Code: Select all
# menu.lst
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
timeout 2
default 1
title Debian FULL Install RW filesys (/boot/grub/menu.lst)
find --set-root /debian-usb
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst
commandline
title Debian Jessie Frugal RO only saves if run flush2disk
find --set-root /live/01-filesystem.squashfs
kernel /vmlinuz boot=live timezone=Europe/London xorg-resolution=1280x768 config nofastboot persistence persistence-read-only persistence-label=persistence quickreboot noprompt showmounts live-media-path=/live/ config rw
initrd /initrd.img
Whilst 01-filesystem.squashfs is empty, leaving it present means you can still load other sfs's if you so desire (just drop them into /live folder so they're loaded at bootup).
Slower to boot, but once a program has been run once then typically it remains memory resident so subsequent runs are quick. Easy to backup, I just boot frugally and make a mksquashfs of /mnt/sda1 on another partition. No need to pin apps or the kernel i.e. accepts all updates such as to wget rather than running with older (weaker security) versions. The equivalent of a full Debian stable version, where security updates come through in a timely manner and the set of programs available in the repository work well.
I originally allocated 16GB to that partition, but typically it uses less than 5GB in total.
A nice feature is that /lib/live/mount/persistence/sda1 is the path to the persistent layer, so for instance in my home folder I created a sym link called documents-persistent to /lib/live/mount/persistence/sda1/documents-persistent, so that any document changed in that folder are preserved across reboots even if no save is run during a frugal booted (read only) session. Similar for Osmo (so all calendar/task changes are preserved). 99.9% of time I'll boot frugal. Full boot is only when a attempted update during a frugal booted session indicates that it was unable to apply the updates (kernel or whatever), in which case reboot without saving ... into full boot mode and re-run the updates, before rebooting back into frugal mode again.
For the full boot, menu.lst chains to Debian installed boot menu.
Works well for me, and just requires a single additional script to make it save changes (extended version of save2flash that I called flush2disk)