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I realise that similar questions have been asked before in multiple posts. Some are linked at the end of this question. But my situation is a little different and I couldn't find any post addressing this.

I have created a Live USB Ubuntu 16.10 Desktop, with persistent storage. I have successfully booted into it and installed software such as Chrome, Eclipse and done an apt-get upgrade. These changes have persisted across reboots previously.

Now I am trying to boot the same USB Key on the same USB port of the same laptop. But I am getting the error:

(initramfs) unable to find a medium containing a live file system

It seems that the upgrade / software installation process has brought this error on. Has anyone seen such behaviour before? Any tips?

I have tried booting into the laptop and also into VMWare player using Plop Boot Manager. Same error.

I have already seen the below posts and tried their suggestions with no luck:

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Vipul Swarup
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2 Answers2

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This sounds like the casper-rw persistence file has been filled and has no more space left.

It is generally recommended not to do an update on a persistent usb drive as this quickly fills the casper-rw file which is limited to 4GB in size.

It is not possible to easily do an upgrade to a Persistent or Live drive as the kernel is part of a read only squashFS file.

To confirm if this is the problem try temporarily renaming the casper-rw file and rebooting.

You can also mount and access the casper-rw file thus:

mkdir /tmp/casper
sudo mount -o loop /path/to/casper-rw /tmp/casper

If you are using a casper-rw persistent partition, it can be accessed from a second Live USB or Live DVD.

Automatic updates should be turned off with persistent drives.

Edit: If the drive was made using mkusb there is probably a NTFS partition named usbdata.

If this partition gets fragmented, as NTFS partitions sometimes do, you can get the same error message. Try backing up and reformatting this partition.

There is a chance that this partition can be defragged in Windows 10. I prefer not to mess with multi partition flash drives in Windows.

Fragmenting can be a sign that the drive was unplugged while being written to, don't do that.

C.S.Cameron
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  • Thanks for that. Seems that doing the apt-upgrade probably was the problem. I don't suppose the casper-rw file is full, because I had extended it's size to 100 GB (following these instructions: http://askubuntu.com/questions/397481/how-to-make-a-persistent-live-ubuntu-usb-with-more-than-4gb). I have mounted the USB on another Linux system. It creates two mount points - "UUI" and "casper-rw". But the file "casper-rw" doesn't seem to exist any longer. Any ideas? – Vipul Swarup Jan 03 '17 at 05:07
  • Sounds like you used mkusb, it uses a casper-rw partition instead of a casper-rw file. One problem is that if the NTFS partition gets fragmented you get that error message. Try reformatting just the usbdata, (NTFS), partition using gparted from a second hard drive. Some people say it can be defragged using windows but I have not gotten that to work. – C.S.Cameron Jan 05 '17 at 07:38
  • Thanks - I have blown away the file system entirely now. Will give it a try again after a few days. Thanks for your help. – Vipul Swarup Jan 06 '17 at 06:20
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what i did:

create lubuntu 17.04 live usb with unetbootin (with 8gb persistence).

then boot usb and do: sudo apt upgrade

after upgrade powerdown and mount usb and copy:

/casper/vmlinuz.efi to /casper/vmlinuz.efi.old

and rename /casper/vmlinuz to /casper/vmlinuz.efi

boot usb again and all will be fine

gilux
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