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K7AAY
Asked: 2019-08-17 11:02:34 +0800 CST

How to add and remove apps post-creation on LiveUSB?

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I've generated multiple 18.04.2 and 18.04.3 LiveUSBs with persistence, but have not been able to permanently remove original apps (in particular, Amazon, Mines, Solitaire, and Thunderbird) by selecting to delete them from the GNOME GUI.

Also, I launched Software and Updates, set the Download source (to mirror.uoregon.edu), added Community-maintained free and open source software (universe), then installed two apps with:

sudo apt install stress stress-ng

After rebooting, stress and stress-ng were gone; Amazon, Thunderbird, and games were back.

The LiveUSBs were generated by the Pendrive.com Unversal USB Installer (1.9.8.2) and Unetbootin 6.6.1 (as well as other apps no longer supported).

How may I do this post hoc, without the Custom Build process, perhaps by flushing the changes to casper-rw?

live-usb 18.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Analysis of the problem

    It seems that you did not run persistent live systems, but live-only systems, where you installed and removed items. This works while the systems are running, but the modifications do not persist, they are gone after reboot.

    • Maybe your USB drives have the capability to boot in persistent mode, but you have booted and/or rebooted them live-only. The boot option persistent makes the difference.

    • Maybe the tools that you used are not yet upgraded to work for persistence in Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS.

    • Maybe you missed some minor detail in the instructions ...

    Working alternative

    I downloaded ubuntu-18.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso and used mkusb to create a persistent live drive in a 16 GB USB3 pendrive.

    When booted persistent live I installed htop and removed usb-creator-gtk (like I did with Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS as described in a previous comment), and then did [part of] what you describe in your edited question: removed Thunderbird, removed the button for Amazon, connected to Universe and installed stress and stress-ng.

    It worked, the modifications persist after reboot. The following picture illustrates what it looks like.

    enter image description here

    Please notice that you can reboot a persistent live drive made with mkusb live-only, and then it will not see the modifications. The original system from the iso file is still there, but you can mount the casper-rw partition and see the files, where the modifications are stored.

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