I'm not afraid of the terminal, and I use it all the time (I'm a programmer, btw), but it's just that there are many things that I'm not sure whether it's even possible do do in the terminal, or if it is, then I have no idea how. So I guess I have to spell it out with a huge amount of examples:

- How can I disable all of the shortcut keys for taking screenshots and other things that I don't want to be possible, as well as uninstall the screenshot software and printer/scanner software?

- How do I uninstall a ton of other included software that I don't need and in some cases must remove, if I can't access the "uninstall" shortcut on the menu, and I don't know exactly where all of the programs reside or where their specific uninstallers reside?

- How do I install new stuff that I would normally use the Software Manager to install? I know there's apt/apt-get, but I don't know if that works for some of these other complicated programs.

- How do I get files from other drives to copy into this system in the ISO file? Can it access them like any regular file system could, or is it closed off like a virtual machine would be? For example, if I'm using VirtualBox, it doesn't detect my hard drive and only uses the "drive" that it makes from a file for persistence with the ISO.

- How can I test things like double-click functionality? I've had issues when I wanted to double-click to open Java programs, and it didn't work, even though they could open when typing the command in the terminal, but for the final result of this project, it MUST be openable by double-clicking.

- How do I configure anything and everything within the Network Settings and Network Connections (including DNS stuff), and the settings within the firewall?

- How do I set a lot of other options for how various things in the "Preferences" section of the menu work, including desktop background, display settings, date and time, disabling remembering recent files, etc.? This would also include the visual configuration of folder windows and which buttons are available.

- How do I configure the settings within Firefox, including privacy/security settings like browser history, etc., and also several variables on the about:config page?

- How do I configure other settings in programs like LibreOffice Writer, to disable auto-saving and things like that? I'm sure this stuff is stored in some file, but I don't know what file, or what path leads to it, nor would I automatically recognize the spots within the file that must be edited to have the specific effects that I want, and that's even if the file is readable text, but it may well be a bunch of numbers stored which would just look like nonsense if I opened it in a text editor. It's must easier to just open LibreOffice Writer directly and change the options - don't you think? But wouldn't that require running the OS with the desktop environment?

- How do I configure things like the Update Manager?

- How do I set up a secure account and make sure it requires the password when logging in?

So as you can see, there's a huge amount of stuff that I need to be able to do, which may or may not be possible from the terminal, or even if it is, I haven't the slightest idea how to do it, making this method MUCH more complicated than just setting everything up through a running installation of Linux and then turning that into an ISO (which is why I don't understand who in their right mind would develop a tool that works that way, rather than just working the way that Live Kit does, but hopefully more compatibly).

You mentioned a GUI for Cubic, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't run like a VM, but rather, there's just a wizard for setting up certain configurations, and I doubt it has all of the things that I just listed, does it?

Well after reading the list I put above, do you still think 95% of it as achievable that way? I'll look into it anyway, just in case it might work for me, but I have my doubts, because of the reasons that I explained above, and first I have another idea that I want to try.

Sounds like you really should be reading "Linux from Scratch".

I just tried my idea and it failed, but I'm not giving up. Here's what I tried:

- I erased a drive and put an MBR on it (I set the partition table to msdos type - is that the right way to do that?).

- I created a partition large enough to hold the contents of the ZIP file generated by the Live Kit.

- I created an extra partition after that for the UEFI but left it empty.

- I extracted the ZIP file onto the first partition and then ran the script to make it bootable in CSM mode.

- I booted into it and then tried to install grub onto the second (UEFI) partition using this command (I had created a directory called /mnt/esp and mounted /dev/sdb2 to that, following the instructions of the page I linked to before):

sudo grub-install /dev/sdb --efi-directory=/mnt/esp --boot-directory=/boot --target=x86_64-efi –removable

But it gave me this error:

Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
grub-install: error: failed to get canonical path of `aufs'.

And I was booted using toram, so limited access to the drive wouldn't be a problem. Then I tried the same command again with --force just before the --efi-directory (this is supposed to force it to do it even if there's an error), but I still got the same error. In any case, it created the boot and EFI folders but didn't put any files in them.

What I was attempting to do is to set up GRUB correctly on the UEFI partition, even though I only had an MBR instead of a GPT, because after that I was going to get another USB stick, put a GPT on it, and then just copy the two partitions from this one to that one using GParted, so that hopefully the GPT would then recognize GRUB on the UEFI partition.

