mutable/immutable persistence-file switch(on/off)

[Tinkerman]

Hello

I was trying an alternative to remastering Serena (Linuxmint) live-distro.

I used the Ventoy Persistence Plugin to get Serena to use it. (It worked)

Then I made the customizations; and rebooted to mark the persistence.dat "chmod 444 ".

But Serena still writes to it (this is not the behavior that i need)

I was searching the site for making persistence file switchable between mutable and immutable: a method to let the distros treat its persistence-file like a base, readonly, live-medium. All union changes would be discarded on shutdown. 


Or is there a simple user solution that I can try?

[Eliott]

If I understand what you're trying to do, I can see a solution, and it's the one I'm using.

To have different configuration of Linux Mint from Ventoy, I proceeded as follows.
-- Create a persistent Mint.dat file and assign it to the distribution.
-- Start Mint with Mint.dat persistence file from Ventoy and configure it “generically” (update drivers, configure display, install main software like VLC, etc.).
-- Copy this Mint.dat file to MintCustom.dat
-- Declaration of MintCustom.dat by Plugson.exe as 2nd persistent file.
-- Launch Mint from ventoy by selecting, in the launch menu, startup with Linux mint MintCustom persistence.

This way, I always have a reference persistent file (Mint.dat) that I can copy at will to have as many persistent files, each of which can be configured differently and declared as an alternative persistence file for Linux Mint.
There's nothing to stop me from copying Mincustom to Mintcustom1, declaring this new file and modifying it in a different way.
Etc............

The only limitation is the space it takes up on the boot media (usb key, external disk, etc....) under Ventoy.

[Tinkerman]

Thanks for the reply.

I wanted to have writes go to ram, instead of on disk.

However thanks for the reply.