If that matters, I'm currently on an Arch Linux system, and I partly followed what's on the relative wiki (Pages Create a new MBR for a USB stick, Manually create a USB flash installation and Install Syslinux), plus a CrunchBang post explaining how to make a persistent live USB out of any Jessie-deriving distro (like their BunsenLabs Hydrogen).
The problem is, even if Debian boots up more than fine, the system isn't persistent at all.
Here's what I did (I know some passages are redundant, but still...):
- Donwloaded the Cinnamon flavor of Jessie via torrent
- Erased the old MBR
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# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1 && sync
- Created a 1.1G W95 FAT32 (LBA) active partition and used the remaining space on a Linux partition
- Formatted the first to FAT32 and labelled it "Debian64". Formatted the second to ext4 and labelled it "persistence"
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# mkfs.vfat -n Debian64 /dev/sdb1 # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb2 -L persistence
- Mounted the first partition and the iso
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# mkdir /mnt/{iso,usb} # mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb # mount -o loop debian-live-8.2.0-amd64-cinnamon-desktop.iso /mnt/iso
- Copied all files inside the iso to the USB
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# cp -a /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb/ && sync
- Copied all .c32 files from the extlinux installed in my system to my USB
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# cp /usr/lib/syslinux/bios/*.c32 /mnt/usb/isolinux
- Installed extlinux to the USB
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# extlinux --install /mnt/usb/isolinux
- Wrote exlinux MBR to my USB
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# dd bs=440 count=1 if=/usr/lib/syslinux/bios/mbr.bin of=/dev/sdb
- Copied this syslinux.cfg in my isolinux folder
(You'll notice that the syslinux.cfg file already has the "persistence" attribute after "boot=live", and it is programmed to load a fancy splash screen at 1366x768, my laptop's resolution) - Created persistence.conf file inside the second partition
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# mkdir /mnt/pers # mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/pers # echo / union > /mnt/pers/persistence.conf
- Unmounted everything and rebooted