Live USB sticks with persistence

[gold_finger]

However, booting from unetbootin displays 2 identical menus and then a third which is a condensed version, prior to displaying the LL feather logo.

Yes UNetbootin can seem a little quirky at startup -- it shows a menu and countdown, then appears to be stuck for a few seconds at end of countdown, then menu size gets re-adjusted smaller (probably after scanning for correct graphics driver and resolution to use) for a few more seconds before it actually boots the OS.  I usually just let people know this is normal and not to worry unless it actually gets stuck for more than 30-60 seconds.  I've also noticed that there are occasions when it actually does fail to boot and ends up displaying all kinds of error messages on the screen -- about 1 out of every 10-15 boot-ups.  So, I tell them to just do a hard shutdown with the power button and boot again.  Usually it's just a glitch on that particular boot-up and it's fine the next try.

I think there is a problem when using gparted to shrink the fat32 partition to it's minimum and creating an ext2 casper-rw at the same time. It may be as simple as leaving a bit of space in the fat32 partition as you suggest and not labeling the ext2, until the install to the fat32 is done.

Like I said before, as far as "shrinking" the FAT32 partition with GParted goes, I have had the same problem as you attempting to do that on USB's -- so I think you may be right that there is (or was) some kind of bug causing that.

The only reason I had that "bit of space" in the FAT32 partition was to have somewhere for UNetbootin to create a persistence file (casper-rw) and to set itself up to boot in that manner.  Technically, that extra space is not necessary for UNetbootin to boot.  For example, I could have done a non-persistent install; shrunk the FAT32 partition as far as it could go; added an Ext2 partition labeled "casper-rw" after the fact; and then simply added "persistent" to the boot parameters of UNetbootin.  (I did that a while back also and it worked fine.  At that time I didn't have the shrink problem with GParted.)


As for the Ext2 partition being labeled "casper-rw" -- yes, you only want to label it AFTER you've installed to the FAT32 partition.  I'm guessing (because I've never tested this) that the presence of  both a casper-rw file and a casper-rw partition on the USB would cause confusion during boot-up.  I think the system can only use (and is only expecting to see) one.  (Again, this is just an educated guess.  I could be wrong.)

My difficulties seem to stem from reusing sticks which somehow get corrupted.

What I usually do before reusing one is wipe everything out on it with GParted first.  Try this in GParted on one of your used sticks:

• Delete any partitions on it, then "Apply" those deletions (Edit -> Apply All Operations).
  
• Create a brand new partition table on it:  Device -> Create Partition Table -> "msdos -> OK.
  
• Create your desired new partition(s) -- in your case a FAT32 partition 200MB bigger than the ISO file and an Ext2 partition for rest of space that you can switch the persistence to after the USB is created.
  
• "Apply" those new partition changes (Edit -> Apply All Operations).
  

Hopefully that gets them working again.  The only time I've had problems on mine is if they're particularly old and I've done many, many versions of bootable ISOs on them; or, when I've used seriously cheap no-name brands which tend to get corrupted after only a few times of doing that.

What is your opinion of usb sticks. I have quite a few different brands. Some, though are very slow, whilst others are markedly faster. I thought they were all basically the same speed

One would think that all "USB 2.0" sticks would behave the same and all USB 3.0 sticks would be the same, but you're right -- they're not.  The quality of the flash memory used in them can vary quite a bit.  Very generally speaking, the really cheap no-name brand are more likely to perform badly.  But that doesn't mean that some of the bigger names are always best.  Many times they have different product lines of their USBs, some of which may not be that great either.  What I always do is check out the ratings that people give them on Newegg.com (a computer parts website) or similar site before I buy any.  From my own experience, brands I've been satisfied with are:  Adata, Patriot, Sandisk and Kingston.

Have you tried installing LL or any other distro to an SD card and would this be a better/faster option.

I have not done that, but I'm pretty sure others here have so they'll be better able to answer this.  If you're BIOS will allow booting from an SD card, go ahead and test it out.  I know people have done full installs to SD cards just fine.  "Live" installs?  I don't recall, but I'd guess that you shouldn't have any problems doing that either.

And just another point which may be outside your field. I load Googleearth (same version) on all the computers I set up, as the users like this program. In LL, however, it is extremely slow to the point of being unusable.

Sorry -- I don't have any experience with Google Earth.  Find your old post on that subject and "bump" it asking for help again.  Maybe it just got lost down the memory hole on the forum and if you bump it back to top of the list someone may be able to help this time.