to...@tuxteam.de [2021-08-19 09:11:00] wrote: > On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 10:24:27PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote: >> > I wanted to do something exactly like that some months ago. >> > What I ended up doing is using a normal Debian installation >> > with an overlay file system mounted over the root. >> FWIW, you can do simpler and just use a normal Debian install on >> a USB key. That saves the trouble of the overlay filesystem. >> And if you want to be able to revert easily to the initial state, then >> you can probably get a similar result using an LVM snapshot. > There's still some charm to Santiago's approach: the device is (nearly?) > read-only after install.
I'm not sure I see the difference: the LVM snapshot can also be tagged as read-only. In both cases (LVM snapshot or overlayfs) the overall system is not read-only. That's of course indispensable for the "persistence" property, but it's also a disadvantage compared to a Debian Live system in that the /var subtree will sometimes be modified "gratuitously". [ I usually try to reduce this aspect by using a tmpfs for /var/cache and also by moving /var/lib/apt/lists to /var/cache (with a symlink), but there are various files that can get written depending on the packages you have installed. ] Stefan