Puredyne/Tips

Persistent Storage for running the Live version of PureDyne

When you run the Live version of PureDyne, it does not, by default, save any changes you make during your session.

If you want to save your settings and any software changes you make, you have to also have a persistent storage partition named live-rw

This is easiest on a flash drive. Get a flash drive you can re-format that has a fair amount of space. At least 4 GB - 8 or 16 is better, if you're going to do a lot of new installs. You can use a USB stick, an SD card, whatever you have. Use Gparted or some other Linux utility to re-format it as:

A.  A primary partition
B.  filetype EXT2 or EXT3
C.  with the label live-rw.   This label, live-rw (lower case, as typed) is what
 the system looks for.  If Puredyne finds it, it stores any changes you make to that 
partition, and reads them from that partition the next time you boot. 

With this persistent storage on a flash partition, you can boot PureDyne from a CD, DVD or USB stick on any computer and have the same persistent environment.

CAUTIONS -

If you boot up and none of your changes are there - the system for some reason didn't recognize your flash drive. Unplug it, re-plug it, and reboot.

BACK UP THE CONTENTS OF YOUR FLASH DRIVE REGULARLY to your hard disk or somewhere - you don't want to lose those directories. You can format a new flash drive with the label live-rw and copy the contents to that, too - two copies of your personal environment.

Wallpaper

For wallpaper on your desktop to be persistent over sessions, it has to be in /user/share/xfce4/backdrops - wallpaper anywhere else won't be used the next time you boot. If you are using persistent storage (above) or a full install, use ' sudo cpy <whatever the path and name of the image you want> /user/share/xfce4/backdrops '

Screensaver

If you're running an installation piece or suchlike then you might want to disable the screensaver. You can use the system preferences to activate/deactivate the XFCE screensaver - but!!! - if your computer supports DPMS (which it probably does) then X11 automatically blanks the screen after ten minutes, which is separate from the screensaver stuff.

To disable screen blanking, launch a terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run this line:

xset -dpms