Debian Live LXDE persistent mode

I was very happy that Debian Lenny had Live LXDE Desktop CD. I had tried it briefly earlier. Today I decided to use the persistent mode i.e. changes saved in live-rw file and used on reboot.

As always I copied the contents of Debian Live LXDE iso to a 1 GB partition and edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to make following entries:

title Debian Live LXDE
root (hd0,7)
kernel /live/vmlinuz1 boot=live union=aufs ip=frommedia swapon timezone=Asia/Kolkata persistent noprompt
initrd /live/initrd1.img

Explanation of boot parameters:
boot=live union=aufs This is copied from live.cfg file in isolinux directory
ip=frommedia This tells the system to read configuration from /etc/network/interfaces saved from earlier boots.
persistent This tells the system to look for live-rw home-rw partitions or files on the hard disk
noprompt This tells the system not to wait for removing Live CD on shutdown/restart

For persistent media I created live-rw on one partition (mounted at /media/disk) as follows:

$ dd if=/dev/null of=live-rw bs=512M seek=1
$ /sbin/mkfs.ext2 -F live-rw
$ sudo mv live-rw /media/disk

Just to check that persistent includes the installed .debs I installed ttf-indic-fonts:

$ sudo apt-get install ttf-devanagari-fonts

and the fonts are available on reboot.

All my personal settings are available, although, I did not create separate home-rw because live-rw includes changes to /home/user

Couple of steps on Zenwalk 6.0

Finally I have made Zenwalk 6.0 usable to my liking.

Setting static IP through Ethernet
Remove Wicd from Startup services:

Start Control_Panel (zenpanel}
Click on Startup_Services
Uncheck Wicd
Click OK.
Click on Session_and_Startup in XFCE Settings Manager.
Click on Application_Autostart
Uncheck on Wicd.
Close

Reboot.

Set up through netconfig (Just enter the required information):

$ su
Password:
# netconfig

Restart network (if you know how) or reboot.

Gmail Display problem
This is how Slackware site looked on Iceweasel on Zenwalk 6.0.

Similar problem was happening in Gmail. After reading on Zenwalk Forum I added the following lines in Device section of xorg.conf and it worked.

Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
Option "XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"

Zenwalk 6.0

I decided to try the new Zenwalk 6.0. As usual I copied the contents of the iso to a partition and found nice article on Zenwalk Wiki. Accordingly I edited the existing /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title Zenwalk 6.0 install
root (hd0,X)
kernel /kernels/ata/bzImage
initrd /isolinux/initrd.img

As per instructions I selected "Exit setup" and got root shell where I mounted the extracted iso:

cd /
mkdir zeniso
mount /dev/sda(X+1) /zeniso
setup

and started the installation. When it asked for source selection I selected "Install from a pre-mounted directory" and when asked for the directory where the installation files are:

/zeniso

and continued the install. I did not install the bootloader and edited the /boot/grub/menu.lst once again to make an entry for Zenwalk:

title Zenwalk 6.0 (on /dev/hda6)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28.7 root=/dev/sda6 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.splash

Next step was to connect to internet on newly installed Zenwalk 6.0 but I had to struggle because Wicd 1.5.9 does not detect the wired ethernet connections properly. I had to setup as follows:

$ su
Password:
# ifconfig eth0 down
# ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
# route add default gw 192.168.1.1
# exit

I am yet to find out a way to save the above configuration.

After choosing the timezone the clock did not indicate my time. I discovered that Zenwalk was assuming that the hardware clock was set to localtime (which is actually UTC). After struggling a little I found the file /etc/hardwareclock and changed the word 'localtime' to 'UTC' and it worked.

I also installed ttf-indic fonts and flash-plugin using Netpkg.

Zenwalk 6.0 has XFCE 4.6 which I had briefly used on Arch Linux the day it was released and now trying it on Zenwalk.