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Adalbert Hanßen
Asked: 2021-05-10 13:39:43 +0800 CST

How can I prevent the launcher for ubiquity in a persistent live stick

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I have made a persistent Live stick for Ubuntustudio 20.04.2.0 LTS.

I want to let people boot from this stick to use it in the configuration I have made.

However I want to avoid that somebody playing around just clicks on the desktop icon "Ubuntu Studio 20.04.0 LTS installieren" and in the worst case does not understand the following dialogues. He might ruin the installed system on the hard disk or SSD.

Therefore I removed this starter from the desktop. However, although my stick has a partition casper-rw and it remembers things I have done in previous sessions (e.g. commands entered to a terminal, stored files and the like), the starter "Ubuntu Studio 20.04.0 LTS installieren" re-appears after each reboot, although I have deleted it before shutting down and the stick is persistent.

How can I prevent the reappearing of this particular starter.

One other question targeted at the use case of this persistent live stick to be tried by very computer-unexperienced people: How could I possibly prevent the (normal) user from any changes to /dev/sdaX, i.e. all partition of the builtin hard drive or builtin SSD? It must not be fail proof against people knowing about sudo, pkexec or the files governing the use of becoming root: Just the normal user should be prevented from altering the builtin disk. Would this be possible by mounting the partitions found on /dev/sda? Could one achieve this by manipulating systemd? If yes: how?

system-installation

2 Answers

  1. quick and dirty method since you are using persistence, add this to your ~/.profile or add as a startup command in settings>session and startup>application autostart.

    if [ -e "$HOME/Desktop/ubiquity.desktop" ]; then rm -r "$HOME/Desktop/ubiquity.desktop"; fi

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  2. Ubiquity the Ubuntu installer is not included in a Full install

    Ubuntu can be installed to a USB in different ways. A Live install does not save between sessions. A Persistent install extracts the OS from a compressed file and saves data to an overlay file or partition each session, and a Full install installs the complete OS to the USB just like an install to internal disk.

    Comparison between Persistent and Full install USB

    Advantages of a persistent install:

    1. You can use the persistent pendrive to install Ubuntu to another computer.

    2. A persistent install takes up less space on the pendrive.

    3. You can reset the pendrive by overwriting the old casper-rw file with a new one.

    4. The install to pendrive takes less time.

    5. Slightly less wear on the drive.

    Advantages of a Full install:

    1. You can update and upgrade.

    2. If you have problems or wish to modify, the solution is the same as with an internal install, (You can ask for help in the forums).

    3. No ugly startup / install screen.

    4. Better security, you can use full encryption

    5. You can use proprietary drivers.

    6. Swapfiles and partitions work and Hibernation can be enabled.

    7. Many persistent installs are limited to a 4GB casper-rw and a 4GB home-rw persistence file, to get more persistence requires persistence partitions. Once casper-rw is full, the drive will not boot.

    8. More efficient usage of disk space. Does not require reserved space for persistence.

    9. Faster boot, no automatic disk checking or Try Ubuntu/Install Ubuntu screen.

    10. You can run VBox and use virtual machines.

    11. Generally faster boot than Live or Persistent USB's.

    12. More stable, better for day to day use. I have run Ubuntu off a flash drive for 5 years making only LTS upgrades.

    Note that once booted, both methods run at about the same speed. If the computer has lots of RAM Ubuntu should run mainly in RAM and there will not be a big difference between running off internal HDD and USB3 flash drive f.

    Full Install Method

    A quick and easy method to flash a Full install to USB can be found here: Easy Full Install USB that Boots both BIOS and UEFI

    A more traditional methods for creating a Full install USB from scratch can be found here: How to Create a Full Install of Ubuntu 20.04 to USB Device Step by Step

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