrome where, instead of looking at what others do and trying to follow suit, they appear to be reinventing the wheel...

Then end result is that it makes it extraordinarily difficult and time consuming for an application like Rufus to try to detect and support every method of enabling persistence out there. As a result, Rufus only supports the method of enabling persistence for the two most common methods used by Debian or Ubuntu.

Most likely, ArchCraft does not use either of a Debian-like or Ubuntu-like way of enabling persistence, and whereas Rufus will have created a persistent partition that is compatible with Debian (default), ArchCraft is unable to use it.

Thus, if you want to have persistence working with a drive that was created by Rufus, you need to use either Debian-Live (or a direct derivative of Debian-Live), or Ubuntu (or a direct derivative of Ubuntu).

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  • Akeo is the developer of Rufus. But I find a full install works better. I have a full install of Ubuntu on every flash drive over 16GB, even if smaller / (root) with just a few repair type apps added. And often then some repair tool type ISO to boot with grub2's loopmount in a data partition and/or some backup data depending on size of flash drive. Have now found external SSD much faster & easier to use.
    – oldfred
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 17:30
  • Is there really no way to link the home directory to the persistent partition on ArchCraft? I'd prefer an arch-based distro as I really like pacman. If the answer is no, does PopOS work with persistent partition?
    – Daniel
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 21:36
  • Thanks a lot anyway, I think I understand your frustration reading the comment you left on GitHub, lol
    – Daniel
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 21:44

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