Hello:

HevyDevy wrote:

Maybe creating a live usb with persistence ...

Yes.
I think that may be the best and less complicated way to go around this.

But I once tried using an SD Card installaiton with persistence and hit a severe bump with respect to updating it.
Have to go back and see what it was about.

But first I have to get persistence working, something that is eluding me at the moment.

I'll start another thread for that.

Thanks for your input.

A.

Probably easier and less messing about doing it the virtualbox/qemu way as fsmithred suggests.

Had not though of that, did not occur to me that it could be done.
Thanks for the heads up.

But I am still having issues with the persistence setup.
Will start new thread.

Best,
A.

Yes.
I suppose that is as long as I do not reboot or enable presistence. (?)

Yes, that's the idea.

Generate a new live *.iso starting off from yes another (in this case Alien-OS) which has most of what I need and then modify it to incorporate what it does not.

Thanks.
I'll have to see about how that works later.
I still have to get persistence working.  =-/

Thanks for your input.
Best,

A.

Yes.
I think that may be the best and less complicated way to go around this.

But I once tried using an SD Card installaiton with persistence and hit a severe bump with respect to updating it.
Have to go back and see what it was about.

But first I have to get persistence working, something that is eluding me at the moment.

I'll start another thread for that.

Thanks for your input.

A.

If you just need to rebuild the iso to change things in the boot menu or anything else that's in the root of the iso instead of in the live filesystem there's a really short shortcut.

Make sure the config file is set to save_work="yes"

Run a snapshot.

If you need to change things in the root of the isos, edit whatever you want in /home/work/iso/
Then re-run refractasnapshot and select the option that says 4. Re-run xorriso only. (make iso, no-copy, no-squash)
This will re-run xorriso and only takes a minute or two.

If you want to change something in the system, you could edit config files in /home/work/myfs/ or even chroot that directory and add or remove packages with apt.
Then re-run refractasnapshot and select the option that says
2. Re-squash and make iso (no-copy)
This runs mksquashfs again and takes a little longer.

No ...
Not refracta errors at all.

I'm sorry, my command of the english language is rather lacking.  =-/

I am referring to my own *trial and error* process, where I need to/want to change things one way or another till I get it all working as I want.

I'd like to avoid having to make a snap-shot -> mount it -> change it -> make another snap-shot -> and so on ...

Am I making sense here?
Thanks for your input.

A.

Something like a dry-run might be something you are looking aka rsyncs --dry-run flag or similar.

I am needing to modify a live distribution which meets *most* of my needs wrt a small footprint and all the maintenance/emergency tools.

I know I can make all the mods/changes and then do a refracta-snaphot to produce another *.iso file.

But as the process of modifying it is a bit drawn out, sort of trial and error/rinse and repeat, I was wondering if there was a way to save the changes temporarily till the final thing was made up and only then take the snapshot.

Thanks in advance.

A.