I mean one of the arch wiki links I posted mentions that some BIOSes will require one of the MBR partitions marked bootable. Did you try that (in case Mint doesn't automagically do that for you)?

I think so. I typed:

sudo fdisk -t dos /dev/sdb

and then pressed p, a, w and then q. Is that what you mean?

Yup.

Like the pendrivelinux link says: It depends on whatever Linux Distro LiveCD image you choose.
Ubuntu linux and ubuntu linux variants should be able to install and work in Persistence mode with little problems. Linux Mint was originally a spinoff of Ubuntu Linux, First thing I would do is get that always booting to GRUB issue fixed furst before messing around with something that will run up against that GRUB loader


Boot order: If your hard drive is listed to load first, that explains why everything keeps going through GRUB on your system. Since I am not a magican, and do not know the configuration of your motherboard, here is another link to follow and read. https://www.dummies.com/computers/pcs/change-the-boot-order-on-your-pc/ or https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/290258.image0.jpg
Ideally,you want the hard drive to "boot last", so in that linked image the hard drive/SSD would be moved to spot 5, and the floppy drive, opticial disk, network card, and USB device would be spots 1 2 3 4.
The LiveCD

Well that's the thing - I don't know how to prevent it from booting from GRUB (I assume you mean specifically the one on the HD, because I do actually want it to always boot GRUB, but just sometimes the one on the USB instead).

Thanks, I'll check those links tomorrow. But when I'm in UEFI mode it doesn't even list anything other than the 2 HD partitions as options for the boot order. In any case, if I go directly into the boot menu I wouldn't think it would be a problem, and the USB should at least show up there. And believe it or not, I don't even have a floppy drive ;)

I'm also going to try the method of using the installer but customizing it persistently using that program you linked me to (I think that's how it works), and if that works then it should boot fine, because my installer never has trouble booting, but I'm still keeping all options open.

Something is totally screwy. I was looking through that list of USB installer programs, trying to find one that seemed like it would run on Linux and do everything that I want (and ideally I'd like to be able to use ext4 rather than FAT32 or NTFS), etc.

Anyway, I found something called LiveUSB Install:

https://live.learnfree.eu/en/download/

So I got the .deb and the .tar.gz because I wasn't sure which one I'd need. But their stupid website doesn't have any instructions for how to install the program!

The .deb looks like the same icon as the software manager, so I thought that might be a simple one to use, but when I double-clicked it, it just opened a package view, like looking inside of a .zip file or something. Anyway, I looked up how to install a .deb package:

https://www.fosslinux.com/41461/how-to-install-deb-packages-on-ubuntu-linux-mint.htm

And I followed the directions, which said to first do this:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

I did that, and then it said to do this:

sudo dpkg -i "path_to_Debian_Package"

I did that also but I think there may have been an error amid all the text telling me what it was doing. In any case, it added the LiveUSB program into the Linux menu, but it had no icon or description, and when I clicked it, nothing happened.

Then it said to do:

sudo apt install gdebi

So I did, but there were more errors (sorry I don't remember what). And next it said to do:

sudo gdebi "path_to_Dbian_Package"

And that gave me more errors. I tried to uninstall LiveUSB, since I couldn't get it to run, anyway, and I thought that might fix the problem, but it didn't seem to want to uninstall either. At some point (I don't remember exactly when) a window popped up that said "Maintainer:" and "Size:", and on the right it says "Install Package" but the rest of the window is an empty white space, and there's an error that says:

Broken dependencies

Your system has broken dependencies. This application can not continue until this is fixed. To fix it run 'pkexec synaptic' or 'sudo apt-get install -f' in a terminal window.

I tried pkexec synaptic and I ended up in the Synaptic Package Manager, and something had said that I should filter to show only the broken packages because one of mine is broken. I found Filters in the Settings menu, which opened a popup window, and I clicked Broken on the left side, which automatically checked the Broken box on the right, and I clicked OK, but it didn't seem to filter any differently and still showed all results, so I exited Synaptic Package Manager.

I also tried sudo apt-get install -f, and I think that's when it seems to have uninstalled the LiveUSB program (that I could never get to work, anyway), because I can't find it anymore on the menu.