You may think that I should put the UEFI partition first, and the Linux partition second, but I had tried that the first time, and even though the script for making it bootable ran just fine, once I tried to actually boot it in CSM it got almost all the way through the process and froze just before displaying the login screen (when I booted with or without toram). So then I tried it with the Linux partition first and UEFI partition second, and it booted in CSM but I couldn't install GRUB for some reason. Do you know why that would be?

EDIT: I wonder if it would work if I just install GRUB onto the UEFI partition, but do it from an installed copy of Linux (like I'm running now) instead of a live one, but then boot into the live one in CSM mode, and then update the GRUB rather than installing it. Would that work? Or I suppose I could even take the ISO made in Live Kit and modify it using Cubic, and then when it rebuilds it, hopefully it will make it UEFI-compatible.

EDIT: brouer, please correct me if I'm wrong (because I'd really like to know the truth of the matter), but as far as I can tell, Linux from Scratch works more like Cubic or something like that, but with even less ability to run things directly, so that not only is there no GUI, but no way to run the OS even with a terminal, so that yo have to do everything from the outside, so then how do you even install software or configure any settings? In any case, it's not easier than using Cubic, is it? If it is then I'd like to know. But if not, then that means that I should try Cubic before LFS, but even Cubic doesn't seem to have the direct GUI to access the desktop environment, the way that Live Kit does.

EDIT: And by the way, I'm still not convinced that it needs an extra partition for UEFI, because even the default live installer for Mint will run in either CSM or UEFI mode, and it has only 1 partition!

Before reading my point-to-point replies, a short summary here could be that Cubic will do most things you want, and the rest can probably be done with enough legwork reading about config files and syntax. But if those custom settings for some things that are only possible through a gui are important and crucial, then you might wanna look at other possibilities instead. Maybe another custom live iso creator (Arch ISO/Manjaro architect/Ubuntu LiveCDCUstomization etc) might do the trick. A persistent install would be the easiest though.

Anyways here are my (by now useless haha) replies:

If you had even glanced at the documentation or guides, then you would know for Cubic this is kid's stuff with the GUI or without in the chroot.

If you had even glanced at the documentation or guides, then you would know for Cubic this is kid's stuff with the GUI when chrooted in. ;)

What you probably mean is that the default applications inside Mint/GNOME/whatever DE you're using need to be configured for specific filetypes. There's a file for that too for Gnome at least.

Linux NetworkManager settings are well documented, and the configurations reside in files, that are easily edited. Depending on your firewall app, the same is true. Actually, everything is a file in Linux, apparently. You would have to copy files over whilst chrooted in through the GUI (which is easy), if you don't want to use nano in the terminal to directly edit the config files (at least I would prefer to do it that way for convenience).

I skimmed some Ubuntu Gnome docs and found their config files where everything can be controlled from, but each DE will have its own setup. I don't know your setup.

If you can't do it through a config file, then you probably can't in Cubic. Unless the below chroot xserver method works. See below.

Yes, this is not easy and the more different configurations there are, the more you have to individually find out the config files and syntax (a major pain in the arse).

And Yeah, you hit the nail on the head about graphical applications. Apparently the custom chroot in Cubic does not support services or graphical apps. A normal chroot would allow for a separate X server launching a window manager like i3 in a new tty, where you could probably configure a lot of stuff if the chroot is setup properly. At least this seemed possible with Ubuntu LiveCDCustomization documentation.

But I doubt it would work for a non-persistent non-installation of a live usb iso (where the iso is still not even made haha). And you can't launch a separate separate app from within Cubic's custom chroot, because X server is already running and required for Cubic. Probably another dead end if insisting on making a live non-persistent custom usb iso, with specific configurations of apps and settings, unfortunately then. Still, the chroot method might be worth pursuing if you have a normal installation of linux on a removable media.

You mean a gui for your repo package manager? I would imagine instead of Synaptic is it, just use the actual terminal version. And it's not like users will be installing much on a non-persistent, slow ass USB drive ;)

Same way Arch users do for example - create non-root user and password for them, check the Arch Wiki (at least under Installation Guide as one of the steps, or Users and Groups as dedicated page). It's dead easy, but remember the sudoers file for sudo access, a worthwhile tip at this stage.

Yes, you have your work cut out for you!

