Re-compressing Squash Live Image with Updates

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szim90
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Joined: 22. Nov 2012, 04:53

Re-compressing Squash Live Image with Updates

Post by szim90 »

Hello everyone,

I just started using Salix's XFCE Live version on a flash drive, and so far I am loving the experience. However, I usually like to try to run reasonably recent versions of applications, so I ran some updates. Unfortunately, even though my persistence file was 1G, simply running all updates (and installing a few small applications) seems to have used up more than 70% of my space.

I was wondering, is there any way to roll my changes back into the modules/squashfs. If I understand squashfs/aufs correctly (I'll admit I'm new to using a live systems on a regular basis, so I could be wrong), an update means I'm just writing a new version into the persistence file, but the old version still is present in the image.

If not, is it possible to do a full install of Salix onto my flash drive, update it, and then re-squash it so it still acts like a live install with persistence?

Thanks for any advice on this issue.

Regards,
szim90
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mimosa
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Re: Re-compressing Squash Live Image with Updates

Post by mimosa »

I think LiveClone will do what you want. Be aware that it can take hours to run and it is taciturn rather than verbose.

I've had the same experience with updates. Particularly at this end of the release cycle, and also if you install anything large that isn't standard, it's worth making the persistent file as big as possible. These days though, USB sticks leave plenty of room for this. I'd suggest a minimum of 2GB, but supposing your stick is 4GB, why not have a 3GB persistent file?
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JRD
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Re: Re-compressing Squash Live Image with Updates

Post by JRD »

We are aware of this problem.
But so far, we didn't find a decent solution for managing (big) upgrades on a Live session.
Maybe by providing upgraded squashfs files that you just replace on your USB key. But this will only work for writable medias. Maybe we should release another version of Salix Live 13.37 with all later upgrades. But with what version number schema ?
If anyone think to have a solution or a pretty hack, I will be happy to know it :)
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szim90
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Joined: 22. Nov 2012, 04:53

Re: Re-compressing Squash Live Image with Updates

Post by szim90 »

Sorry for the delayed reply - for some reason, email notification didn't work as expected for me.

Though not exactly a solution, for my flash drive, I ended up simply installing Salix 14 (the standard version, not the live one) to my flash drive as though it was a normal hard disk. It took a bit of work to make it work (rebuild ramdisk with usb modules, switch to syslinux boot loader) and it's no longer compressed, but I've found that I don't need much beyond the minimal package set, so I can run the entire system comfortably in less than 3.5GB, and it works amazingly well.

mimosa, thank you for the suggestion - though I solved the problem for this drive, I'd like to also try to put Salix on my smaller flash drive (it's only 2 GB), so I'll definitely try the LiveClone feature then.

JRD, there's a post on the Gentoo forums about re-compressing a squashfs image, but I'm not sure how specific it is to their setup. Here's the link: forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-646289.html (the part on re-compressing is on step 12).
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JRD
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Re: Re-compressing Squash Live Image with Updates

Post by JRD »

I have no problem in upgrading or recompressing a squashfs image. The problem is not technical, but in the organisation.
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