But if I open the .deb file now it just shows a popup window that says:

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: python-glade2

Under that it has a description of all the different distributions that LiveUSB can install (if it actually worked at all!).

So what the hell am I supposed to do now?! I can try to figure out how to install the .tar.gz file but I may only make things worse, and as for the .deb file screwing everything up, how can I undo that?

Well, I wasn't able to fix that problem, but I'm using other software now. For some reason I also wasn't able to install MultiSystem/MultiBoot:

https://www.pendrivelinux.com/multiboot-create-a-multiboot-usb-from-linux/

But I tried using YUMI in Windows. I thought while I'm at it I might as well install Linux Lite and Bodhi as well as Mint, to increase options, but then when I tried to boot them:

- Linux Lite almost immediately crashed while booting without compatibility mode (as expected, because of my video driver), but then when using compatibility mode it got pretty far, and at one point had a timer of 3 minutes trying to wait to do something I guess, but I had to wait for it to finish, and then later it got to a spot where it said "rc.local [2117]: A connection to the bus can't be made" and then wouldn't progress beyond that.

- Bodhi just showed the little penguin holding the USB stick in the bottom right, with an otherwise black screen, even when I booted with compatibility mode. I waited several minutes but nothing else happened.

- Mint didn't even offer me a menu from which to choose compatibility mode!!! When I chose Mint from the main multi-booting program it just immediately tried to boot and of course corrupted the image. So I tried again and it would let me edit the parameters, but they appeared different and much simplified compared to how they appear when I boot Mint on the HD, so I wasn't sure where to put the "nomodeset xforcevesa". Where should I put them in that case?

I can't believe it! Mint is the one that I've always been able to boot just fine before, but as soon as I put it on this stick it doesn't boot! I'll try a few other ones I guess, but damn it, why are they defective?!

Now I've also tried the whole process with Ventoy, and I get the same results for Linux Lite and Bodhi, but for Mint it actually boots! But it doesn't persist. How can I make Ventoy persistent?

I had never heard of Ventoy before, however 5 seconds on the Ventoy website lead me to this...
https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html

No idea why or how you didn't check on the Ventoy site before posting here. However it is becoming clearer why you keep running into issue after issue on your bizarre quest to re-implement TAILS(The Amnesic Incognito Live System).

Wait, why are you looking at live usb creators still? I thought you wanted to actually install a linux distro on a usb stick?

If nothing else, you seem to learn a lot with this long ordeal. Persistence!

If I ever in the future want to create a portable Linux installation on a USB flash disk, I'm sure to contact you. :)

(I hope I still understood what the scope and target of this project is...)

morrowslant, I found some information on persistence a bit later, but the problem was that the link I had originally used had implied that Ventoy was only available for Windows, so I was using that version, and I didn't see any special options for that stuff. Then later I found a Linux version and some instructions to do some stuff, which I'll try tomorrow morning as soon as I have time to do it.

I've never heard of TAILS before but I'll check it out. Is that something that I can use for this? It would be nice if someone had mentioned it earlier but thanks. You think it's bizarre for me to want to do this? Why would I keep having issues with it?



rojimboo, I do, but I'm trying this out of desperation, having already attempted every conceivable method to install it on a USB and always ending up with problems of it not being able to boot independently without having GRUB installed on the HD, and in many cases also being WAY too slow (even on USB 3.1). But the only reason why I didn't want to use a live one before was because I was under the impression that they couldn't be persistent, and therefore couldn't be customizable.



timppu, yes, persistence is the word - in fact, that's exactly what I'm looking for! A data persistent solution, but one that's also bootable without a separate boot loader on the HD.

The third post in this thread was me recommending TAILS along with OpenBSD.

Oh, crap. I guess there were so many of them all at once that I didn't remember all of them, and at the time I was looking to install on the HD so maybe USB seemed irrelevant, and then when it had become relevant I didn't remember posts that far back, and I also didn't realize that I'd want to use live mode, since I hadn't realized that it could be persistent. In short, it's a case of bad timing. Sorry.