Anyways, as I and others probably come to understand more and more about what it is you are trying to accomplish, the clearer it becomes how a live and non-persistent custom iso might not be the way to go. Why not make a persistent install, with some flexibility in the configuration setups (like not hardcoding network configuration to ensure it works for all) and then just make an iso of that and copy it to many fast USB sticks? I think there is precedent for this, and many people have done it so it should be googleable.

Was there a reason you discarded persistent installations?

Well you've got too many little bits for me to try to reply to each separately, so I'll just read through and give you a general reply:

First of all, the reasons why I can't use persistence are:

- Every time I try to install directly to the drive it ends up being WAY too slow to install, boot and run, even using USB 3.1. It took me about 4 hours to install, and then like probably 20 minutes just to get the desktop to display, and everything I try to open or manipulate takes a couple more minutes for it to get around to doing (by the way, my computer doesn't normally take 10 minutes to boot Linux on the HD, but more like 4 minutes, though I had estimated it was about 10 minutes, because I guess it just felt that long).

- It's VERY crucial that the files on the USB drive don't change, because I don't want them to be erased, or the configurations of anything to be altered in any way! By making it not persistent, that protects it from that problem.

- I want these USB drives to last essentially forever or as close to it as possible, without having to keep replacing them, and if it's installed with persistence then it will cause way too much wear and tear on the drives (I've read that they sometimes only last a few months in that case!).

So I hope that answers that particular question once and for all.

I haven't heard of Arch ISO (I assume that would work with Manjaro also, since that's made from Arch, wouldn't it?), but I've seen Manjaro Architect (though I think it may be more complicated than what I've been using, but I'll try it if it gets to that point). I've never heard of Ubuntu LiveCDCUstomization. Does that work with USB or only with CDs, as the name suggests? I tried using something called Customizer, but couldn't get it to work. That's not the same thing, is it?

You mention the word "chroot" a lot. I'm not sure exactly what that is, except that I've heard it before and I guess it has something to do with root (though I was just reading a novel in which people were drinking some beverage called chroot). Anyway, I'll look it up, but I can't promise that I'll be able to make sense of the documentation if it's convoluted and jumps all over the place, like about 90% of all documentation tends to do, which is why I can rarely ever seem to make any sense of it.

By the way, I'm using Cinnamon, which is different than GNOME, though I don't know if that matters, and I could use Mate instead (which is made from GNOME 2) if I need to do that.

I guess if I can configure some of these settings files then that would work as far as that stuff goes, as long as I can find which files and which text within them to change, but I really do need to customize application settings too.

Software Manager is basically a GUI program that allows the automatic download and installation of a lot of different kinds of software, and it's different than Synaptic Package Manager. I'm not exactly sure how it's different, conceptually, except that Synaptic seems to have many thousands of little packages of all kinds of scripts and stuff, which you could probably obtain using apt or apt-get, but I don't know if that's true of Software Manager, which has everything from games to programs like LibreOffice to stuff like VirtualBox, etc., and I think they're in DEB files, but I'm not sure, because it just downloads and installs with the click of a button. I know that Manjaro has something similar but I don't remember what it's called.

But you're right that the users won't be installing anything onto the USB drive, but I must install software onto it, to get it customized the way I need it within the live ISO.

I'm not sure what "sudoers" is, but I know that when I tried running live mode with persistence on Ventoy (back in the experimental stages), I found that I couldn't make a secure login, and if I created a user with a password and told it to show the login screen, it did, but as soon as I clicked the box to type the password, it just immediately logged in! What's the point of that? So the only way I've been able to get a secure login when using live mode was to install first and set it up then, and afterwards use Live Kit to make an ISO of it.

I don't see why all of this shouldn't be possible and hopefully not too horribly difficult. After all, there are hundreds, if not thousands of Linux distributions, and every single one of them has made customizations just like that ones that I've described, and then put them into ISO files that can usually run live in UEFI mode, so it's not like I'm trying to do anything unprecedented.

You never mentioned, what do you think about what I said in the previous post, about how I set up the two partitions, and then tried to boot in CSM mode and then install GRUB from there, and then copy the partitions to a drive with a GPT - what do you think of that? Why do you suppose I got that aufs error, and do you think it would work if I install GRUB onto it while booted into my HD, and then update that grub after booting back into the USB, or is there even a way to update it from there? Keep in mind that I can use toram to gain full access to the USB even while booted into it!

