[Fedora-livecd-list] persistence and "install to harddrive"

[Jerry Vonau]

Hi all:

Just been playing around with a LiveUSB stick and persistence, and it
occurred to me that if you make any changes at all, anaconda will not
pick them up. The reasoning for this is that /usr/sbin/liveinst looks
for: 

if [ -z "$LIVE_BLOCK" ]; then
    if [ -b "/dev/mapper/live-osimg-min" ]; then
        LIVE_BLOCK="/dev/mapper/live-osimg-min"
    else
        LIVE_BLOCK="/dev/live-osimg"
    fi
fi

"live-osimg-min" is setup as part of the livecd init script and is made
up from the squashfs.img and osmin.img. Just wondering what the
advantages are in having the init script setup this device over trying
to create this device just before anaconda is called. 

Now the real question, what would be the best way to have anaconda
pickup the persistent overlay for the "install to hard-drive" part.
Could you just create a second device-mapper snapshot using the same
overlay and squashfs.img just presented as read-only in /dev/mapper?

then do something like:

if [ -z "$LIVE_BLOCK" ]; then
    if [ -b "/dev/mapper/live-osimg-min" ]; then
        LIVE_BLOCK="/dev/mapper/live-osimg-min"
    else
        LIVE_BLOCK="/dev/live-osimg"
    fi
    
    if [ -b "/dev/mapper/live-usb-ro" ]; then
        LIVE_BLOCK="/dev/mapper/live-usb-ro"
    fi

fi  

I'm thinking that an overlay file might be a mode that could be used in
the future to update the livecd just before you install to the disk.  

Just some thoughts,

Jerry