And do you think that Cubic could allow me to edit and rebuild an ISO that I made from Live Kit, rather than the default live ISO for Linux Mint?

Probably wrong boot directory. See what I wrote earlier: What filesystem is /boot? What filesystem is /?

Is that question directed at me? If so then the answer is that I'm using Ext4, but if that's not what you mean then I don't know.

EDIT: By the way, it vaguely seems like someone said something about Cubic taking the settings of the currently running OS and putting them into the ISO, or am I misinterpreting that? Does that mean that, for example, if I were running Manjaro and trying to edit the Mint ISO (I only use two different distributions to avoid confusion in this example), then that would mean that it would take the system configurations of Manjaro and put them into the Mint ISO? But that's weird, because what if I don't want to use the configurations of the one that I'm running, but only modify the ones for the ISO itself? Or am I misunderstanding something?

I still think you should keep the option open and explore it further. Because your requirements for your little project are seemingly such that making a persistent mode is the best, maybe even the only way, to do everything you want from this little project of yours. Unless you loosen or change your requirements of course, like giving up some small comfortable configuration settings on seemingly redundant graphical interfaces.

The installation could be made read-only (apart from a /tmp folder i guess+other stuff that needs figuring out) with no swap to reduce wear and tear. That pretty much handles 2/3 of your reasons.

Again, tHe slowness is a real issue on your rig, and you should seriously troubleshoot those issues, and isolate them (does it happen on other rigs/setups, do you need a mobo bios firmware update, change bios settings due to southbridge pci and usb not getting enough bandwidth lanes for example, optimise XMP memory, enable higher speeds for CPU etc etc.) because something is wrong, especially on such a new rig. I realise you have a pre-built with apparently no SSD, and if it's a laptop then that's fine regarding not building your own. But even with an ancient HDD on a slow laptop, a multi-minute Linux bootup signifies serious things on your rig. You are aware of Linux logs and troubleshooting right? On arch-based, a simple journal reading command (journalctl) will tell you everything about the bootup and any warnings or errors. Mint/Ubuntu probably uses journalctl too, but it's just a google away.

Anyways, a USB installation is always going to be pretty slow, that's why they warn to have as fast a possible setup for it, so you're right, a persistent installation will be slower than a simple and lean live usb setup. This is something to consider when distributing these possibly bloated live isos. But it shouldn't take minutes to operate and open simple apps...

I'm not sure about Customizer. Arch Iso is for the arch distro specifically, and is a custom live iso (mainly to install Arch, but should suit your purposes too). Manjaro Architect is for Manjaro. They don't mix. Manjaro Architect is a CLI tool for a persistent installation however.

I've heard good things about both, but at this moment I don't know if they can deal with your strict requirements, of having pre-configured already installed graphical interface software without using the terminal. I suppose I should look it up, but at this point you need to start googling for yourself to learn more ;) For example when you hear something like Ubuntu LiveCDcustomization utility, and don't know what it is, it's a great opportunity to learn more about Linux. But to again summarise it for you, it's a bunch of terminal commands to customise the Ubuntu live iso. There is a detailed set of instructions in Ubuntu help pages.

The reason why I mention it, is that a) it's ubuntu so you may be familiar with some of it (though if the inner workings of installing using a package manager are foreign to you, this may be a wrong assumption haha) b) it's seem to make it possible to run graphical software from within chroot with a separate xserver, which would solve all these pesky small gui settings problems of yours. It is for Ubuntu Gnome. And no, it's not for CDs, it uses the ubuntu live iso installation medium, and 'unsquashes' and extracts the desktop/filesystem from the live installation medium so it looks like a linux system again, so it's easier and simpler to modify. This is at least my understanding, but I have no way of experimenting with it due to being on Arch.


Try the Arch wiki. Arguably the clearest, best documented linux info out there. And because Arch starts from the beginning, it's applicable to most distros, with slight differences (makepkg, pacman etc) for other distros.

Chroot changes the root of the system, so it's incredibly useful for installations and rescues. The idea is that you have a working linux system, and then you chroot to the other that needs installation or rescuing, and you can use commands pretending you're in that environment.

I would make sure that everything I needed to customise graphically was indeed necessary and not doable from the commandline before I discarded Cubic.

Synaptic or apt and your repos basically, will have everything you need from the commandline or the custom iso utilities (that work with packages from your repo). Consider ditching the redundant graphical utility.

Yeah but you don't need to have the users on the non-persistent drive to have this ability to install anything, right? And you yourself can't do that after making it live, right? So what do some configuration settings for installation programs have to do with anything? You just need it before making the live iso, right? In fact, I would make a list of the hard requirements for this project, so you don't mix these things up again.

Just read what I suggested you to read. It's all there documented and very simple. Basically you add a user, add a password for that user, and make sure they can sudo. The display manager will then give you the option of either root or the user.

THere aren't thousands of distros, and there aren't even hundreds. In fact there are only a handful to even consider as well supported mainline distros for everyday use for a beginner.

And The difference is that the distro creators write a lot of code to make this happen, and design the whole process, and you have specific requirements for already installed graphical software settings not configurable through the commandline, which none of the live isos can do actually to my knowledge. That would the defeat the whole purpose of a linux installation, in terms of customisability and modularity, which is apparently its philosophy that it aspires and adheres to.

You did it wrong I think, mostly due to Grub being frakking annoying. This command has some issues

EDIT: testing. Unable to post remainder of my message.

previous command used which I can't post atm for some reason


The removable flag syntax is wrong I think and from the Arch wiki :

You might note the absence of a device_path option (e.g /dev/ sda) in the grub-install command. In fact any devicepath provided will be ignored by the GRUB UEFI install script. Indeed, UEFI bootloaders do not use a MBR bootcode or partition boot sector at all." and "If you are trying to run grub-mkconfig in a chroot or systemd-nspawn container, you might notice that it does not work: grub-probe error failed to get canonical path of /dev/sdaX. In this case, try using arch-chroot as described in the BBS post. In addition, as it mentions aufs, it might be some dependency issue.

Also, I don't see why you couldn't copy all files from a MBR to a GPT one (though I don't see the point of doing it in MBR in the first place) but copying boot files from your currently running normal linux installation will of course not work due to different drives and partitions and entries in the bootloader.

I think it's a bit of a mess again, to be honest, and we had already established the script for linux-live kit doesn't work very well or at all for UEFI, and that adding boot options manually in conjuction with the custom script doesn't work either. None of this would be an issue with a persistent install of course.

And no, customising the linux-live kit iso with Cubic will almost certainly not work due to custom scripts and differences in setups. You can however post-edit a Cubic live Iso, with Cubic.

glad i dont have problems like this

still 10+ mins to boot up?:O

IKR? It's down to about 4 minutes now on a brand new rig with a fresh Linux install, he corrected.

Still an eternity. And apparently it's all 'fine' as there can't be anything wrong with a brand new store-bought rig :)

i wouldnt be surprised if linux is booting from an usb

Wait, 4 minutes to boot? Even spinning drives don't take that long.

Check your mounts on the system when you run grub-install. I'm almost 100% sure you'll see aufs there.

Well there's no way that I can allow wear and tear (there may not be as much without a swap file, which I've disabled, anyway, but I'm pretty sure it will still wear out the drive after a while), and there's no way I can allow for the possibility of people messing up the drive, especially by changing security settings! This stuff MUST be the way I set it!

I don't know what most of the stuff you just mentioned is, but I know that it's a new computer (a desktop, not a laptop - why does everyone always assume I'm using a laptop?), and I've only changed a few relevant settings, but it always runs slow as balls whenever I install onto a USB stick.

I'll look into all of these ideas, but it's just that with only so many hours in a day, and so many different things to try and debug, the new ideas sometimes come at me faster than I can even test them, and that's also why I don't always immediately look up any and all information that people post.

Anyway, I may have confused Manjero Architect with something else, but I'm not sure. In any case, here's a link to a video that I've found explaining how to use one of these tools:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89TsITpY3h0

Actually, I think it's called Manjaro ISO. I'll check the Ubuntu one as well, but I don't know about plain Arch, because never even tried that distribution (I think I couldn't get it to work or it didn't have a live mode for testing or something, so I didn't bother with it).

Yeah, I looked up chroot yesterday. Is that how Firejail works, to limit Firefox to only be able to access the Downloads folder, by just making it think that the whole entire OS is in the Downloads folder and any folders outside of that don't exist at all? And I'll check the Arch wiki as soon as I have time. But I still want to test a couple of other ideas that I've been meaning to try.

Alright, I'll get to that as well.